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XML Sitemap Guide
Generate a complete XML sitemap with our free Sitemap Generator. Add URLs, set priorities, and export a search-engine-ready sitemap.xml file.
Sitemap XML Fields
| Field | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|
| loc | Yes | Full URL of the page including protocol (https://example.com/page) |
| lastmod | No | Date of last modification in W3C format (2026-01-15) |
| changefreq | No | How often the page changes: always, hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, never |
| priority | No | Relative importance from 0.0 to 1.0 (defaults to 0.5) |
Common Sitemap Mistakes
Including non-canonical URLs
Only include canonical URLs in your sitemap. Exclude parameterized, paginated, or duplicate versions.
Noindex pages in sitemap
Never include pages blocked by noindex or robots.txt. Search engines will ignore them and may lose trust in your sitemap.
Ignoring lastmod accuracy
Set accurate lastmod dates. Stale or incorrect dates can reduce crawl efficiency and indexing frequency.
Over-prioritizing everything
Don't set all pages to priority 1.0. Reserve high priority for your most important content pages only.