What is a sitemap generator, and do you actually need one?
A sitemap is a list of your pages, written for machines. A sitemap generator writes that list for you. Most modern platforms already generate one, so many small-business sites have a sitemap without anyone setting it up manually.
The question behind "what is a sitemap generator" is usually a different question: does my site have a sitemap, is it right, and does it matter? This page answers all three, with the source Google publishes, so you can check yours in about five minutes.
What a sitemap actually is
A sitemap is a file that lists the URLs on your site, usually with the date each was last modified. Search engines read it as a hint about what exists and what changed. The format is an open standard documented at sitemaps.org, and Google, Bing and others all support it.
It is not a menu for humans. That is a navigation page, sometimes confusingly called an HTML sitemap. The XML file is written for crawlers and is meant to be boring.
What a sitemap generator does
A generator produces that XML file so you do not hand-write it. There are three kinds, and which one you need depends entirely on your platform.
- Built into your platform. Shopify, Squarespace and Wix generate sitemaps automatically, and WordPress has included XML sitemaps in core since version 5.5. Some SEO plugins replace or extend the WordPress default. If your platform already maintains one, you usually do not need a separate generator.
- Built into your codebase. On a custom site, the sitemap can be generated from the same source that creates the pages. That reduces the chance of the file drifting out of date as the site changes. That is how this site works: every service, guide and location page appears in the sitemap because the file is generated from the same source the pages are.
- A standalone crawler. Desktop tools and online generators crawl your site and output a file you upload. Useful for a static or legacy site with no CMS. But it is a snapshot, so it goes stale the moment you publish anything.
Does your business actually need one?
Google is unusually direct about this in its sitemap documentation. A sitemap helps most when a site is large, when it is new and has few links pointing at it, or when it has pages that are not well linked from other pages. It matters less for a small site whose pages are all reachable from the navigation.
A sitemap helps search engines discover URLs. It does not guarantee crawling, indexing or ranking.
So if you have a nine-page site with a normal menu, a sitemap is worth having and will not transform anything. If you have several hundred pages, or a new site nobody links to yet, it earns its place.
//Free 5-minute checklist
Check your sitemap in five minutes.
Get the step-by-step check, the mistakes worth fixing and a one-page sitemap checklist sourced to Google Search Central.
How to check the sitemap you already have
- Open yoursite.com/sitemap.xml. If you see a list of URLs, you have one. If you get a 404, check /sitemap_index.xml before assuming you do not.
- Read the list. Every URL should be a page you want found, on the correct domain, with the correct https prefix.
- Look for what should not be there. Thank-you pages, tag archives, staging URLs, filtered category pages and anything set to noindex. Pages you intentionally do not want in Google generally should not be in the sitemap. Google recommends listing the canonical URLs you want to appear in search results.
- Check it in Search Console. The Sitemaps report shows when it was last read and how many URLs were discovered. If the count is wildly lower than your page count, something is wrong.
- Confirm Google can find it. Submit the sitemap in Search Console, or list its URL in
robots.txt. Both are supported ways to tell Google where the file lives.
Google's guide to building and submitting a sitemap covers the formats and the submission methods, and it is short.
The mistakes that make a sitemap useless
- Listing redirected or dead URLs. You are asking a crawler to spend its time on pages that no longer exist.
- Listing noindex pages. It asks Google to crawl pages you have told it to leave out. Google recommends listing only the URLs you want in search results.
- A stale file from a one-time generator. Six months of new pages missing, because the snapshot was taken once.
- Treating it as an SEO strategy. A perfect sitemap on a site with thin pages changes nothing. The pages are the work.
That last one is the common thread in most of the SEO mistakes small businesses make: effort spent on the plumbing while the thing being plumbed is empty.
Where sitemaps sit in real SEO work
Sitemaps are part of technical SEO, the branch of search engine optimization that decides whether search engines can reach and read your site at all. For a med spa client, a rebuilt website and treatment-focused search work brought 406 newly ranking keywords, with 138 non-brand keywords in Google's top three.
A sitemap is one small piece of technical SEO. To have our founders look at the business and tell you what actually deserves attention, start with the free marketing audit.
