Your first XML sitemap, minus the guesswork
A sitemap is a discovery aid: a list of canonical pages you want search engines to find.
Choose pages worth indexing
List absolute HTTPS URLs for your canonical, publicly accessible pages. Leave out redirects, duplicate URLs, private dashboards, and pages marked noindex. A sitemap does not override crawling or indexing restrictions.
Keep dates honest
Only supply a last-modified date when it represents a meaningful update to the page. Do not set every date to today just because you regenerate the file. This starter accepts one optional date for the supplied list; omit it if pages have different update dates.
Generate and submit
Paste one URL per line into the generator. Review validation errors and download sitemap.xml. Host it at your site’s root, reference it in robots.txt, and submit the URL in Search Console. Keep each sitemap within the protocol’s URL and size limits.
Maintain the list
Regenerate the sitemap as you add or remove pages. The starter generator handles up to 1,000 URLs on a single host and does not crawl a website. Larger sites should generate sitemaps automatically from their content database.
Further reading: Google’s SEO Starter Guide