XML Sitemaps Generator

What are XML Sitemaps
It’s a special sitemap document protocol to help search engines index websites. This protocol uses XML for describing its content. The full name is XML Sitemaps Protocol, but is commonly referred to as XML Sitemaps. The idea and format was conceived by Google, and was in the beginning called Google Sitemaps. If you are unsure what the difference it between XML Sitemaps, HTML sitemaps, RSS feeds etc. you can check this sitemaps article.

Create XML Sitemap
A quick search on Google shows various services and products for creating XML sitemaps. Read our create XML sitemaps tutorial for more information.

Upload XML Sitemap
After creating your XML sitemaps, you will need to upload it either using your favorite FTP program or use the built-in FTP functionality (if any) in your chosen sitemap generator tool. For more information, check our XML sitemap FTP upload tutorial.

Submit XML Sitemap
You can submit XML sitemaps to all primary search engines, or/and add a reference to your XML sitemap in robots.txt to allow for search engine XML sitemap auto discovery. For more information about both options, check this submit XML sitemap article.

Ping Search Engines with XML Sitemap
While search engines will check your XML sitemap for changes themselves, you can speed this process by pinging search engines when your XML sitemap has changed. You can see how in the XML sitemaps ping post.

This tutorial will explain how to create XML sitemaps using A1 Sitemap Generator. We use default settings such as automated calculation of priority values. If you are interested in some of the advanced options or the command line interface for scheduling and automation, you can always check the help.

Crawl entire website first
Before building the XML sitemap, A1 Sitemap Generator needs to scan your website. If you want certain areas restricted, you can either create custom crawler filters or tick options for obeying no-index, no-follow, robots.txt etc. With most websites, you only need to set root path of your website followed by clicking start scan.

Website analysis and links check
After the site scan is done, you can view the website structure and detailed information for the individual pages. These tools can help you solve various website problems related to crawling. When you are done, click the Create sitemap tab.

Building the XML sitemap
In the dropdown, pick XML Sitemap and click build sitemap. The XML Sitemaps Protocol has some limits to max number of urls per XML sitemap file. However, if exceeded, A1 Sitemap Generator will automatically split all URLs out to multiple XML sitemaps and create an XML sitemap index file.

Final steps for your XML sitemap
At this point, you can choose to upload your XML Sitemap. You can also ping and update it to various search engines such as Google. If you haven’t already, it is also a good idea to create a robots.txt file with a reference to your generated XML sitemap.