XML Sitemap Generation

XML Sitemap Generation

An XML sitemap tells search robots about site structure and indexation priorities. For sites with complex navigation or large numbers of pages — essential tool.

Sitemap Structure

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9"
        xmlns:xhtml="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"
        xmlns:image="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-image/1.1">

    <url>
        <loc>https://example.ru/</loc>
        <lastmod>2024-03-15</lastmod>
        <changefreq>weekly</changefreq>
        <priority>1.0</priority>
    </url>

    <url>
        <loc>https://example.ru/catalog/laptops</loc>
        <lastmod>2024-03-14</lastmod>
        <changefreq>daily</changefreq>
        <priority>0.8</priority>
        <!-- Product images -->
        <image:image>
            <image:loc>https://example.ru/images/laptop-dell.jpg</image:loc>
            <image:title>Dell XPS 15 Laptop</image:title>
        </image:image>
    </url>

</urlset>

Index Sitemap (for Large Sites)

One sitemap file is limited to 50,000 URLs and 50 MB. For large sites — sitemap index:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<sitemapindex xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
    <sitemap>
        <loc>https://example.ru/sitemap-pages.xml</loc>
        <lastmod>2024-03-15</lastmod>
    </sitemap>
    <sitemap>
        <loc>https://example.ru/sitemap-products.xml</loc>
        <lastmod>2024-03-15</lastmod>
    </sitemap>
    <sitemap>
        <loc>https://example.ru/sitemap-blog.xml</loc>
        <lastmod>2024-03-15</lastmod>
    </sitemap>
</sitemapindex>

Generation in Laravel

// routes/web.php
Route::get('/sitemap.xml', [SitemapController::class, 'index']);

// SitemapController.php
public function index()
{
    $pages    = Page::where('is_published', true)->get(['slug', 'updated_at']);
    $products = Product::where('is_active', true)->get(['slug', 'updated_at']);

    return response()
        ->view('sitemap.index', compact('pages', 'products'))
        ->header('Content-Type', 'text/xml');
}

Registration in robots.txt

Sitemap: https://example.ru/sitemap.xml

Also add sitemap to Google Search Console and Yandex Webmaster manually to speed up indexation.

Setup timeline: a few hours for basic implementation.