On this page (10 sections)
- Introduction
- What Is the Sitemap Generator and How Does It Work?
- How to Use the Sitemap Generator: Step-by-Step Guide
- Key Features of the Sitemap Generator
- Who Should Use a Sitemap Generator? Practical Use Cases
- Tips for Better Results
- Common Mistakes to Avoid
- Frequently Asked Questions About the Sitemap Generator
- Related Tools You May Find Useful
- Conclusion
Introduction
Doing this by hand is slow and easy to get wrong – a dedicated online tool makes it a matter of seconds. Create a standards-compliant sitemap.xml.
Let the crawler discover the pages of a small site for you, or paste your own list of URLs, then download the file.
In this guide you will learn what the Sitemap Generator does, how to use it step by step and how to avoid the most common mistakes. You can follow along with the free Sitemap Generator on WebToolsHelper – it runs in your browser and needs no sign-up.
What Is the Sitemap Generator and How Does It Work?
Generate an XML sitemap by crawling your website or from a list of URLs. Set change frequency and priority, then download a sitemap.xml ready for Google and Bing.
What an XML sitemap is for
A sitemap is a machine-readable list of the URLs you would like search engines to know about. Crawlers normally discover pages by following links; a sitemap gives them the list directly, which helps for pages that are deep in a site or have few links pointing to them.
The format is simple XML: a urlset element containing one url entry per page, each with a loc and optionally a lastmod date.
A sitemap should list only canonical, indexable URLs that return a 200 status. Including redirects, error pages or blocked URLs sends mixed signals and wastes crawl effort.
A single file may contain up to 50,000 URLs and must not exceed 50 MB uncompressed; bigger sites split their URLs across several files referenced from a sitemap index.
How to Use the Sitemap Generator: Step-by-Step Guide
Open the Sitemap Generator and follow these steps:
- Step 1: Choose Crawl a website and enter your home page address, or choose From a URL list and paste one URL per line.
- Step 2: For a crawl, set the maximum number of pages and select Start crawl.
- Step 3: Optionally set a change frequency and priority to include in the file.
- Step 4: Download sitemap.xml, upload it to your site root and submit it in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.
That is all – no installation, no account and no watermark.
Key Features of the Sitemap Generator
These are the features that make the tool useful in daily work:
Automatic discovery
Follows internal links from your start page to find up to 150 pages.
Respects your rules
Honours robots.txt disallow rules and leaves out pages marked noindex.
Canonical aware
Uses each page's canonical URL so duplicates are not listed twice.
Manual list mode
Build a sitemap from any list of URLs without crawling.
Valid XML output
Follows the sitemaps.org 0.9 protocol with properly escaped URLs.
Last-modified dates
Includes lastmod when your server reports when a page changed.
Who Should Use a Sitemap Generator? Practical Use Cases
People reach for this tool in many everyday situations, for example:
- Giving search engines a complete list of pages on a new or small website.
- Creating a sitemap for a static site that has no CMS plugin to do it.
- Listing landing pages that have few internal links pointing to them.
- Checking which pages a crawler can actually reach from your home page.
Tips for Better Results
- Write for people first; search engines reward pages that answer the question clearly.
- Change one thing at a time and measure the effect in Google Search Console.
- Re-check important pages after every redesign or migration.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
- Writing for search engines instead of for readers.
- Changing many things at once, so you cannot tell what helped.
- Ignoring mobile users, who are often the majority of visitors.
Want to go deeper? See Google’s SEO Starter Guide for background information.
Frequently Asked Questions About the Sitemap Generator
Do I need a sitemap?
Small sites with good internal linking are usually crawled fine without one. A sitemap helps when a site is new, large, has pages that are not well linked, or changes often.
It is a hint to search engines, not a guarantee of indexing.
Where should I upload sitemap.xml?
To the root of your site, so it is at https://example.com/sitemap.xml. Then reference it in robots.txt with a Sitemap: line and submit it in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.
Why did the crawl stop before finding every page?
The crawler is limited to 150 pages and about 40 seconds per run to protect both your server and ours. For larger sites, use the sitemap feature of your CMS, or build the list of URLs yourself and use list mode.
Do changefreq and priority matter?
Google has said it ignores both. Bing may use them as weak hints.
They are optional; lastmod is the field worth getting right, and only when it reflects a real change.
Why were some pages left out?
Pages are skipped if they are blocked by robots.txt, marked noindex, return an error, redirect to another site, are not HTML, or are not reachable by following links from the start page.
Related Tools You May Find Useful
The Sitemap Generator is part of our free SEO Tools. These tools work well alongside it:
Conclusion
The Sitemap Generator turns a fiddly task into a quick, reliable one. You now know how it works, how to use it step by step and which mistakes to avoid.
Ready to try it? Open the free Sitemap Generator now – no installation, no account, and your data stays private.
