How to Generate Perfect XML Sitemaps with Sitemap Writer Pro

How to Generate Perfect XML Sitemaps with Sitemap Writer ProA well-structured XML sitemap is one of the simplest, most effective tools for improving a website’s search engine visibility. Sitemap Writer Pro is a specialized tool designed to make sitemap creation fast, flexible, and SEO-friendly. This article walks through everything you need to generate a perfect XML sitemap with Sitemap Writer Pro — from planning and configuration to validation, submission, and automation.

Why XML Sitemaps Matter

XML sitemaps help search engines discover and index your site’s pages more efficiently. They communicate page priority, update frequency, canonical URLs, and last-modified dates — signals that help crawlers prioritize content. For large sites, newly launched sites, or pages that are poorly linked internally, a clear sitemap is essential to ensure visibility.

Key benefits:

• Faster indexing of new or updated pages
• Better control over which URLs are crawled
• Improved handling of complex site architectures
• Support for images, videos, and multilingual content

Preparing Before You Use Sitemap Writer Pro

Before generating a sitemap, gather and review the following:

• A complete URL list for the site (including subdomains, if applicable)
• Preferred canonical domain (www vs non-www, HTTP vs HTTPS)
• URL parameters and query strings to exclude or normalize
• Sections to prioritize vs sections to omit (e.g., admin pages, staging)
• Any media content (images/videos) or alternate language pages that need special tags

A quick crawl with a tool like Screaming Frog or an internal export from your CMS will give you a reliable starting URL set.

Step-by-Step: Creating an XML Sitemap

1. Install and open Sitemap Writer Pro

   • Launch the application on your computer. Sitemap Writer Pro is portable and runs on Windows; ensure you have the latest version.

2. Set project and site settings

   • Create a new project and enter your website’s base URL.
   • Set the preferred domain (https://example.com vs https://www.example.com).
   • Configure global options: default change frequency, default priority, and whether to include lastmod dates.

3. Import URLs

   • Import from CSV, text file, or paste a list of URLs directly.
   • Use the “Crawl” function if you want Sitemap Writer Pro to fetch and discover URLs automatically. Set crawl depth and respects robots.txt as needed.

4. Filter and clean

   • Remove duplicate URLs, non-canonical variants, and redirect targets.
   • Exclude development, admin, or private areas using path filters or regex exclusions.
   • Normalize query parameters: choose to include or ignore specified parameters.

5. Configure advanced options

   • Set specific priority and changefreq values for sections (e.g., blog posts vs landing pages).
   • Include image and video metadata if you host significant media. Sitemap Writer Pro supports image:image and video:video tags.
   • Add hreflang tags or alternate language entries for multilingual sites.

6. Split large sitemaps if necessary

   • If your site has more than 50,000 URLs or the sitemap exceeds 50 MB (uncompressed), enable automatic splitting. Sitemap Writer Pro can generate sitemap index files that reference multiple sitemap parts.

7. Preview and validate

   • Use the built-in preview to inspect the generated XML.
   • Validate the sitemap against the XML sitemap schema. Fix any structure or character-encoding errors.

8. Save and export

   • Export the sitemap.xml and, if used, sitemap-index.xml plus any sitemap-part files.
   • Optionally upload directly to your server via FTP/SFTP from inside the app.

Best Practices and Recommendations

• Use absolute URLs with your canonical domain and HTTPS where applicable.
• Always include lastmod for pages that change frequently (news, blog posts).
• Assign sensible priorities — don’t overuse 1.0; keep relative importance consistent.
• Exclude 4xx/5xx and redirecting URLs.
• For dynamic parameters (filters, sorts), either canonicalize or exclude to avoid crawl waste.
• For large sites, use a sitemap index file and split sitemaps into logical segments (by path, content type, or date).
• Include images and video tags where those assets are important to search visibility.
• Keep your robots.txt updated to reference your sitemap index: Sitemap: https://example.com/sitemap_index.xml

Validating and Submitting to Search Engines

1. Test locally

   • Use Sitemap Writer Pro’s validator and online XML validators to ensure compliance.

2. Submit in Google Search Console

   • Sign into GSC, add and verify your site (if not already), and submit the sitemap URL under “Sitemaps”.
   • Check the sitemap status and any reported errors or warnings.

3. Submit to Bing Webmaster Tools

   • Add and verify your site in Bing Webmaster Tools and submit the sitemap URL.

4. Monitor indexing and errors

   • Regularly check Search Console and Bing reports for indexing status, crawl errors, and excluded URLs.
   • Address issues like blocked resources, server errors, and unsupported tags.

Automating Sitemaps and Keeping Them Fresh

• Schedule regular crawls and sitemap exports in Sitemap Writer Pro (if available) or integrate with a CI/CD pipeline that regenerates sitemaps on content changes.
• For CMS-driven sites, set up hooks to regenerate sitemaps on publish/unpublish events.
• Use pinging endpoints to notify search engines of updated sitemaps:
  • Google: https://www.google.com/ping?sitemap=
  • Bing: https://www.bing.com/ping?sitemap=

Troubleshooting Common Issues

• Sitemap not found by Search Console: ensure sitemap is accessible at the exact URL and referenced in robots.txt.
• Encoding errors: save XML as UTF-8 and remove invalid characters.
• Too many URLs: split into multiple sitemaps and create a sitemap index.
• Media not indexed: include complete image/video metadata and ensure media URLs are reachable.

Example: Minimal XML Snippet Produced by Sitemap Writer Pro

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9"         xmlns:image="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-image/1.1">   <url>     <loc>https://example.com/</loc>     <lastmod>2025-08-15</lastmod>     <changefreq>daily</changefreq>     <priority>1.0</priority>     <image:image>       <image:loc>https://example.com/images/hero.jpg</image:loc>       <image:caption>Homepage hero image</image:caption>     </image:image>   </url> </urlset> 

When to Regenerate a Sitemap

• Major site restructuring (URL changes, migrations)
• Large content imports or deletions
• Changes to canonicalization rules or domain settings
• Regular intervals for frequently updated sites (daily/weekly)

Conclusion

Sitemap Writer Pro simplifies creating clean, standards-compliant XML sitemaps while giving you control over priorities, media, and multilingual setups. By preparing your URL set, applying sensible filters and metadata, validating the XML, and automating updates, you ensure search engines can find and index the most important parts of your site quickly and reliably.

If you want, I can generate a sample sitemap for your site — paste a list of URLs or give me the main site sections and I’ll create a ready-to-use XML file.