/dm:sitemap
Purpose
Analyze existing XML sitemaps for issues and opportunities, or generate new sitemaps with industry-specific templates and best practices.
Modes
Mode 1: Analyze Existing Sitemap (/dm:sitemap [URL])
Provide a sitemap URL (e.g., https://example.com/sitemap.xml) to audit:
- Fetch and parse: Download sitemap XML, detect sitemap index vs single sitemap
- URL count: Total URLs, URLs per sitemap file (flag if approaching 50K protocol limit)
- lastmod audit: Check for presence, format (W3C datetime), staleness (>6 months without update), fake lastmod (all same date)
- Priority and changefreq: Check for deprecated/ignored signals (Google ignores both — flag if present, recommend removal to reduce file size)
- URL health: Sample 20-50 URLs and check HTTP status codes — flag 404s, 301s, 302s, 5xx errors
- Indexation alignment: Cross-reference with robots.txt and meta robots — flag noindexed URLs in sitemap, flag sitemap URLs blocked by robots.txt
- Missing URLs: Compare sitemap against site crawl or provided URL list — identify pages missing from sitemap
- Image/video/news sitemaps: Check for specialized sitemap extensions
- Compression: Check if sitemap is gzip compressed (recommended for large sitemaps)
- robots.txt registration: Verify sitemap is declared in robots.txt
Mode 2: Generate New Sitemap (/dm:sitemap generate)
Generate a sitemap plan or actual XML:
- Discover site structure: Crawl from homepage or use provided URL list
- Categorize pages: Group by type (homepage, category, product, blog, landing, legal)
- Apply industry template: Use appropriate structure based on business model (SaaS, ecommerce, local, publisher, agency)
- Set lastmod: Use actual page modification dates, not generation date
- Split strategy: Plan sitemap index structure if >50K URLs or >50MB uncompressed
- Exclude rules: Noindexed pages, paginated results, faceted URLs, utility pages (login, cart, search results)
- Generate XML: Produce valid XML sitemap following the sitemap protocol (sitemaps.org)
Industry Templates
SaaS
- Homepage, features, pricing, integrations, docs, blog, changelog, about, legal
- Integration pages as separate sitemap (if 50+)
- Blog with high update frequency
eCommerce
- Homepage, categories, products, brands, collections, blog, about, legal
- Product sitemap (largest — split if needed)
- Image sitemap for product photos
- Category pages with canonical handling for filtered views
Local Business
- Homepage, services, locations, about, contact, blog, reviews, legal
- Location pages as separate sitemap (if multi-location)
- Service area pages
Publisher/Media
- Homepage, sections, articles, authors, topics, about, legal
- News sitemap (for Google News inclusion)
- Video sitemap (if video content)
- High-frequency article sitemap updates
Agency
- Homepage, services, case studies, blog, team, about, contact, legal
- Case study sitemap
- Industry/vertical landing pages
Sitemap Protocol Reference
<?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>2026-03-15</lastmod>
</url>
</urlset>Sitemap Index (for multiple sitemaps)
<?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>2026-03-15</lastmod>
</sitemap>
<sitemap>
<loc>https://example.com/sitemap-blog.xml</loc>
<lastmod>2026-03-28</lastmod>
</sitemap>
</sitemapindex>Protocol Limits
- 50,000 URLs per sitemap file
- 50MB uncompressed per sitemap file
- Unlimited sitemap files in a sitemap index
- Must use absolute URLs
- UTF-8 encoding required
- Entity escaping for special characters (& ' " > <)
Output
Sitemap Analysis Report
- Total URLs indexed, health status breakdown
- Issues found with severity (critical/high/medium/low)
- Missing pages that should be in the sitemap
- Recommendations sorted by impact
Sitemap Generation Output
- Complete XML sitemap(s) or sitemap plan
- Sitemap index if multiple files needed
- robots.txt sitemap declaration line
- Submission instructions for Google Search Console
Agents Used
- seo-specialist — Sitemap analysis, URL health checks, architecture recommendations
Scripts Used
- tech-seo-auditor.py — URL health checking (status codes, redirects)