Free XML Sitemap Generator

What is an XML sitemap?

An XML sitemap is a plain text file, usually named sitemap.xml, that lists the important pages on your website in a format search engines can read. Think of it as a table of contents written for Googlebot and Bingbot rather than for people. Each entry holds the full address of a page and, optionally, a few details about it, such as the date it was last changed.

Search engines normally discover pages by following links. A crawler lands on your homepage, follows every link it finds, then follows the links on those pages, and so on. That works well for a small, tightly linked site. It works far less well for a new site with few backlinks, a large blog with thousands of posts, or a store where product pages sit five or six clicks deep. A sitemap removes the guesswork by handing search engines a complete list up front.

The format follows an open standard published at sitemaps.org and supported by Google, Bing, Yandex, DuckDuckGo's partners and most other search engines. Because it is a shared standard, one file works everywhere. You do not need a separate sitemap for each search engine.

Our free XML sitemap generator above builds that file for you. You can let it crawl your site automatically, or paste in a list of URLs you already have, then download a valid file ready to upload.

Why your website needs an XML sitemap

Google describes sitemaps as helpful rather than mandatory, and that is an honest way to put it. A five-page brochure site with good internal links will probably be crawled fine without one. For almost every other site, a sitemap brings real, practical benefits.

• Faster discovery of new pages. When you publish a new post or product, a sitemap with an accurate last-modified date tells search engines something new is waiting, instead of leaving them to stumble across it.
• Better coverage on large sites. Search engines give every site a limited crawl budget. A sitemap points that budget at the pages you actually care about.
• Help for new websites. A brand-new domain has few or no external links pointing to it. Submitting a sitemap is one of the quickest ways to get a new site on Google's radar.
• Rescue for poorly linked pages. Landing pages, older archive posts and filtered category pages are often linked from only one place, or nowhere. A sitemap makes sure they are still found.
• Useful diagnostics. Once submitted, Google Search Console reports how many sitemap URLs are indexed and why others are not. That report is one of the best free SEO health checks you can get.

One point worth being clear about: a sitemap is not a ranking factor. Listing a page does not push it higher in results. What a sitemap does is make sure good pages are found and considered. Rankings still depend on content quality, relevance, links and user experience.

How to use the BlogDada XML sitemap generator

The tool is built to be usable by anyone, whether you run a WordPress blog, a hand-coded HTML site, or a store on a hosted platform. Here is the whole process.

1. Choose how to add pages. Select Crawl my website to let the tool find pages automatically, or Paste URLs if you already have a list, for example from your CMS, an analytics export or a spreadsheet.
2. Start the crawl. Enter your homepage address, including https://, pick how many pages to crawl, and select Start crawl. The tool follows internal links on your domain, skips images, PDFs and other files, and ignores links to other websites. You can stop the crawl at any time.
3. Review the URL list. Every page found is added to the URL list. Remove anything that should not be indexed, such as thank-you pages, login pages or test pages, and add any pages the crawler missed.
4. Set the options. Choose whether to include a last-modified date, a change frequency and a priority. If you are unsure, the defaults work well for most sites.
5. Generate and download. Select Generate sitemap. Check the preview on the right, then select Download sitemap.xml or copy the code.
6. Upload and submit. Upload the file to the root folder of your website, add it to robots.txt, and submit it in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. The section below walks through each step.

Understanding the tags inside sitemap.xml

An XML sitemap looks technical at first glance, but it uses only a handful of tags. Here is a small example of what the generator produces:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
  <url>
    <loc>https://example.com/</loc>
    <lastmod>2026-09-22</lastmod>
    <changefreq>weekly</changefreq>
    <priority>1.0</priority>
  </url>
</urlset>

What search engines actually use

Here is the honest picture. Google has publicly stated that it ignores changefreq and priority. It does use lastmod, but only when the dates on your site prove consistently accurate. If every page shows today's date on every crawl, Google learns to distrust the value. Bing has said that lastmod is important for its crawler too.

That is why the generator lets you leave any optional tag out. The safest approach is to include lastmod only when it reflects a real content change, and treat changefreq and priority as harmless extras for search engines that still read them. The Auto by page depth priority setting gives your homepage 1.0, top-level pages 0.8, second-level pages 0.6 and deeper pages 0.5, which mirrors a typical site structure.

How to submit your sitemap to Google and Bing

Creating the file is only half the job. Search engines need to know where it lives.

1. Upload the file to your root folder

Upload sitemap.xml to the top-level folder of your website, often called public_html or www, using your hosting file manager or FTP. When you open https://yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml in a browser, you should see the XML. A sitemap can only list URLs in its own folder and below, so the root is the best location.

2. Add it to robots.txt

Open your robots.txt file and add one line anywhere in it, using the full address:

Sitemap: https://yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml

Every major search engine checks robots.txt, so this line helps them find your sitemap even without a manual submission. The tool shows this exact line for your domain after you generate.

3. Submit in Google Search Console

Sign in to Google Search Console, select your property, open Sitemaps in the left menu, type sitemap.xml into the box and select Submit. Within a few days the report will show the status, the number of URLs discovered and any errors. Google retired its old sitemap ping URL in 2023, so Search Console and robots.txt are now the official ways to tell Google about a sitemap.

4. Submit in Bing Webmaster Tools

Bing Webmaster Tools works the same way: add your site, open Sitemaps, and submit the full URL. You can import your site straight from Google Search Console to save time. Bing's index also powers several other search engines and AI assistants, so this step is worth the two minutes it takes. For even faster updates, Bing and Yandex support the IndexNow protocol, which many CMS plugins can send automatically.

XML sitemap best practices

A sitemap is simple, but a clean one gets far more value from search engines than a messy one. Follow these rules.

• List only canonical, indexable URLs. Every URL should return a 200 status, not be blocked in robots.txt, not carry a noindex tag, and be the canonical version of the page. If a page's canonical tag points somewhere else, list the other URL instead.
• Use one consistent version of your domain. Pick https and either www or non-www, and use it everywhere. Mixing versions creates duplicates and wastes crawl budget.
• Keep lastmod honest. Update the date when the main content changes, not when a sidebar widget or copyright year changes.
• Leave out low-value pages. Tag archives, internal search results, cart and checkout pages, login pages and thin paginated pages rarely belong in a sitemap.
• Use UTF-8 encoding and absolute URLs. Relative paths like /about/ are not valid in a sitemap. The generator always outputs full addresses.
• Keep it updated. A sitemap that lists deleted pages or misses new ones sends mixed signals. Regenerate it whenever your site structure changes, or use a CMS plugin that updates automatically.
• Split large sites by content type. Separate sitemaps for posts, pages, products and categories make Search Console reports much easier to diagnose.

Common sitemap mistakes to avoid

These are the problems we see most often when auditing sites, and each one can quietly limit how well your pages are crawled.

• Including redirected URLs. If an old URL redirects to a new one, list only the new one.
• Listing noindex pages. Telling Google to index a page in the sitemap while telling it not to index the page itself creates a conflict that shows up as errors in Search Console.
• Broken or 404 URLs. Deleted pages left in the sitemap waste crawl budget and make the whole file look less trustworthy.
• Mixing http and https. After moving to https, many sites forget to update their sitemap.
• Setting every priority to 1.0. If every page is top priority, no page is. It adds nothing.
• Forgetting to resubmit after a redesign. A new URL structure needs a new sitemap, submitted again.
• Unescaped characters. A raw ampersand in a URL breaks XML parsing. Our tool escapes these automatically, but hand-written sitemaps often fail on this.

XML sitemap vs HTML sitemap

The names are similar, but the two serve different readers. An XML sitemap is written for search engines. Visitors never see it in normal browsing, and it carries machine-readable details such as last-modified dates. An HTML sitemap is an ordinary web page with a list of links, written for people who want to find something quickly, and it also passes a little internal link value to the pages it lists.

You do not have to choose. Most sites benefit from an XML sitemap. An HTML sitemap is optional but useful on large sites with deep navigation. If you only have time for one, create the XML sitemap first because that is what search engines read directly.

Sitemap limits and sitemap index files

The sitemap standard sets two limits for each file: no more than 50,000 URLs and no more than 50 MB uncompressed. Most small and medium sites never come close. If yours does, split your URLs across several sitemap files, for example sitemap-posts.xml and sitemap-products.xml, then create a sitemap index file that lists them. You submit only the index file, and search engines follow it to the rest.

There are also specialised sitemap extensions for images, videos and news articles. These add extra tags to help search engines understand media content. For most blogs and business sites a standard URL sitemap is all you need, and image and video pages are usually discovered well through normal crawling.

Frequently asked questions

Create your sitemap now

A clean, accurate sitemap is one of the simplest technical SEO wins available, and it takes less than a minute with the tool above. Generate your file, upload it to your root folder, add it to robots.txt and submit it to Google and Bing. Then check the Search Console report after a few days to see which pages are indexed and fix anything flagged. Go back to the generator.