# Plan XML sitemaps for a large website

A sitemap structure, splitting rules, and maintenance plan that helps search engines find and refresh the pages that matter.

- Topic: SEO & Website
- Framework: Few-Shot
- Level: Standard
- Tags: Plan, Fill-in Template
- Source: https://www.thinkwithprompt.com/prompts/plan-xml-sitemaps-for-a-large-website

## Prompt

```text
Help me plan the XML sitemaps for my website.

**Site type:** [e.g. "e-commerce", "news publisher", "marketplace", "documentation site"]
**Approximate number of indexable URLs:** [NUMBER]
**Content types:** [products, categories, articles, images, videos, locations, languages]
**CMS or platform:** [PLATFORM, and whether sitemaps are generated automatically]
**Known problems:** [e.g. "new products take weeks to get indexed", "Search Console shows many 'Discovered - currently not indexed'"]

Cover:
1. **Limits and structure:** a single sitemap file holds up to 50,000 URLs or 50MB uncompressed; plan a sitemap index and how to split files (by content type, section, date, or language) so problems are easy to diagnose.
2. **What to include:** only canonical, indexable URLs that return 200. What to exclude: redirects, noindex pages, parameter duplicates, blocked URLs, thin filter pages.
3. **Tags:** use accurate lastmod dates (only when content meaningfully changes); explain why priority and changefreq add little for Google.
4. **Special sitemaps:** image, video, news, and hreflang annotations if they apply to my site.
5. **Submission and discovery:** robots.txt reference, Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools submission.
6. **Monitoring:** using per-sitemap indexing reports to find sections with poor coverage.
7. **Maintenance:** how often to regenerate, and automated checks for broken or non-canonical URLs.

Output: a recommended sitemap file plan (table: File | Contents | Approx. URLs | Update frequency), an example of the index file, and a checklist. If something depends on details I haven't given, mark it [CONFIRM].
```

## What to fill in

- NUMBER
- PLATFORM, and whether sitemaps are generated automatically
- CONFIRM

Free to copy and use. From ThinkWithPrompt (https://www.thinkwithprompt.com/), a library of 2,663 curated AI prompts.