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Sitemap

Sitemap

Section titled “Sitemap”

Introduction

Section titled “Introduction”

A sitemap is an XML file that lists all the pages on your website. It helps search engines discover and index your content more efficiently, especially for new sites or pages that aren’t linked from other pages.

Why Do We Need This?

Section titled “Why Do We Need This?”
  • Helps Google discover new pages faster
  • Ensures all your pages are indexed
  • Provides metadata about each page (when it was last updated, how important it is)
  • Essential for large sites with hundreds or thousands of pages

Static Sitemap

Section titled “Static Sitemap”

For small sites with fixed routes, export a static sitemap:

app/sitemap.ts
import type { MetadataRoute } from 'next'


export default function sitemap(): MetadataRoute.Sitemap {
  return [
    {
      url: 'https://yourdomain.com',
      lastModified: new Date(),
      changeFrequency: 'yearly',
      priority: 1,
    },
    {
      url: 'https://yourdomain.com/about',
      lastModified: new Date(),
      changeFrequency: 'monthly',
      priority: 0.8,
    },
    {
      url: 'https://yourdomain.com/blog',
      lastModified: new Date(),
      changeFrequency: 'weekly',
      priority: 0.5,
    },
    {
      url: 'https://yourdomain.com/contact',
      lastModified: new Date(),
      changeFrequency: 'monthly',
      priority: 0.3,
    },
  ]
}

Dynamic Sitemap

Section titled “Dynamic Sitemap”

For sites with dynamic content (blog posts, products), generate the sitemap from your database:

app/sitemap.ts
import type { MetadataRoute } from 'next'
import { db } from '@/lib/db'


export default async function sitemap(): Promise<MetadataRoute.Sitemap> {
  const baseUrl = 'https://yourdomain.com'


  // Static pages
  const staticPages = [
    { url: baseUrl, lastModified: new Date(), priority: 1 },
    { url: `${baseUrl}/about`, lastModified: new Date(), priority: 0.8 },
    { url: `${baseUrl}/blog`, lastModified: new Date(), priority: 0.5 },
  ]


  // Dynamic blog posts
  const posts = await db.post.findMany({
    where: { published: true },
    select: { slug: true, updatedAt: true },
    orderBy: { updatedAt: 'desc' },
  })


  const postPages = posts.map((post) => ({
    url: `${baseUrl}/blog/${post.slug}`,
    lastModified: post.updatedAt,
    priority: 0.7,
  }))


  // Dynamic product pages
  const products = await db.product.findMany({
    where: { active: true },
    select: { slug: true, updatedAt: true },
  })


  const productPages = products.map((product) => ({
    url: `${baseUrl}/products/${product.slug}`,
    lastModified: product.updatedAt,
    priority: 0.6,
  }))


  return [...staticPages, ...postPages, ...productPages]
}

Sitemap Fields

Section titled “Sitemap Fields”
FieldDescriptionRecommendation
urlFull page URLAlways include
lastModifiedWhen the page was last updatedUpdate when content changes
changeFrequencyHow often the page changesweekly for blogs, monthly for static
priorityRelative importance (0.0 to 1.0)Homepage = 1.0, less important = lower

Large Sitemaps

Section titled “Large Sitemaps”

For sites with more than 50,000 URLs or 50MB sitemaps, split into multiple files:

app/sitemap.ts
export default async function sitemap() {
  const entries = await generateAllEntries()


  // Next.js automatically splits into multiple sitemaps
  // if you return more than 50,000 entries
  return entries
}

Sitemap Index

Section titled “Sitemap Index”

Next.js automatically generates a sitemap index when needed. The index looks like:

<sitemapindex xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
  <sitemap>
    <loc>https://yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml/1</loc>
  </sitemap>
  <sitemap>
    <loc>https://yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml/2</loc>
  </sitemap>
</sitemapindex>

Submitting to Search Engines

Section titled “Submitting to Search Engines”
  1. Submit your sitemap URL in Google Search Console
  2. Submit to Bing Webmaster Tools
  3. Reference the sitemap in robots.txt

Common Mistakes

Section titled “Common Mistakes”
  • Not updating lastModified — Search engines use this to decide when to recrawl.
  • Including unpublished or draft pages — Only include published, indexable content.
  • Missing trailing slashes — Be consistent with URL format.
  • Not submitting to Search Console — Creating a sitemap is only half the work. Submit it.

Best Practices

Section titled “Best Practices”
  • Include all public, indexable pages in the sitemap
  • Update lastModified when content changes
  • Use dynamic sitemaps for database-driven content
  • Submit your sitemap URL to Google Search Console
  • Reference the sitemap in robots.txt
  • Keep sitemaps under 50,000 URLs or 50MB

Summary

Section titled “Summary”

Sitemaps help search engines discover and index your content. Use static sitemaps for fixed pages and dynamic sitemaps for database-driven content. Update lastModified when content changes and submit the sitemap URL to Google Search Console.

Section titled “Related Topics”