SEO Sitemap

Sitemap Analysis & Generation

Shared Data Cache

Step 0 -- Check shared data cache:

Before gathering, check .seo-cache/ for reusable context from related SEO skills. Reference: ../seo/references/shared-data-cache.md for schemas and dependency map.

Check these cache files when present:

• .seo-cache/site-meta.json for domain, business type, industry, and crawl context

• .seo-cache/audit-scores.json for prior full-audit priorities

• .seo-cache/pages/{url-slug}/page-analysis.json for page-level context when a URL is provided

• If found: parse and use clearly valid fields (note "Using cached [X] from [date]")

• If missing, corrupt, or irrelevant: continue with fresh evidence

• If the user says "refresh" or "re-run": ignore cache reads and overwrite on write

Mode 1: Analyze Existing Sitemap

Validation Checks

• Valid XML format
• URL count <50,000 per file (protocol limit)
• All URLs return HTTP 200
• <lastmod> dates are accurate (not all identical)
• No deprecated tags: <priority> and <changefreq> are ignored by Google
• Sitemap referenced in robots.txt
• Compare crawled pages vs sitemap; flag missing pages

Quality Signals

• Sitemap index file if >50k URLs
• Split by content type (pages, posts, images, videos)
• No non-canonical URLs in sitemap
• No noindexed URLs in sitemap
• No redirected URLs in sitemap
• HTTPS URLs only (no HTTP)

Common Issues

Mode 2: Generate New Sitemap

Process

1. Ask for business type (or auto-detect from existing site)
2. Load industry template from ../seo-plan/assets/ directory
3. Interactive structure planning with user
4. Apply quality gates:
   • ⚠️ WARNING at 30+ location pages (require 60%+ unique content)
   • 🛑 HARD STOP at 50+ location pages (require justification)
5. Generate valid XML output
6. Split at 50k URLs with sitemap index
7. Generate STRUCTURE.md documentation

Safe Programmatic Pages (OK at scale)

✅ Integration pages (with real setup docs) ✅ Template/tool pages (with downloadable content) ✅ Glossary pages (200+ word definitions) ✅ Product pages (unique specs, reviews) ✅ User profile pages (user-generated content)

Penalty Risk (avoid at scale)

❌ Location pages with only city name swapped ❌ "Best [tool] for [industry]" without industry-specific value ❌ "[Competitor] alternative" without real comparison data ❌ AI-generated pages without human review and unique value

Sitemap Format

Standard Sitemap

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
  <url>
    <loc>https://example.com/page</loc>
    <lastmod>2026-02-07</lastmod>
  </url>
</urlset>

Sitemap Index (for >50k URLs)

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<sitemapindex xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
  <sitemap>
    <loc>https://example.com/sitemap-pages.xml</loc>
    <lastmod>2026-02-07</lastmod>
  </sitemap>
  <sitemap>
    <loc>https://example.com/sitemap-posts.xml</loc>
    <lastmod>2026-02-07</lastmod>
  </sitemap>
</sitemapindex>

Error Handling

• URL unreachable: Report the HTTP status code and suggest checking if the site is live
• No sitemap found: Check common locations (/sitemap.xml, /sitemap_index.xml, robots.txt reference) before reporting "not found"
• Invalid XML format: Report specific parsing errors with line numbers
• Rate limiting detected: Back off and report partial results with a note about retry timing

Output

For Analysis

• VALIDATION-REPORT.md: analysis results
• Issues list with severity
• Recommendations

For Generation

• sitemap.xml (or split files with index)
• STRUCTURE.md: site architecture documentation
• URL count and organization summary

Write to shared data cache

After completing all work, write a concise JSON summary to .seo-cache/ when the workflow produced durable findings. Use the schemas and naming rules in ../seo/references/shared-data-cache.md; include at least cache_type, analyzed_at, source URL/domain, key findings, issues, recommendations, and tool limitations. Add .seo-cache/ to .gitignore if it is missing.