Short definition
A file that lists the pages you want search engines to find.
Beginner In plain English
An XML sitemap is a list of a website’s important pages, made for search engines rather than people. It helps them discover pages they might otherwise miss.
Professional How pros use it
List only canonical, indexable URLs that return 200. Submit it in Search Console and reference it in robots.txt. A sitemap aids discovery but does not guarantee indexing.
Examples
- /sitemap.xml listing all product and blog pages.
- Removing redirected URLs from the sitemap after a migration.
More detail
A file listing a site’s important URLs to help search engines discover and crawl them.
In client work, you will often need to explain this term in plain language, so practice describing it in one sentence.
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