Sitemap Analysis & Generation
Mode 1: Analyze Existing Sitemap
Validation Checks
- Valid XML format
- URL count <50,000 per file (protocol limit)
- All URLs return HTTP 200
<lastmod>dates are accurate (not all identical)- No deprecated tags:
<priority>and<changefreq>are ignored by Google - Sitemap referenced in robots.txt
- Compare crawled pages vs sitemap; flag missing pages
Quality Signals
- Sitemap index file if >50k URLs
- Split by content type (pages, posts, images, videos)
- No non-canonical URLs in sitemap
- No noindexed URLs in sitemap
- No redirected URLs in sitemap
- HTTPS URLs only (no HTTP)
Common Issues
| Issue | Severity | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| >50k URLs in single file | Critical | Split with sitemap index |
| Non-200 URLs | High | Remove or fix broken URLs |
| Noindexed URLs included | High | Remove from sitemap |
| Redirected URLs included | Medium | Update to final URLs |
| All identical lastmod | Low | Use actual modification dates |
| Priority/changefreq used | Info | Can remove (ignored by Google) |
Mode 2: Generate New Sitemap
Process
- Ask for business type (or auto-detect from existing site)
- Load industry template from
../seo-plan/assets/directory - Interactive structure planning with user
- Apply quality gates:
- ⚠️ WARNING at 30+ location pages (require 60%+ unique content)
- 🛑 HARD STOP at 50+ location pages (require justification)
- Generate valid XML output
- Split at 50k URLs with sitemap index
- Generate STRUCTURE.md documentation
Safe Programmatic Pages (OK at scale)
✅ Integration pages (with real setup docs) ✅ Template/tool pages (with downloadable content) ✅ Glossary pages (200+ word definitions) ✅ Product pages (unique specs, reviews) ✅ User profile pages (user-generated content)
Penalty Risk (avoid at scale)
❌ Location pages with only city name swapped ❌ "Best [tool] for [industry]" without industry-specific value ❌ "[Competitor] alternative" without real comparison data ❌ AI-generated pages without human review and unique value
Sitemap Format
Standard Sitemap
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
<url>
<loc>https://example.com/page</loc>
<lastmod>2026-02-07</lastmod>
</url>
</urlset>
Sitemap Index (for >50k URLs)
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<sitemapindex xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
<sitemap>
<loc>https://example.com/sitemap-pages.xml</loc>
<lastmod>2026-02-07</lastmod>
</sitemap>
<sitemap>
<loc>https://example.com/sitemap-posts.xml</loc>
<lastmod>2026-02-07</lastmod>
</sitemap>
</sitemapindex>
Error Handling
- URL unreachable: Report the HTTP status code and suggest checking if the site is live
- No sitemap found: Check common locations (/sitemap.xml, /sitemap_index.xml, robots.txt reference) before reporting "not found"
- Invalid XML format: Report specific parsing errors with line numbers
- Rate limiting detected: Back off and report partial results with a note about retry timing
Output
For Analysis
VALIDATION-REPORT.md: analysis results- Issues list with severity
- Recommendations
For Generation
sitemap.xml(or split files with index)STRUCTURE.md: site architecture documentation- URL count and organization summary