sitemap.xml

A sitemap.xml file is an XML document that lists all the URLs of a website that are available for crawling by search engine bots. It helps search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo to more efficiently crawl and index a website's content.

Basic Structure

A basic sitemap.xml file follows this structure:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
  <url>
    <loc>https://www.example.com/</loc>
    <lastmod>2023-01-01</lastmod>
    <changefreq>daily</changefreq>
    <priority>1.0</priority>
  </url>
  <url>
    <loc>https://www.example.com/about</loc>
    <lastmod>2022-12-15</lastmod>
    <changefreq>monthly</changefreq>
    <priority>0.8</priority>
  </url>
</urlset>

Key Elements

• <urlset> - The root element that encapsulates the file and references the sitemap protocol standard
• <url> - Container for each URL entry
• <loc> - The URL of the page (required)
• 🟠 claude-3.7-sonnet