How To Create a Sitemap: Steps and Best Practices (2026)

Search engines need to find your pages before they can show them in results. An XML sitemap gives crawlers a machine-readable list of the URLs you want crawled. It can also record each page’s last meaningful update date.

This information helps search engines discover new products and revisit updated listings. They can then evaluate each page for crawling and indexing.

Many ecommerce platforms generate and update sitemaps automatically, including Shopify. This guide explains the different sitemap types, how they help search engines and shoppers, and how to create and submit one for your store.

What is a sitemap?

A sitemap is a file that lists a website’s important URLs so search engines can discover and crawl them. For an online store, those URLs lead to product pages, collections, and blog posts.

XML and HTML sitemaps have different purposes:

• XML sitemaps are machine-readable files for search engines. They list URLs and can record when each page last changed. An XML sitemap can also provide details about images, videos, news content, and localized pages. Google ignores the optional priority and changefreq fields, so these values don’t set crawl schedules or determine rankings.
• HTML sitemaps are webpages with organized links for visitors. They give shoppers another way to browse your site, and give crawlers additional links to follow.

Google also accepts RSS 2.0, mRSS, and Atom 1.0 feeds as sitemaps. RSS and Atom feeds generally list recent URLs, so they aren’t necessarily a complete inventory. An mRSS feed provides information about video content. Google also accepts plain-text sitemaps containing one URL per line.

Visual sitemaps are separate planning tools. These diagrams show a website’s page hierarchy and help teams plan navigation. Nielsen Norman Group describes them as reference documents for organizing pages and sections.

Example: Visual sitemap shown as a text outline

• Home
• Shop
• T-shirts
• Classic cotton T-shirt
• About
• Contact

This outline shows how pages fit together, but it’s not a sitemap file to submit to Google.

Every Shopify online store automatically generates a sitemap.xml file at the root of its primary domain, such as yourstore.com/sitemap.xml. Shopify updates the sitemap as you add content, so you don’t need to build the XML file yourself.

Why create a sitemap?

A sitemap helps search engines discover your pages and crawl your site more efficiently. It’s useful for large product catalogs or new stores with few incoming links. 

A complete sitemap can help Google discover your website’s important URLs so they can be crawled and potentially indexed. Google evaluates each page before adding it to search results. Content quality, authority, user experience, and technical performance also influence search engine optimization (SEO) rankings.

Different sitemap types can help you:

• Get new pages discovered: An XML sitemap gives crawlers another way to find recently published URLs. For example, adding a new product to your sitemap gives Google another way to discover the listing, even before other websites link to it. 
• Flag meaningful updates: Accurate lastmod dates tell search engines when a page was last meaningfully changed. Google recommends keeping sitemaps current and including this information for updated content. Record substantive changes, such as a revised product description.
• Give shoppers another way to navigate: An HTML sitemap groups links in one accessible page. A shopper looking for a specific collection can browse that list, and crawlers can follow the same links. Visual sitemaps help your team plan the navigation before customers use it.
• Reinforce your preferred URLs: Listing canonical URLs tells Google which versions you want considered for search results. Keep those URLs consistent with your internal links and canonical tags. Shopify adds canonical tags automatically to help prevent duplicate-content issues. For market-specific pages, each version’s canonical tag points to its own URL.
• Identify language and regional variants: Hreflang annotations identify alternate language or regional versions of a page, helping search engines display the appropriate version. For example, fr-CA identifies French-language content intended for Canada.

Shopify generates hreflang tags automatically for markets configured with distinct domains, subdomains, or subfolders and languages. It also updates sitemaps with market-specific URLs. 

Markets sharing one identical URL don’t have separate versions to reference. These settings contribute to an international SEO strategy that directs customers to the correct storefront.

How to create an XML sitemap in 4 steps

Before creating a sitemap manually, check whether your ecommerce platform already generates one. Open your domain followed by /sitemap.xml in a browser. 

If nothing appears, check /robots.txt for a line beginning with Sitemap:. Your platform’s documentation or SEO settings can also identify the file’s location.

Several platforms and tools can do the work for you:

If your platform already publishes and maintains a sitemap, go to Step 4. To create one manually, follow the steps below.

1. Gather all your URLs

Collect the URLs you want search engines to index. For a small website, copy them into a text document. For a larger site, export them from your content management system or use a site crawler such as Screaming Frog or Sitebulb.

Review the results as part of a technical SEO audit. Keep canonical, indexable URLs that return a 200 HTTP response. Remove redirects, broken links, and pages marked noindex. Compare the crawl with your content management system (CMS) inventory to find published pages that lack internal links.

2. Code them in XML

Open a plain-text or code editor and create a file using the XML sitemap format. Here’s a basic example for one product page:

Replace the example URL and date with your page’s details:

• Location (<loc>): The complete, canonical URL, including https://.
• Last modified date (<lastmod>): An optional date recording the page’s last meaningful update. Use YYYY-MM-DD, or a valid date and time with a timezone. Omit this field if you can’t provide an accurate value.

Add a separate <url> entry for each page inside <urlset>. Google ignores priority and <changefreq>, so you can omit both.

Save the file with UTF-8 encoding. Sitemap.xml is the conventional filename; another valid filename also works. Escape special characters in URLs, such as writing an ampersand as &amp;.

Each sitemap can contain up to 50,000 URLs and 50 MB of uncompressed data. Split larger lists into separate files and reference them in a sitemap index.

3. Add your sitemap to your website

This step applies when you created the file yourself or exported it from a generator. Shopify publishes its automatically generated sitemap for you.

Upload your file to the website’s public root directory using your hosting provider’s file manager, SFTP, or deployment process. For example, the file would be accessible at https://www.example.com/sitemap.xml.

The sitemap’s location affects its scope. A file at /blog/sitemap.xml normally covers URLs under /blog/. Google permits more coverage when you submit it through Search Console. Publishing at the root is the simplest option for a sitewide sitemap.

Open the published URL and confirm that the file loads. Search engines need access to it, so check for password protection or crawler blocks.

4. Submit your sitemap to search engines

Verify ownership of your website in each search engine’s webmaster account, then submit the published sitemap URL:

Google Search Console

Submit your sitemap to Google by selecting your property, opening Indexing, and clicking Sitemaps. Under Add a new sitemap, enter the sitemap address and click Submit. If the field already displays your domain, enter the remaining path, such as sitemap.xml. Follow Shopify’s submission instructions for stores with multiple international domains.

Bing Webmaster Tools

Select your verified site and open Sitemaps. Use the sitemap submission option to enter the full URL and submit it. Bing’s sitemap guidance explains how to check submission status, the last read date, and processing errors.

Submission tells search engines where to find your sitemap and gives you access to processing reports. Crawling, indexing, and rankings are not guaranteed. In Google’s Sitemaps report, a Success status confirms that Google fetched and read the file. Check the Page indexing report to see which URLs are indexed.

On Shopify, you can add extra sitemap URLs by editing robots.txt.liquid, but most stores don’t need to modify the default file. Routine sitemap submission needs no code changes. Work with a Shopify Partner if customization is necessary.

How to choose a sitemap generator

Sitemap generators generally fall into two categories: XML sitemap files for search engines or visual diagrams for planning website structure. 

Some technical SEO tools can also crawl a live site, filter its URLs, and export an XML sitemap.

First decide what you need, then compare each tool’s output, update process, free-use limits, and export options before signing up.

For an existing Shopify store, use the automatically maintained XML sitemap. For sites with no built-in generator, XML-Sitemaps.com suits a small, occasional export for up to 500 pages. Screaming Frog can crawl a site and gives you more control over which crawled URLs make the exported sitemap.

For a redesign, a visual tool lets you move pages between categories and review the proposed navigation with your team. Check export and sharing restrictions before committing to a free plan.

Plan for maintenance, too. A downloaded XML file needs updating as pages change. Confirm who will regenerate and publish it, or arrange an automated process. 

Sitemap best practices

Keep your sitemap accurate and easy for search engines to process:

• Automate updates. Use your platform’s sitemap generator to reflect published, removed, or changed pages. Shopify updates sitemaps automatically. Add a sitemap review to your replatforming SEO plan after a migration or major change to the site’s URL structure.
• Split large sitemaps. Each file has a limit of 50,000 URLs and 50 MB uncompressed. Group larger URL lists into separate files and reference them in a sitemap index.
• List canonical, indexable pages. Include the preferred URLs you want in search results. URL parameters can create several versions of the same page, so list the canonical version. Exclude redirects, broken URLs, password-protected pages, and pages marked noindex.
• Skip priority settings. Google doesn’t pay attention to priority and changefreq. Use descriptive internal links to help crawlers find important pages.
• Consider an HTML sitemap for navigation. An organized page of links gives visitors another way to browse your website. Those crawlable internal links also help search engines discover pages.
• Validate and monitor. Check manually created XML against the sitemap schema. After submission, review Search Console’s Sitemaps report for fetching and formatting errors. Check the Page indexing report separately to see which URLs Google has indexed.