Sitemap Validator

About Sitemaps

Element	Descriere
XML Sitemap	A file that lists all important pages on your website to help search engines discover and index your content.
urlset	Root element that contains all `url` entries. Must include proper XML namespace.
url	Parent tag for each URL entry. Contains `loc`, `lastmod`, `changefreq`, and `priority`.
loc	The URL of the page. Must be absolute URL with protocol (http/https).
lastmod	Last modification date in W3C Datetime format (YYYY-MM-DD). Optional but recommended.
changefreq	How frequently the page changes: `always`, `hourly`, `daily`, `weekly`, `monthly`, `yearly`, `never`.
priority	Priority of URL relative to other URLs (0.0 to 1.0). Default is 0.5.
Size Limits	Max 50,000 URLs per sitemap. Max 50MB uncompressed. Use sitemap index for larger sites.

Sitemap Best Practices

Submit to Search Engines: Add your sitemap to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools
robots.txt Reference: Include sitemap location in your robots.txt file
Keep Updated: Regenerate sitemap when adding or removing pages
Use Priority Wisely: Reserve high priority (0.8-1.0) for important pages only
Include Only Indexable URLs: Don't include noindex pages, redirects, or error pages
Use Absolute URLs: Always use complete URLs with protocol and domain
Compress Large Sitemaps: Use .xml.gz compression for sitemaps over 10MB

Example Sitemap

Basic sitemap structure:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
  <url>
    <loc>https://example.com/</loc>
    <lastmod>2024-01-15</lastmod>
    <changefreq>daily</changefreq>
    <priority>1.0</priority>
  </url>
  <url>
    <loc>https://example.com/about</loc>
    <lastmod>2024-01-10</lastmod>
    <changefreq>monthly</changefreq>
    <priority>0.8</priority>
  </url>
</urlset>