How to Create an XML Sitemap for Your Website for Free
A practical walkthrough for building a valid XML sitemap with a free generator, uploading it and getting Google to read it.
You do not need a plugin, a paid crawler or any coding knowledge to make a sitemap. If you can list your pages and upload one file to your hosting, you can have a working XML sitemap in about ten minutes. This walkthrough uses the free SeoSpidie sitemap generator, but the checks at the end apply whichever tool you use.
New to sitemaps in general? Start with what an XML sitemap is and whether your site needs one, then come back here.
Before you start: decide which URLs belong in it
The generator can only be as good as the list you give it. Spend five minutes on this step and you avoid most of the errors people later see in Search Console.
- Use the final, canonical address of each page โ with the same protocol (
https) and the samewwwor non-wwwversion everywhere. - Drop pages that redirect, return errors or carry a
noindextag. - Skip thank-you pages, account pages, carts and filtered listing URLs.
Not sure whether some URLs redirect? Paste them into the redirect checker first and use the final destination.
Step 1: Generate the sitemap
Open the sitemap generator and type your website address. The tool first looks for an existing sitemap (through robots.txt or the default /sitemap.xml location), because that is faster and usually more complete. If there is none, it crawls your site by following internal links until it stops finding new pages. Leave "crawl the whole site" ticked for a full list. If your host blocks automated requests, you can paste the page's HTML source instead and the links are extracted from that.
The result is properly escaped XML, so special characters such as & in a URL do not break the file โ a mistake that is easy to make when writing XML by hand. Each entry gets today's date as its last-modified date, which is accurate for a freshly built sitemap.
Step 2: Review the output
Read through the result before you download it. Each page should appear exactly once, inside its own url block. Remove anything that matches the "leave out" list above: URLs with tracking parameters such as ?utm_source=, login pages, internal search results, or old URLs that only redirect. A crawl finds every linked page, including ones you would rather not promote, so this review step matters.
Step 3: Upload it to the root of your site
Save the file as sitemap.xml and upload it to the top-level folder of your website, usually public_html on shared hosting. A sitemap can only list URLs in its own folder and below, which is why the root is the safe choice. Open https://yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml in a browser to confirm it loads.
Step 4: Tell search engines where it is
Two places, both quick:
- robots.txt โ add
Sitemap: https://yourdomain.com/sitemap.xmlon its own line. If you do not have a robots.txt file yet, the robots.txt generator creates one with the sitemap line included. - Google Search Console โ go to Indexing โ Sitemaps, paste the address and click Submit. Bing Webmaster Tools has an equivalent screen.
Step 5: Check the result after a few days
Search Console will show "Success" and the number of discovered URLs. If the status shows "Couldn't fetch," the file is probably blocked, misnamed or returning an error. Then open the page indexing report and compare: pages listed in your sitemap but not indexed are the ones that need attention โ often thin content, duplicates or a stray noindex.
When to regenerate
Update the sitemap whenever you add, remove or merge pages. For a small site that might be once a month; for a shop it should be automatic. A quick sanity check is to run the sitemap's URLs through the bulk indexability checker every quarter, so dead or redirected URLs never pile up.
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Frequently asked questions
Is the SeoSpidie sitemap generator really free?
Yes. There is no sign-up and no limit on how often you use it.
Can I have more than one sitemap?
Yes. Large sites often split pages into several files and list them in a sitemap index. Each file can hold up to 50,000 URLs.
Do I need to resubmit the sitemap every time I change it?
No. Once submitted, Google rereads it periodically. Resubmitting can nudge a faster read after a big change, but it is optional.
My CMS already has a sitemap. Should I make another one?
Usually not. Check the existing one for redirected or noindexed URLs instead. Two competing sitemaps for the same pages only add confusion.