How to Create an XML Sitemap for Your Website Free (And Submit It to Google)

If your website has more than 10-15 pages and you haven't submitted a sitemap to Google yet, you're probably leaving pages un-indexed that should be getting traffic. This is one of the highest-leverage, lowest-effort SEO fixes you can make.

Let me walk through the whole thing.

What Is an XML Sitemap?

A sitemap is an XML file that lists every URL on your website, along with optional information about how often pages are updated and their relative importance. It's like a directory you hand directly to Google saying "here's everything on my site, please crawl all of it."

Google can find pages on its own through links — but on large sites, it misses things. A sitemap guarantees Google knows about every page you want indexed.

A typical XML sitemap looks like this:

```xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">

<url>

<loc>https://yoursite.com/page-1</loc>

<lastmod>2026-06-01</lastmod>

<priority>0.8</priority>

</url>

...

</urlset>

`

How to Create a Sitemap

If you're using WordPress, plugins like Yoast SEO or Rank Math generate your sitemap automatically — you just need to find it at yoursite.com/sitemap.xml.

For custom websites, static sites, or if you want to create a sitemap for a specific section, the Sitemap Generator tool creates a complete XML sitemap from any URL. Enter your website's root URL, and it crawls your pages and generates the sitemap file ready to download.

How to Submit Your Sitemap to Google

1. Go to Google Search Console (search.google.com/search-console)

2. Select your property (your website)

3. Left sidebar → Indexing → Sitemaps

4. Enter your sitemap URL: usually https://yoursite.com/sitemap.xml

5. Click Submit

Google will now regularly check this sitemap URL for new or updated pages.

How to Check If Your Sitemap Is Working

After submitting, Search Console shows the status of your sitemap — how many URLs it discovered vs. how many got indexed. If the "discovered" count is much higher than "indexed," it means Google found your pages but chose not to index them (usually content quality reasons, not the sitemap itself).

If your sitemap shows errors, check for:

• URLs returning 404 errors (deleted pages still in sitemap)
• URLs blocked by robots.txt that are in the sitemap (conflicting signals)
• Invalid XML formatting (use a validator)

How Often Should You Update Your Sitemap?

For blogs and frequently updated sites, your sitemap should update automatically whenever you publish new content. For static sites, regenerate and resubmit whenever you add new pages.

You can also use the Sitemap Validator to check an existing sitemap for errors before submitting it, and Sitemap URL Extractor to see all the URLs currently in a competitor's sitemap — useful for understanding what pages they're prioritizing.