Increase the number of pages indexed and crawled. Get the job done with these top-10 best sitemap generators (with budget-friendly recommendations).
What are Sitemaps?
Sitemaps are a valuable resource for SEO specialists and webmasters. They help Google and other search engines find new pages and content on websites and get around them. That is to say, there is no assurance that search engines will index the content, but letting them know which pages are essential can make a significant difference.
Sitemaps can aid in:
- Get an overview of the structure of your website.
- View which pages Google and other search engines are crawling.
- Determine how frequently the pages are crawled.
- Check which pages are not being indexed.
- Determine which pages contain errors that must be corrected.
With the help of the best sitemap generators, search engines will be able to crawl your website faster and better. Hence, if your website has fewer than a few hundred pages, you can manage your sitemap on your own.
But if you have a site that is medium-sized or larger and adds a lot of new content often, you might want to add a dynamic sitemap or look into a sitemap generator.
Moreover, a dynamic sitemap adds new pages to the sitemap file automatically.
Most of the time, writing to a dynamic file is faster and uses fewer resources than writing to a static file.
Choosing A Sitemap Generator
If you decide to use a sitemap generator, there are numerous tools available online. However, which one is best for you?
Here are the 10 best sitemap generator tools I’ve discovered for SEO professionals:
1. Google Sitemap Generator
This WordPress plugin will make a sitemap for your website that meets all of Google’s requirements. Certainly, it is user-friendly and compatible with websites of all sizes.
The Google sitemap generator also includes multiple translations, which can be a valuable addition.
Price: Free.
2. Screaming Frog
Screaming Frog, one of the most popular crawlers in the SEO community, can be used to generate sitemaps for websites of any size. In addition, it provides an XML sitemap generator.
Moreover, this tool is a bit more sophisticated and is designed specifically for larger websites.
The XML sitemap generator adheres to these steps: Crawl The Website > Click Sitemaps > XML Sitemap > Select Pages To Include.
To sum up, one of my favorite features of Screaming Frog is the ability to generate a sitemap from a list crawl.
For instance, if you wish to check the status codes of a list of URLs and perform a list crawl, you can quickly and easily generate an XML sitemap from the list crawl.
Price: Free for the first 500 URLs. Moreover, if your enterprise-level website has thousands or millions of pages, you must subscribe to the paid version, which costs €149 per year.
3. XML-Sitemaps.com
This sitemap generator tool allows you to quickly and easily generate sitemaps for your website.
In addition, it provides a variety of features, including support for multiple languages and the ability to include/exclude specific pages.
You can create a sitemap for up to 500 URLs using the online generator.
Price: Free for up to 500 URLs. Beyond that, the pro model is $3.49 per month.
4. Yoast SEO Sitemap Plugin
Yoast SEO, a popular WordPress plugin that helps you optimize your website for search engines, includes a sitemap generator that makes it easy to generate sitemaps for your website.
One of the most attractive aspects of the Yoast sitemap generator is its sensible defaults for what goes into the sitemap and for excluding many pages that should not be included.
Yoast SEO divides larger sitemaps into multiple smaller sitemaps. In short, their sitemaps can contain up to 1,000 URL connections.
Price: The XML sitemap feature is free to use in Yoast SEO.
5. Inspyder
This website software company offers a user-friendly XML sitemap generator capable of handling complex websites.
It operates on a PC. Also, you can schedule a sitemap generation, receive an email when the sitemap is complete, and obtain a sitemap in multiple formats, including images, videos, etc.
Price: Inspyder offers a free trial so you can try it before you buy. Moreover, you can get an Inspyder package for about $39.95 annually.
6. Slickplan
A website planning company, Slickplan offers an intuitive sitemap generator and a WordPress plugin.
A valuable feature of Slickplan’s tool is that it allows you to create a sitemap from scratch by dragging and dropping elements or by importing an existing website’s URL, sitemap index file, or Google XML file. Moreover, Slickplan’s visual sitemap generator creates hierarchical sitemaps that are simple to navigate, allowing you to present and test a variety of web page architecture scenarios.
For large sitemaps that require numerous edits, you can also offer batch editing.
Another cool feature of Slickplan is that users can easily import a previously exported XML file into the application to import a website.
In addition, you can export your existing XML sitemap from WordPress and import it directly into Slickplan.
Price: The basic plan starts at $10.79 per month and goes all the way up to $100.39 per month.
7. Dynomapper
With interactive visual sitemaps, this generator is a good way to figure out and show how a website is really put together. In addition, Dynomapper’s sitemap is capable of crawling 200K pages per crawl. Moreover, the sitemap editor lets users change the hierarchy, put pages into groups, and give each page a workflow status.
Unfortunately, Dynomapper does not offer the sitemap generator as a standalone product; it is bundled with other tools. Pricing starts at $49.95 per month.
8. Sitemap Writer Pro
This is a fantastic tool for quickly creating sitemaps and managing sites with millions of URLs.
Standard Sitemap, Google Image, Google News, Google Video, Google Images, Google Code Search, Google Geo, and Google Mobile are the eight types of sitemaps that Sitemap Writer Pro offers for properly indexing your site.
Price: A very cost-effective $24.95.
9. WriteMaps
This is yet another visual sitemap generator that allows you to generate a sitemap without spending time on formatting. In addition, you can export your visual content to PDF or share it via a unique URL, which is one of the many great features of WriteMaps.
Moreover, you can upgrade, downgrade, or cancel at any time.
Price: Monthly plans range in price from free for up to three sitemaps and 50 URLs to $29.99 per month for unlimited sitemaps.
10. Octopus.do.
Octopus.do excel at devouring incredibly quick visual sitemaps.
You can generate sitemap XML from visual sitemaps and submit it to Google, Bing, and other search engines to enhance your website’s visibility and search engine optimization. Moreover, Octopus.do provides an interactive flow that makes extensive use of drag-and-drop.
You can also export your sitemap to PDF, PNG, TXT, and XML, among others.
Price: Free for one project, then all the way up to $120 per month for unlimited sitemaps and projects.
Takeaways
Based on my experience, these are the leading 10 sitemap generators.
There are numerous alternatives available, so be sure to do your research to find the one that best suits your needs.
Ensure that it generates a sitemap that is correctly formatted and simple to upload and validate.
I’ll leave you with these time-saving suggestions.
Sitemap Tips
Always generate separate sitemaps for each section of your website. This will help you determine which sections of your website have indexing problems.
A single sitemap is limited to 50MB (uncompressed) and 50,000 URLs. If you have a larger file size or more URLs, you must divide your list into multiple sitemaps.
Alternatively, you can generate a sitemap index file (a file that points to a list of sitemaps) and submit it to Google.
Google does not take priority into account in sitemaps, so assigning a URL a higher priority has no effect on indexing.
Once your sitemap has been created, upload it to the root directory. Then, include it in the robots.txt file, and submit it to Google through Google Search Console.
To sum up, after submitting the file, check for any errors and ensure that it was successfully submitted and read.
