Validate your XML sitemap against the Sitemap Protocol specification. Catch errors before search engines do.
Each sitemap file can contain at most 50,000 URLs and must not exceed 50MB uncompressed. For larger sites, use a sitemap index file that references multiple sitemap files.
Google uses <lastmod> to prioritize crawling. Only update the date when content meaningfully changes. Setting all dates to today reduces trust in the signal and wastes crawl budget.
Every URL in your sitemap should be the canonical version. Do not include URLs that redirect, return 404, or have a different canonical tag. This keeps your crawl budget focused.
Add a Sitemap: https://example.com/sitemap.xml directive to your robots.txt file. This helps search engines discover your sitemap without needing to submit it manually.