Lesson 10 / 34

Sitemap.xml

Create and submit a sitemap to tell search engines about all your pages and their importance.

What is a sitemap?

A sitemap.xml is an XML file that lists the pages you want search engines to crawl, with an optional last-modified date. It is for crawlers, not users, and helps them discover pages they might otherwise miss.

Sitemap structure

Each <url> needs a <loc>. Add an accurate <lastmod>; Google ignores <priority> and <changefreq>, so you can omit them.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
  <url>
    <loc>https://example.com/</loc>
    <lastmod>2025-10-15</lastmod>
  </url>
  <url>
    <loc>https://example.com/blog/seo-guide</loc>
    <lastmod>2025-10-01</lastmod>
  </url>
</urlset>

Submit to Search Console

After creating your sitemap, submit it via Google Search Console (and Bing Webmaster Tools). This speeds up crawling and indexing.