An XML sitemap is a list of all the URLs of a website displayed in XML format. Unlike an HTML sitemap, the XML sitemap is not visible to website users.
Sitemaps can be created with the help of content management systems or various online tools, such as the WordPress plugin Yoast. For smaller websites with few URLs, the sitemap can also be created manually. When creating a sitemap manually, however, it is important to note that the XML sitemap must be recreated each time a URL changes.
XML sitemaps are often used by SEOsto optimize the indexing of a website. By uploading the XML sitemap directly into the main directory of the domain, into the Google Search Console or in Bing Webmaster Tools, search engines can index the page better. Search engines are also informed of URLs that have been updated.
In order for Google to be able to read the sitemaps, they must be adapted to the Google Sitemap Protocol 0.9. Furthermore, a maximum of 50,000 URLs may be included and the file size must not exceed 50 MB. For particularly large websites that have more URLs or exceed this file size, it is advisable to split the sitemap into several files.
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