Introduction: Our Sitemap Generator is a free online tool that helps you create a custom XML sitemap for your website. Simply add your page URLs one by one, set their priority and change frequency, and then download the ready-to-use `sitemap.xml` file. This manual approach gives you full control over your sitemap, which is essential for improving your site’s SEO.
Online XML Sitemap Generator
Add URLs to your Sitemap
Your generated sitemap will appear here after you add a URL.
What is an XML Sitemap Generator?
An XML Sitemap Generator is a tool that creates a structured file listing all the important URLs on a website. This file, typically named `sitemap.xml`, acts as a roadmap for search engines like Google, Bing, and Yandex. It helps their automated crawlers (bots) to discover, understand, and index a site’s content more efficiently and intelligently. While a search engine can often find most pages by following links, a sitemap provides an explicit list of URLs you want them to know about.
This is particularly crucial for:
- Large websites: With thousands of pages, it’s easy for some to get missed during a regular crawl.
- New websites: New sites with few external links pointing to them can be hard for crawlers to discover. A sitemap gives them a direct starting point.
- Sites with complex navigation: If your content is deep within your site architecture or not well-linked, a sitemap ensures it gets found.
- Sites with rich media: Sitemaps can also include information about videos and images, providing more context to search engines.
Our tool is a manual sitemap generator. Unlike automated plugins that crawl your site, our tool gives you full control. You provide the list of URLs, allowing you to create a clean, curated sitemap with only the most important pages, making it a powerful and precise instrument for technical SEO.
Key Features & Benefits
Full Manual Control
You decide exactly which URLs go into your sitemap. This prevents unimportant pages (like tags or thank-you pages) from being included.
Instant Generation
The sitemap XML is generated in real-time in your browser as you add URLs. No waiting, no server processing. Download the final file instantly.
Set SEO Parameters
For each URL, you can provide hints to search engines by setting the last modified date, change frequency, and crawl priority.
How to Create Your XML Sitemap
Follow these simple steps to build and download a professional XML sitemap for any website:
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Add Your URLs
Copy a full page URL from your website. Paste it into the input box at the top of the tool and click the “Add URL” button. The URL will appear in the list below.
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Repeat for All Pages
Continue adding all the important pages you want search engines to index. This should include your homepage, about page, contact page, blog posts, and key product or service pages.
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Configure Parameters (Optional)
For each URL in the list, you can adjust its properties. Set the ‘Last Modified’ date, select how often the page changes with ‘Change Frequency’, and assign its relative importance using the ‘Priority’ slider.
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Download and Upload
Once your list is complete, click the “Download sitemap.xml” button. Save the file to your computer. Finally, upload this `sitemap.xml` file to the root folder of your website and submit its location to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.
The Complete Guide to XML Sitemaps for SEO in 2025
In the complex ecosystem of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), technical SEO forms the bedrock upon which all other efforts—content, link building, and user experience—are built. At the heart of technical SEO lies a simple yet profoundly important file: the XML sitemap. While invisible to the average user, this file is a direct line of communication to search engine crawlers, guiding them through your website to ensure your valuable content doesn’t get lost in the digital maze. Understanding how to use a Sitemap Generator effectively is not just a technical task; it’s a strategic imperative for anyone serious about their online visibility.
The Anatomy of an XML Sitemap
An XML sitemap is more than just a list of links. It’s a structured document with specific tags that provide metadata about each URL. A typical entry looks like this:
<url>
<loc>https://www.yourwebsite.com/your-page.html</loc>
<lastmod>2025-08-08</lastmod>
<changefreq>weekly</changefreq>
<priority>0.8</priority>
</url><urlset>: The parent tag that encapsulates the entire file.<url>: The parent tag for each individual URL entry.<loc>: The location (URL) of the page. This is the only mandatory tag within a<url>block. It must be an absolute, canonical URL.<lastmod>: (Optional) The date the file was last modified. This helps search engines understand if content is fresh.<changefreq>: (Optional) A hint to crawlers about how frequently the page is likely to change. Options include `always`, `hourly`, `daily`, `weekly`, `monthly`, `yearly`, and `never`.<priority>: (Optional) The priority of this URL relative to other URLs on your site, on a scale from 0.0 to 1.0. This lets you tell search engines which pages you deem most important.
While Google has stated that it largely ignores `priority` and `changefreq` in favor of more sophisticated signals, `lastmod` remains a valuable piece of information. Regardless, providing this data demonstrates a well-structured site and contributes to your overall E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) profile.
Manual vs. Dynamic Sitemaps: Choosing the Right Tool
The method of sitemap creation depends on your website’s platform and complexity. Dynamic Sitemaps: For content management systems like WordPress, SEO plugins (e.g., Yoast, Rank Math) dynamically generate sitemaps. They automatically add new posts and pages and remove deleted ones. This is the best approach for most blogs and large, frequently updated sites. Manual Sitemaps: For static websites (built with HTML/CSS/JS), smaller sites with unchanging content, or when you need a highly specific list of URLs, a manual Sitemap Generator like this one is the perfect tool. It provides absolute control. You can ensure only high-quality, canonical pages are included, and you can easily create sitemaps for any type of website, regardless of the underlying technology.
Strategic Sitemap Implementation for Maximum SEO Impact
Creating the file is only the first step. To maximize its SEO value, follow these strategic best practices:
- Be Clean and Canonical: Only include URLs that you want search engines to index. Exclude non-canonical versions, redirects, 404 pages, and low-value pages like internal search results or archives. Your sitemap should reflect your ideal indexable footprint.
- Location Matters: Upload your `sitemap.xml` to the root directory of your website. This is the standard location search engines expect to find it.
- Submit to Search Consoles: While you can reference your sitemap in your `robots.txt` file, the most direct method is to submit it via Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. This action prompts them to schedule a crawl and provides you with valuable data on indexing status, errors, and warnings.
- Keep it Updated: Your sitemap should be a living document. Whenever you add a significant new page or remove an old one, update your sitemap and resubmit it. For static sites, this is a quick manual process.
- Consider Multiple Sitemaps: If your site exceeds the 50,000 URL limit or you want to organize your content logically (e.g., one sitemap for blog posts, one for product pages), you can create multiple sitemaps and list them in a sitemap index file.
Conclusion: More Than a List, It’s a Statement of Intent
An XML sitemap is your formal declaration to search engines: “Here is the content I value. Here are the pages that define my website.” It’s an act of taking control of your site’s discoverability and indexability. By using a Sitemap Generator and following best practices, you eliminate guesswork for crawlers, speed up the indexing process for new content, and build a technically sound foundation for all your SEO efforts. This attention to technical detail is a powerful signal of quality and expertise that helps establish your site as an authoritative and trustworthy resource in the eyes of both users and search engines.
Frequently Asked Questions
An XML sitemap is a file that lists all the important pages on your website. It acts as a roadmap for search engines like Google, helping their web crawlers find, understand, and index your content more efficiently.
A sitemap is crucial for SEO because it guarantees that search engines know about all the pages you want them to index, especially pages that might be hard to discover through normal crawling (like new pages or pages deep within your site architecture). This ensures better and faster indexing of your content.
Yes, our online Sitemap Generator is 100% free to use. There are no fees, no registration, and no limits on how many sitemaps you can create.
SEO plugins like Yoast or Rank Math automatically generate a sitemap by crawling your own site. Our tool is a manual sitemap generator. It gives you full control to create a smaller, curated sitemap for any website platform by adding URLs one by one. This is perfect for static sites or for creating specialized sitemaps.
‘Priority’ (a value from 0.0 to 1.0) is a hint to search engines about which pages you consider most important. ‘Change Frequency’ (e.g., ‘daily’, ‘weekly’) hints at how often a page’s content changes. While Google has stated they pay less attention to these values today, they can still be useful hints for other search engines and for your own reference.
A single sitemap file can contain a maximum of 50,000 URLs and must be no larger than 50MB (uncompressed). If you have more URLs, you can create multiple sitemap files and list them in a sitemap index file.
First, upload the generated ‘sitemap.xml’ file to the root directory of your website (e.g., https://yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml). Then, log in to your Google Search Console account, navigate to the ‘Sitemaps’ section, enter the URL of your sitemap file, and click ‘Submit’.
Yes, absolutely. Since this is a manual generator, it is platform-agnostic. You can use it to create a sitemap for a website built with WordPress, Shopify, Wix, Squarespace, or any custom-coded static site.