Should I include noindex URLs in my sitemap?

No. Only include canonical, indexable URLs you want to rank. Including noindex URLs wastes crawl budget and creates mixed signals.

Recommended. lastmod can help crawlers prioritize recrawling, as long as it’s accurate (don’t update it daily without real changes).

What are sitemap limits?

A single sitemap supports up to 50,000 URLs or 50MB (uncompressed). Split large sites and use a sitemap index.

Sitemap (sitemap.xml) Best Practices

A sitemap won’t magically rank you, but it’s a powerful discovery signal—especially for multilingual and large programmatic sites.

1) Include only URLs you want to rank

Canonical URLs only (avoid parameters/duplicates)
Exclude noindex, 404 and redirect URLs
List each language version (e.g. /en) separately

2) Minimal sitemap example

xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
  <url>
    <loc>https://example.com/</loc>
    <lastmod>2025-01-01</lastmod>
  </url>
  <url>
    <loc>https://example.com/en/</loc>
    <lastmod>2025-01-01</lastmod>
  </url>
</urlset>

3) Generate and submit

Use Sitemap Generator.
Publish `sitemap.xml` at your site root.
Submit in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.

4) Scale with sitemap index

Over 50,000 URLs? Split into multiple sitemaps and use a sitemap index—common for programmatic SEO.

Learn more: Programmatic SEO

International SEO Sitemap Crawl budget

FAQ

Sitemaps, lastmod and submission.