Here’s a guide to everything you need to know about generating and optimizing XML sitemaps, including a best practice checklist.

• Compress sitemap files using gzip

• Use a sitemap index file

• Use image, video, and Google news sitemaps only if indexation drives your KPIs

• Dynamically generate XML sitemaps

• Ensure URLs are included only in a single sitemap

• Reference sitemap index URL(s) in robots.txt

• Submit sitemap index to both Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools

• Include only SEO relevant pages in XML sitemaps

• Fix all errors and warnings

• Analyze trends and types of valid pages

• Calculate the submitted page’s indexation rate

• Address causes of exclusion for submitted pages