XML Sitemap: a file for SEO but also for AI engines
Description
The XML sitemap is a structured file that lists all the important URLs on a site along with their metadata (update frequency, priority, last modified).
It facilitates discovery and indexing by providing crawlers with a complete content roadmap, particularly useful for sites with complex architecture or dynamically generated content.
Why is this important for ai search?
Language models use sitemaps to understand the overall structure of a site and identify priority content during their analysis processes.
A well-organized sitemap with clearly defined priorities guides LLMs to the most authoritative pages, increasing their chances of being selected as reference sources.
The freshness indicated in the sitemap also influences the temporal relevance of citations.
Technical details
- Accessibility of the sitemap.xml file
- Content of the sitemap
- Broken links
- Declaring the sitemap in the robots.txt file
- Inclusion of strategic pages of the site
- Checking for URL freshness (<lastmod>)
- Checking for broken links on other levels of the sitemap
1. Accessibility of the sitemap.xml file
The sitemap.xml file is essential to help search engines, including those based on generative AI, discover all the important pages of your site. Its presence and accessibility are essential for effective indexing.
- Location: the sitemap.xml file must be located at the root of the domain. For example, for the domain example.com, the file must be accessible via https://example.com/sitemap.xml.
- HTTP/HTTPS Accessibility: the file must be accessible via both HTTP and HTTPS protocols. It is recommended to ensure that the HTTPS version is the canonical version and that any HTTP requests are redirected to HTTPS.
- HTTP Status Code: the server must return an HTTP 200 OK status code when requesting the sitemap.xml file. A 404 Not Found or any other error code will prevent robots from discovering your URLs.
2. Sitemap Content (Use of XML Tags)
The sitemap must be a valid XML file, respecting the structure defined by the Sitemap protocol. This ensures that search engines can parse it correctly and understand the information it contains.
XML Format: The file must be a well-formed XML document, starting with the XML declaration and the <urlset> tag.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
<!-- URL entries go here -->
</urlset>
Essential Tags: each URL must be enclosed in a <url> tag. and contain at least one <loc> tag with the full URL of the page.
<url>
<loc>https://www.example.com/page-strategique</loc>
</url>
Optional tags: to provide more context to search engines, it is recommended to use the following optional tags:
- <lastmod> : date the page was last modified (YYYY-MM-DD format).
- <changefreq> : frequency of page modification (always, hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, never).
- <priority> : priority of the page in relation to other pages on the site (from 0.0 to 1.0).
<url>
<loc>https://www.example.com/blog/a rticle-recent</loc>
<lastmod>2025-07-07</last mod>
<changefreq>weekly</changefreq>
; <priority>0.8</priority>
</url>
3. Beware of Broken Links
Broken links in your sitemap can harm your site's indexing and search engine trust. It's crucial to ensure that all URLs listed in the main sitemap are valid and accessible.
- Validation Tools: use online sitemap validation tools or custom scripts to check the HTTP status of each URL. A 200 OK status code is expected for all URLs.
- Error Reporting: implement a monitoring system to quickly identify and fix broken links.
If you use index sitemaps (a sitemap that lists other sitemaps), it is crucial to check not only the links in the primary sitemap, but also those in all secondary sitemaps.
- Recursive Validation: implement a validation process that runs through all sitemaps listed in the index sitemap and checks the status of all URLs within them.
4. Declaring the Sitemap in the robots.txt File
Declaring your sitemap in the robots.txt file is a best practice that helps search engines discover it more easily, even if they can't find it by other means.
- Sitemap Directive: add the Sitemap directive with the full URL of your sitemap.xml file to the end of your robots.txt file.
Sitemap: https://www.example.com/sitemap.xml
- Multiple Sitemaps: if you use multiple sitemaps (for example, for different languages or specific sections of the site), list them all in the robots.txt file.
5. Inclusion of Strategic Site Pages
The sitemap should include all pages that you consider important for indexing and visibility, especially those that are strategic for GEO.
- Editorial Pages: make sure all editorial content pages, such as blog posts, guides, and case studies, are included.
- Product/Service Pages: all pages describing your products or services should be present.
- Key Pages: include contact, about, and other essential pages that provide important information about your business.
- Exclusion of Irrelevant Pages: do not include login pages, internal search results pages, shopping cart pages, or any other page that doesn't provide value for public indexing.
6. URL Freshness Check (<lastmod>)
The <lastmod> tag tells search engines when a URL was last modified. A recent and accurate date can encourage more frequent recrawling of the page, which is beneficial for GEO.
- Automatic Update: Implement a mechanism to automatically update the <lastmod> tag whenever a page is modified. This can be done via your CMS, a sitemap generation script, or a deployment hook.
- Accuracy: The date should reflect the actual date of the last significant change to the page content.
7. Checking for Broken Links on Other Sitemap Levels
If you use index sitemaps (a sitemap that lists other sitemaps), it is crucial to check not only the links in the main sitemap, but also those in all secondary sitemaps.
- Recursive Validation: implement a validation process that iterates through all sitemaps listed in the index sitemap and checks the status of all URLs within them.
- Continuous Monitoring: broken links can appear at any time. Continuous monitoring is essential to maintain the integrity of your sitemap.
Resources & useful links
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