XML Sitemaps: What They Are and How to Create One

An XML sitemap is a file that lists the URLs on your website you want search engines to crawl and index. Think of it as a directory you hand directly to Google and Bing, rather than relying entirely on them discovering pages through links.

Sitemaps matter most for large sites (thousands of pages), new sites with few external links pointing in, and sites with content that’s poorly linked internally. For a small, well-linked site, a sitemap is still good practice, but crawlers will likely find your pages anyway.

What to include: Only canonical, indexable URLs that return a 200 status code. Don’t include redirected URLs, noindexed pages, or duplicate content variants — this just wastes crawl budget and can signal quality issues.

How to create one: Most CMS platforms (WordPress via Yoast or RankMath, Shopify, Webflow) generate sitemaps automatically at a URL like /sitemap.xml. For custom sites, sitemap generator tools or a simple script can build one from your URL list.

How to submit it: Add the sitemap URL to Google Search Console under Sitemaps, and reference it in your robots.txt file so all crawlers can find it automatically.

For large sites, split sitemaps by content type (blog, products, categories) and use a sitemap index file to link them together — this also makes it easier to spot which section has indexing issues.