Enter a domain name
Enter a domain name
In technical terms, XML means Extensible Markup Language (XML). It is a standard machine-readable file format, consumable by search engines and other data collection programs such as feed readers.
In the simplest of terms, an XML Sitemap is a document that helps Google and other major search engines better understand your website as they track it.
Basically, it lists the URLs (pages) of a site in a structured way, which allows you (the webmaster) to include additional information about each URL. This ranges from information such as:
The fact that XML maps list pages and provide additional information on those pages helps search engines crawl your site more intelligently.
Basically, this means that a good Sitemap serves as a route map of your website that takes search engines to all your important pages.
The XML map can also be useful for search engine optimization (SEO).
They allow Google and other search engines to easily find important pages on their website, even if their internal linking is bad.
This is important because of Google and other search engines index and rank specific web pages, not complete websites.
So even if the search engines have already crawled and indexed the URL of your homepage, there is still a need to provide them with a correctly defined site map to help expose other pages that would otherwise be hidden from spiderbots.
Think of your website as a house and every page of your site as space.
Google can know the house from an external point of view, but not necessarily each and every one of the rooms.
XML Sitemap Generator by SEO Tools is a powerful tool, but like any powerful tool, a little training and background on how all bits work is a long way.
So let's analyze the exact steps you must follow to use the tool in the most efficient way:
Step # 1: In the XML Sitemap Generator section, enter the URL of your website.
Step # 2: Specify optional custom parameters according to your preferences. The parameters include the number of pages you need to track, the frequency of change, the default priority and the dates.
Step # 3: Once you have specified the parameters you want, click on the "Generate Sitemap" button.
The tool will take a few minutes to analyze your request, track your site and generate a site map for you based on the details you provided.
Step # 4: Once the tool has completed the process, it will present the details of the site map, including the number of pages, the list of broken links, the content of the XML file and the link to the site map file.
Step # 5: Next, click on "Save as XML file" to download the site map file in .xml format.
Step # 6: Next, go to the root directory of your website and place the sitemap.xml file in the root folder of the domain. In case you have several site maps integrated into a sitemap.zip file, unzip it and load all the sitemap files into the root directory of your website.
Step # 7: As an additional step, go to your Google Search Console account (formerly called Google Webmaster Tools) and add the URL of your sitemap. As stated earlier, our free online tool is also compatible with other major search engines, in addition to Google. So, if you are a Bing person, you should go to your Bing Webmaster Tools account to add it.
Submitting your XML file to search engines (through the Google Search Console for Google) is a way to verify it. Just make sure the Sitemap is in the correct format and has been loaded correctly on your web server before attempting to verify it.
