A sitemap is a file that lists all important URLs on your website, helping search engines discover and index your content. XML sitemaps are the standard format recognized by Google, Bing, and other search engines.
1. Upload to root: Place sitemap.xml at https://yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml 2. robots.txt: Add Sitemap: https://yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml 3. Google Search Console: Go to Sitemaps → Add → Enter URL 4. Bing Webmaster Tools: Submit under Sitemaps section
Priority (0.0-1.0): Relative importance. Homepage = 1.0, main pages = 0.8, blog posts = 0.6, legal pages = 0.3 Changefreq: How often content changes — daily for news, weekly for blogs, monthly for static pages, yearly for legal pages. Note: Google treats these as hints, not directives.
• Max 50,000 URLs per sitemap file
• Max 50MB uncompressed file size
• Use sitemap index for large sites
• Only include canonical URLs
• Don't include noindex pages
• Update lastmod only when content changes
• Use absolute URLs with protocol