# XML Sitemap

> A file listing important URLs to help search engines discover and crawl content.

Source: https://anotherseoguru.com/en/glossary/xml-sitemap

An XML sitemap is a structured file that lists the URLs on your website you want search engines to crawl and index. It includes metadata like last modification date, change frequency, and priority.

## Example

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
  <url>
    <loc>https://example.com/page</loc>
    <lastmod>2026-01-15</lastmod>
  </url>
</urlset>

## How to apply it

Include only indexable pages, keep under 50MB or 50,000 URLs, update lastmod only when content changes, submit to GSC, and split large sitemaps.

> **Pro tip:** Monitor 'Sitemap' report in GSC. If submitted URLs don't match indexed URLs, investigate why pages are being excluded.

## Related terms

- [Crawling](https://anotherseoguru.com/en/glossary/crawling)
- [Indexing](https://anotherseoguru.com/en/glossary/indexing)
- [Robots.txt](https://anotherseoguru.com/en/glossary/robots-txt)