Create xml site map file

The following post explores best practices, definitions, examples, and more. By Nik Svoronos January 11, You have to speak their language if you want your website to rank prominently on search engine result pages SERP.

You can create an XML sitemap that search engines like Google use to understand how your website is structured and what it should pay attention to. XML stands for extensible markup language. XML includes codes or tags that explain how a web page is formatted.

Like a map or blueprint for your website, Bing and Google XML sitemaps are files that detail elements of your website like:. When you create a sitemap, you tell search engines like Google what the most important pages and elements on your website are. Since Google processes information in codes, XML sitemaps translate the content of your website quickly and easily for Google, which can influence your search results. An XML sitemap serves as a guide to your website in the exact language Google understands and can respond quickly to.

But they can help get more of your pages indexed. To confirm your site is crawlable without a sitemap, it should meet the following criteria. However , Google states in most cases that your site will benefit from having a sitemap. We recommend always creating a sitemap to benefit SEO and search ranking purposes.

Google specifically indicates if you match any of the following criteria, you need to have a sitemap. Whatever state your website is in, generally, anything you add to a sitemap will result in faster indexation for web crawlers. Sitemaps can provide a needed boost to your website if you want to get more pages indexed and ranked. You can see your sitemap and click on the check or warning icon to get recommendations for your sitemap. You can also work with your webmaster to find your sitemap.

You can find this file in the root directory of your web server. To add your sitemap, open the file and paste this line:. You can learn more about these issues and how to solve them here. If you have a lot of content, some low-quality pages likely made it into your sitemap. Look for clusters of duplicate and near-duplicate pages without canonicals. These are the orange squares. Click one to see all the pages in the group. All in all, the best course of action is to remove low-quality from your website and, subsequently, your sitemap.

This shows all noindexed pages. To do that, go to the Data Explorer and add these filters:. Here are a few answers to some frequently asked questions about sitemaps. You create a sitemap for an ecommerce website in the same way as you would for any site.

And sitemaps have nothing to do with rankings. Got questions? Give me a shout in the comments or on Twitter. Joshua Hardwick. Article stats Monthly traffic 1, Linking websites An XML sitemap file has a specific format that you must follow.

Each URL will end up looking like this:. Since we can use a formula within Excel, it is going to be pretty easy to set up this formatting.

For example:. Now that we have the URL structure correct for the sitemap, we have to create the text file with the proper format and data that needs to be included. Every sitemap has to follow the same protocol. The file should look like this:. This is the easiest part of the whole process.

Simply save your text file as an. Just enter your website URL to create a sitemap. Why do you need a sitemap? More options. Automatically calculate "Page Priority" attribute The priority of a particular URL is relative to other pages on the same website. Free and simple Suitable when you need to quickly create a sitemap for a small web site up to pages. No registration required and you get sitemaps ready immediately.

You can download xml sitemap file or receive it via email and put it on your website after that. Powerful, yet easy to use Free account provides you everything you get with Online generator and allows you to: submit sitemap directly from our servers update sitemap without reuploading it to your website easily manage multiple websites. Upgraded account will let you: index up to 1,, pages automatically update sitemap create Images, Videos, News sitemaps and RSS feed detect and list broken links on your site View details.

Installable version We offer a server-side script written in PHP language that you can install on your server and create sitemap for your website. There are add-ons for it to create images, video and news sitemaps. This is a fantastic tool — so quick and simple to use. In less than a few minutes the map was complete and submitted to google! Thank you so much! Perfect Housekeeping www.

Thanks for having saved me hours. Thank you very much for a great product with instructions even I could understand! Derek W. You've saved me tons of time. Keep up the good work!

You have a great product! Thanks, I am sending a donation Dan Freeman.