A sitemap is an organized map of your website that helps search engines find, crawl, and index your website's content. Sitemaps tell search engines which pages on your website are most important, helping them to prioritize pages that they will crawl.
You will want to submit a sitemap to your preferred search engines, so they can locate and surface your content in searches. There are different types of sitemap; BigCommerce uses XML sitemaps, which are the most common.
Accessing Your Sitemap
To access your store's sitemap, go to yourdomain.com/xmlsitemap.php. This will be the link used when submitting your sitemap to search engines.
Submitting Your Sitemap
Search Engines will require you to submit your sitemap in order to index your store's webpages. Once indexed, your store can begin displaying search results. For more information on submitting your sitemap to search engines, see our Additional Resources.
For best practices on optimizing your search ending ranking, see our Guide to SEO.
FAQ
Do I have to update the links in the sitemap?
Links are updated in the sitemap automatically. When search engines crawl your site, they will find the updated links.
When should I re-submit my sitemap?
Whenever there is a major change to your store, such as when you change your domain name. It is also advised to re-submit your sitemap when you make a major change to your product catalog and content web pages by adding or deleting hundreds or thousands of products or pages. You do not need to do this for smaller, everyday updates.
What pages are included in the sitemap?
Products, categories, brands, content web pages, and blog pages are included in the sitemap, as long as they are marked visible.
Why are some of my products, categories, and brands missing from the sitemap?
To ensure all of your product pages are included, they must be assigned to the channel of the requested sitemap and marked as visible. If you do not have any brands associated, the sitemap won't include any links to brands' listing pages.
The sitemap won't include the link to your categories pages if they are not marked as visible. An exception is that it will include a links to a non-visible if the child category is marked visible.
Why doesn't the sitemap include a link to my blog even though it is marked visible?
The sitemap will not include links to blog pages if there are no published blog posts, even if the blog is marked visible.
Is there a limit to the number of pages included in the sitemap?
The Google XML Sitemap cannot export more than 50,000 page URLs. However, your store automatically indexes its URLs into separate sitemaps based on page type (such as product or blog pages). When you submit your XML sitemap to a search engine, the page limit is applied to each indexed sitemap instead of your store's total URL count.
Additionally, indexed sitemaps can provide other SEO benefits, such as making it easier to track sitemap indexing progress with search engines and potentially even increase traffic to your store.
