Sitemaps

Most websites have two types of sitemap – one HTML sitemap, which is found and used by humans and one XML sitemap, which is found and used by search engines. Generally speaking, the XML sitemap is going to be at the root level of your domain and simply be titled sitemap.xml

So if your site is http://www.yoursite.com, the XML sitemap should be easy to find at http://www.yoursite.com/sitemap.xml.

If you do not have an XML sitemap, best practice is to create one. You can create one for free several places online, here is a free site I’ve used in the past. Once it’s been created, pass it on to your developer to upload to your site.

Once it’s been uploaded, log in to your Google Search Console account and let Google know about it. If you don’t have a Google Search Console account, you can create one here.

Simply select Index > Sitemaps from the menu and then Add the sitemap URL to give Google your sitemap location. Google should give you an indication if your sitemap is successfully read instantly.