XML Sitemap (Domain Structure)

An XML sitemap is a structured file that lists a domain's important URLs to help search engines discover and prioritize crawling. For large or complex domains, a sitemap index file references multiple child sitemaps organized by section — e.g., /sitemap-blog.xml, /sitemap-products.xml — keeping each file under the 50,000 URL and 50 MB limits. Sitemaps are submitted via Google Search Console and are especially valuable for new domains where [[backlinks|backlinks]] are sparse, as they provide a direct crawl pathway. The [[robots-txt|robots.txt]] file should reference the sitemap index location.