What is Sitemap?

XML Sitemap - A file designed for search engines listing URLs with metadata (last modified date, change frequency, priority). Located at yoursite.com/sitemap.xml. HTML Sitemap - A user-facing page on your website that lists links to important pages, organized by category. Helps both users and search engines navigate. XML sitemaps are essential for SEO. HTML sitemaps are optional but can improve user experience and internal linking.

• Faster discovery - Search engines find new pages more quickly • Complete coverage - Ensures orphan pages are found • Priority signals - Indicate which pages are most important • Metadata - Provide last modified dates to trigger re-crawling • Large sites - Essential for sites with thousands of pages • New sites - Help new sites get indexed faster

• Include only canonical, indexable URLs • Keep sitemaps under 50,000 URLs or 50MB • Use sitemap indexes for large sites • Update lastmod dates only when content actually changes • Reference your sitemap in robots.txt • Submit to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools • Don't include URLs blocked by robots.txt or noindex • Generate dynamically - don't maintain manually

PixlSEO checks for: • Sitemap presence and accessibility • Valid XML format • Referenced in robots.txt • No broken URLs in the sitemap • Consistency between sitemap and actual site pages • Proper lastmod dates