xml-sitemap-generator_skill

Overview

This skill generates fully valid XML sitemaps compliant with Sitemaps Protocol 0.9. It produces sitemap.xml, sitemap-index.xml, or sectioned sitemap-{section}.xml files and can include image, video, and news extensions. Outputs are ready for submission to search engines and respect URL, date, size, and entry limits.

How this skill works

When triggered (phrases like "create sitemap" or "generate sitemap.xml"), the skill inspects a provided URL list or crawls supplied site paths and infers sensible lastmod, changefreq, and priority values from URL patterns and content types. It builds proper XML with required namespace declarations, escapes special characters, splits into multiple files or a sitemap index when limits are exceeded, and validates dates and value ranges before returning the files.

When to use it

• Create a sitemap.xml for a small to medium website ready for search engine submission.
• Generate a sitemap index and multiple section sitemaps for large sites exceeding 50,000 URLs.
• Include image, video, or news metadata in sitemaps for media-heavy pages.
• Quickly produce SEO-friendly sitemaps for e-commerce categories and products.
• Regenerate sitemaps after a site restructure or bulk content update.

Best practices

• Provide absolute URLs (including protocol and domain) to avoid invalid loc entries.
• Verify lastmod values use W3C datetime formats (YYYY-MM-DD or full ISO variants).
• Keep each sitemap under 50,000 URLs and 50MB (uncompressed); use a sitemap index otherwise.
• Use reasonable priority and changefreq values based on page role (homepage highest).
• Ensure special characters in URLs are escaped (&, <, >, ' , ") before output.

Example use cases

• Create sitemap.xml for a SaaS marketing site including homepage, features, pricing, blog, and legal pages.
• Generate an e-commerce sitemap with category hierarchies, paginated product lists, and individual product pages.
• Produce a sitemap index for a news site with separate sitemaps for sections and daily archives.
• Add image: and video: extensions for product pages and tutorial videos so search engines can discover media.
• Regenerate sectioned sitemaps after migrating content and provide sitemap-{section}.xml outputs.