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How much Google Ads costs: spend, management fees and a realistic budget
How much Google Ads costs: what you pay Google, what an agency charges to manage it and what budget you need for it to pay off.
21/09/2026
A sitemap is a file listing the URLs of a website along with extra information about each page. Its main job is to help search engines such as Google discover, crawl and index your content more efficiently.
Think of the sitemap as the index of a book: it tells the search engine which pages exist and where to find them, without having to follow link after link.
A sitemap is especially useful for large sites, new sites with few external links, or pages that are poorly linked internally. It makes it easier for Google to find content that might otherwise go unnoticed.
There are different types of sitemap depending on the format and the kind of content they list:
The most important one for SEO. It is a file in XML format designed specifically for search engine crawlers. This is the type of sitemap you submit to Google Search Console. Typical location: yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml
A web page, visible to visitors, that lists all the site’s links in an organised way. Useful for improving navigation and user experience, especially on large sites. It also helps search engines, though only as a secondary signal.
An extension of the XML sitemap that includes information about the site’s images. It helps your images appear in Google Images. You can include images in the main sitemap or create a dedicated one.
Similar to the image sitemap, but for video content. It includes details such as title, description, duration and thumbnail. Useful if video is an important part of your content strategy.
Specific to news sites that want to appear in Google News. It has special requirements and only includes content from the last 2 days.
Not every site needs a sitemap equally urgently, but as a rule it is good practice to have one:
Even if your site is small, creating a sitemap has no downsides and potential benefits. It is a tiny investment that makes life easier for search engines.
An XML sitemap follows a specific structure that search engines can read. Here is a simplified example:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
<url>
<loc>https://yourdomain.com/page/</loc>
<lastmod>2025-01-15</lastmod>
<changefreq>weekly</changefreq>
<priority>0.8</priority>
</url>
</urlset>
If you use WordPress, creating a sitemap is very simple thanks to SEO plugins:
These plugins keep the sitemap updated automatically whenever you publish or edit content. There is nothing else to do.
If you do not use WordPress, or you want more control, there are other ways to create a sitemap:
Tools such as XML-Sitemaps.com, Screaming Frog or Sitemap Generator crawl your site and produce the XML file automatically. Useful for static sites or when you need a one-off sitemap.
For small sites you can write the XML file yourself following the structure above. Save it as sitemap.xml and upload it to the root of your domain.
If your site is custom built, you can program the sitemap to be generated automatically. Most frameworks and CMSs have libraries or modules for this.
The sitemap is a basic but fundamental part of technical SEO. It will not rank you on its own, but it makes it far easier for Google to discover and index all your important content.
At JRC Web we make sure every technical aspect of your website is set up correctly, including sitemaps, robots.txt, URL structure and information architecture.
As an SEO agency in Barcelona, we run full SEO audits covering all of these technical elements to make sure your site is optimised for search engines.
Not sure about the technical SEO of your website? Get in touch and we will review your case with no commitment.
Once the sitemap is created, you need to submit it to Google Search Console so Google knows about it:
Once submitted, Search Console will show you:
If there are errors, Search Console will tell you what they are so you can fix them.
Add the sitemap reference to your robots.txt file:Sitemap: https://yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml
Not every URL on your site belongs in the sitemap. Including unnecessary pages can dilute the importance of the content that matters.
If you do not want a page to appear in Google, keep it out of the sitemap. The sitemap should only contain URLs you want indexed and ranking.
Having a sitemap does not guarantee Google will index every URL. These are the most frequent problems:
Check that the sitemap URL works in a browser. Make sure it is not blocked by robots.txt or by server rules.
If the sitemap includes URLs returning 404 or 500 errors, Google will flag it as a problem. Review it and remove broken URLs.
Including URLs with noindex or blocked by robots.txt creates inconsistencies. Google will warn you in Search Console.
If the sitemap is not updated automatically it can contain obsolete URLs or miss new pages. Use a plugin that keeps it current.
Including thousands of low-value pages (tags, author archives, pagination) can affect how Google prioritises crawling your important content.
The sitemap is one piece of the technical SEO puzzle. It works best combined with other good practices:
Robots.txt controls what Google can crawl; the sitemap says what you want crawled. The two must be consistent: do not block in robots.txt what you list in the sitemap.
The sitemap makes URLs easier to discover, but the decision to index depends on other factors: content quality, noindex tags, canonicals and so on.
Good internal linking reduces your dependence on the sitemap. If all your pages are well linked, Google will find them anyway. The sitemap is extra insurance.
The sitemap does not affect performance directly, but good Core Web Vitals improve how Google rates the pages it discovers through it.
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