Sitemap XML Guide - Do You Need Them and How to Build Them.

Thanks to the constant number of SEO Audits that Dave does each month he sees odd things across many sites, content management systems and more specifically in sitemap XML files.

Recently there was some comments made by John of Google and covered by Barry at Search Engine Round Table where you can see what was said by all parties.

Automate it on your backend (generate the files based on your local database). That way you can ping sitemap files immediately when something changes, and you have an exact last-modification date. Don't crawl your own site, Google already does that. Via John Mu on Reddit

And while John is correct that the most efficient and reliable way to create a sitemap.xml file is through a backend process, the reality is that there are often technical or business reasons why this isn't a viable solution. As we covered recently, sometimes best practices aren't best practice and every situation around a CMS, plugins, business goals, developer resources, setup, and 20 other things may make your situation pretty unique and thus "best practice" simply won't work for you.

The goal of this podcast episode was to try and walk you through various options no matter your CMS and technical ability (as best we can in 20 minutes of course).

Steps for Building a Sitemap.xml

Start with your CMS and use any extensions, plugins or default ways to build the file. Compare your known site to the sitemap.xml - are there pages in it you do NOT want in it? Is it missing any types of pages?Move on to looking at ways to customize your sitemap.xml as needed. This may be at the plugin/extension level or for something like WordPress this may be at the page level.Now this may be where if your out of the box setup or plugin is having issues that you may need to look at custom options for building a sitemap.xml file.

Tips for Building a Sitemap.xml

For large dynamic sites the out of the box solutions may or may not work. When that is the case for you and your site here is a quick breakdown of some tips to use to help you build a solid sitemap file.

Export all URLs that you can from your CMSExport all URLs from your Google Analytics or Web Analytics solutionExport all URLs from your Google Search ConsoleCrawl the site using whatever 3rd party crawler you prefer to useCombine all these sources to give you an idea of every URL there is on your site.Cut anything you don't want in the sitemap.xml file - tag pages, author pages, add to cart, thank you pages or anything else.Double check it like you are Santa and push the file live.

CMS Sitemap XML Resources

Below is a list of CMS resources on how or where to find plugins and information on implementing sitemap XML files for various content management systems. We didn't cover EVERY CMS on the show but we did try and mention and cover the more heavily used systems.

Medium

https://medium.com/onely/mediums-got-a-large-problem-451bb89dfba7

Drupal

https://www.drupal.org/project/xmlsitemap

WordPress

https://www.wpbeginner.com/beginners-guide/what-is-a-wordpress-sitemap-how-to-create-a-sitemap-in-wordpress/

Wix

https://support.wix.com/en/article/request-making-changes-to-your-sitemap

Joomla

Shopify

https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/promoting-marketing/seo/find-site-map

Sitefinity

https://www.progress.com/documentation/sitefinity-cms/sitemap-generator

Sitemap XML Podcast Transcript

Matt Siltala: [00:00:00] Hey guys, excited to be here with you today. How's it going Dave?

Dave Rohrer: [00:00:15]

It is going, sir. Awesome.

Matt Siltala: [00:00:17]

So we've got a fun one for you guys. You're gonna love this one today. We're

going to get really nerdy on ya.

Um. Well, Dave is, anyway,

Dave Rohrer: [00:00:27]

so

Matt Siltala: [00:00:28]

somewhat nerdy now. This is, this is a good one, I think is a good time. Like

we were just talking about. It's a go