XML Sitemap Best Practices: What to Include, What to Exclude

An XML sitemap is a file that lists the pages you want search engines to crawl and index. It doesn’t guarantee indexing, but it ensures search engines know your important pages exist — especially pages that are hard to discover through internal links alone.

What Is an XML Sitemap?

An XML sitemap is a structured file (usually at /sitemap.xml) that lists URLs along with optional metadata like last modification date, change frequency, and priority.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/sitemaps/sitemap.xsd">
  <url>
    <loc>https://www.example.com/</loc>
    <lastmod>2026-05-01</lastmod>
  </url>
  <url>
    <loc>https://www.example.com/blog/seo-guide</loc>
    <lastmod>2026-04-15</lastmod>
  </url>
</urlset>

Search engines use your sitemap as a discovery aid — a hint about which pages exist and which have been recently updated.

What to Include in Your Sitemap

Include

• All canonical pages you want indexed (your homepage, key landing pages, blog posts, product pages)
• Recently updated pages — the <lastmod> tag helps search engines prioritize recrawling
• Pages with few internal links — orphan pages that search engines might not find through crawling alone
• Localized versions — if you have hreflang pages, include all language variants

Exclude

• Pages with noindex — if you’re telling search engines not to index a page, don’t list it in your sitemap
• Redirected URLs — only include the final destination URL, not the redirect source
• Duplicate content — don’t include both https://site.com/page and https://site.com/page/ unless both are canonical
• Paginated pages — generally exclude /page/2, /page/3 etc. unless each page has unique content
• Utility pages — search results pages, login pages, thank-you pages, and admin dashboards
• URLs blocked by robots.txt — if crawling is blocked, listing the URL in a sitemap sends mixed signals

Where Should Your Sitemap Live?

The standard location is:

https://www.yoursite.com/sitemap.xml

But your sitemap can live at any URL — as long as you tell search engines where to find it:

1. Reference it in robots.txt (recommended):

Sitemap: https://www.yoursite.com/sitemap.xml

2. Submit it in Google Search Console under Sitemaps → Add a new sitemap

3. Submit it in Bing Webmaster Tools under Sitemaps

Your robots.txt should always reference your sitemap, even if you also submit it manually.

Sitemap Size Limits

A single sitemap file can contain:

• Maximum 50,000 URLs
• Maximum 50 MB uncompressed

If your site has more than 50,000 pages, use a sitemap index file that references multiple smaller sitemaps:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<sitemapindex xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/sitemaps/sitemap.xsd">
  <sitemap>
    <loc>https://www.example.com/sitemap-pages.xml</loc>
  </sitemap>
  <sitemap>
    <loc>https://www.example.com/sitemap-blog.xml</loc>
  </sitemap>
  <sitemap>
    <loc>https://www.example.com/sitemap-products.xml</loc>
  </sitemap>
</sitemapindex>

The lastmod Tag: Use It Correctly

The <lastmod> tag tells search engines when a page was last meaningfully updated. This is powerful — search engines use it to prioritize recrawling.

Rules:

• Only update lastmod when the page’s content actually changes, not on every deploy
• Use full ISO 8601 format: 2026-05-11T14:30:00+00:00 or at minimum 2026-05-11
• Don’t set all pages to today’s date — search engines will ignore lastmod entirely if it’s clearly inaccurate

The priority and changefreq Tags: Skip Them

Google has publicly stated that it ignores the <priority> and <changefreq> tags. Bing has said similar things. These tags are relics from the original sitemap protocol and add no value today.

Don’t waste time configuring them. Focus on <loc> and <lastmod>.

Dynamic vs Static Sitemaps

Static Sitemaps

Generated once and updated manually or during deploys. Fine for small sites with infrequent content changes.

Dynamic Sitemaps

Generated on-the-fly by your CMS or application. Better for sites with frequent content updates (blogs, ecommerce, news sites).

Most frameworks have sitemap plugins:

• WordPress: Yoast SEO, Rank Math, or XML Sitemaps
• Astro: @astrojs/sitemap
• Next.js: next-sitemap
• Shopify: Built-in (auto-generated)

Common Sitemap Mistakes

1. Not having a sitemap at all. Small sites can rank without one, but there’s no reason not to have one.
2. Including noindex pages. Contradictory signals confuse search engines.
3. Stale lastmod dates. If every page shows the same date, search engines stop trusting the dates.
4. Broken URLs in the sitemap. URLs that return 404 or 500 errors waste crawl budget and signal poor site maintenance.
5. Not referencing the sitemap in robots.txt. Without this reference, search engines might not find your sitemap at all.
6. Including non-canonical URLs. If a page has a canonical tag pointing elsewhere, don’t include the non-canonical version.

How Do I Check My Sitemap?

You can visit /sitemap.xml directly in your browser to see if one exists, then check your robots.txt for a Sitemap: reference. But validating the contents — checking for broken URLs, noindex conflicts, and proper formatting — takes more work.

What seoutils.dev checks: Our free audit detects your sitemap at common locations, validates its XML format, checks the URL count, and verifies it’s properly referenced in your robots.txt.

Run a free audit to check your sitemap setup.

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This is part of our Complete SEO Audit Checklist. Related: How to Create an Effective robots.txt File.