The sitemap.xml file structure
SXA auto-generates sitemaps that follow globally approved guidelines. To read more about sitemaps in general, see this Google docs article about sitemaps, and this Google docs article about building and submitting a sitemap.
Sitemap entries have the following elements: loc
, lastmod
, changefreq
, and priority
.
Alternate links for different languages
When a sitemap has alternate links for pages in different languages, the links are formatted in the following way:
<url>
<loc>http://www.example.com/deutsch/</loc>
<xhtml:link
rel="alternate"
hreflang="en"
href="http://www.example.com/english/" />
<xhtml:link
rel="alternate"
hreflang="de-ch"
href="http://www.example.com/schweiz-deutsch/" />
<xhtml:link
rel="alternate"
hreflang="de"
href="http://www.example.com/deutsch/" />
</url>
To follow the global best practices, SXA follows these general principles:
-
If there are 2 or more languages, there is a separate entry for each language defined in
loc
. -
If there are 2 or more languages defined for a page, x-default is set for one hreflang. For example:
RequestResponseshell<xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default" href="http://sxa/contact-us"/> <xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href="http://sxa/en/contact-us"/> <xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="da" href="http://sxa/da/contact-us"/>
-
If there is only a single language, SXA lists the language with an
href
, but does not add the language code underloc
.
Example of site structure
The following example uses both English and Danish sites:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" standalone="no"?>
<urlset xmlns:xhtml="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"
xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
<url>
<loc>https://sxa/en</loc>
<lastmod>2020-07-18</lastmod>
<changefreq>daily</changefreq>
<priority>0.5</priority>
<xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default" href="https://sxa/" />
<xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="da" href="https://sxa/da" />
<xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href="https://sxa/en" />
</url>
<url>
<loc>https://sxa/da</loc>
<lastmod>2020-07-19</lastmod>
<changefreq>daily</changefreq>
<priority>0.5</priority>
<xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default" href="https://sxa/" />
<xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="da" href="https://sxa/da" />
<xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href="https://sxa/en" />
</url>
<url>
<loc>https://sxa/page-da</loc>
<lastmod>2020-07-19</lastmod>
<changefreq>daily</changefreq>
<priority>0.5</priority>
<xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="da" href="https://sxa/da/page-da" />
</url>
<url>
<loc>https://sxa/page-en</loc>
<lastmod>2020-07-19</lastmod>
<changefreq>daily</changefreq>
<priority>0.5</priority>
<xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href="https://sxa/en/page-en" />
</url>
<url>
<loc>https://sxa/en/page-multi</loc>
<lastmod>2020-07-19</lastmod>
<changefreq>daily</changefreq>
<priority>0.5</priority>
<xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default" href="https://sxa/page-multi" />
<xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="da" href="https://sxa/da/page-multi" />
<xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href="https://sxa/en/page-multi" />
</url>
<url>
<loc>https://sxa/da/page-multi</loc>
<lastmod>2020-07-19</lastmod>
<changefreq>daily</changefreq>
<priority>0.5</priority>
<xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default" href="https://sxa/page-multi" />
<xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="da" href="https://sxa/da/page-multi" />
<xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href="https://sxa/en/page-multi" />
</url>
</urlset>