Sitemap Generator

A sitemap is a file that lists all important pages of your website, helping search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo discover, crawl, and index your content more efficiently. Our free sitemap generator creates both XML sitemaps (for search engines) and HTML sitemaps (for human visitors), ensuring comprehensive coverage of your website's structure. Proper sitemaps are essential for SEO, particularly for large websites, new sites with few backlinks, websites with complex navigation, or pages with rich media content that might otherwise be difficult for search engines to discover.

What is an XML Sitemap?

XML sitemaps are structured files written in Extensible Markup Language specifically designed for search engine crawlers. These files list URLs along with metadata including last modification date (lastmod), change frequency (changefreq), and priority (priority between 0.0 and 1.0). XML sitemaps help search engines understand your website's structure, discover new pages quickly, find updated content efficiently, and prioritize which pages to crawl first. Major search engines including Google, Bing, Yahoo, and Baidu support XML sitemaps, using them to optimize their crawling resources and ensure comprehensive indexing of your content. XML sitemaps are particularly valuable for websites with pages that aren't easily discoverable through normal link navigation, such as orphaned pages, pages with few internal links, or newly published content.

How to Use This Generator

Creating a sitemap with our tool requires just a few simple steps. Enter your website's base URL (like https://example.com) ensuring you include the protocol (https:// or http://). List all page paths or full URLs you want included in the sitemap, one per line—you can enter relative paths starting with / (like /about or /blog) or complete URLs. Configure sitemap settings including change frequency (how often pages update: daily, weekly, monthly) and priority (0.0 to 1.0, with 1.0 being highest priority). Click "Generate Sitemap" to create both XML and HTML versions instantly. Switch between tabs to view XML (for search engines) or HTML (for visitors) versions. Copy the generated code using the "Copy Code" button or download files directly using "Download XML" or "Download HTML" buttons. Upload the sitemap.xml file to your website's root directory (https://yoursite.com/sitemap.xml). Submit your sitemap to Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools, and other search engines. Update your robots.txt file to reference the sitemap location.

Sitemap Best Practices

Following sitemap best practices ensures optimal search engine crawling and indexing. Include only canonical URLs in your sitemap—avoid duplicate content by listing only the preferred version of each page. Keep sitemaps under 50MB uncompressed or 50,000 URLs per file—larger sites should split into multiple sitemaps using a sitemap index file. Update sitemaps regularly when adding new pages, removing old content, or making significant changes to existing pages. Set appropriate priorities with your homepage typically at 1.0, important category pages at 0.8-0.9, and regular content pages at 0.5-0.7. Choose realistic change frequencies that match actual update patterns—overestimating frequency wastes crawler resources while underestimating delays indexing. Include only publicly accessible pages—exclude pages behind login walls, duplicate content, redirected URLs, or URLs with noindex directives. Submit sitemaps to all major search engines through their respective webmaster tools rather than relying solely on robots.txt discovery.

HTML Sitemaps for Users

While XML sitemaps serve search engines, HTML sitemaps benefit human visitors by providing a comprehensive, organized overview of your website's structure. HTML sitemaps improve user experience by helping visitors find content quickly, understand site organization at a glance, and navigate to specific sections efficiently. They particularly help on large websites with complex navigation, e-commerce sites with numerous product categories, blogs with extensive archives, or informational sites with deep content hierarchies. HTML sitemaps also provide SEO benefits by creating additional internal links, ensuring all pages are accessible, and potentially improving crawl depth. Place HTML sitemaps in your footer navigation or main menu for easy access, organize content logically by category or hierarchy, and link to important pages using descriptive anchor text that includes keywords naturally.