What Is XML Sitemap?
An XML sitemap is a file (typically at /sitemap.xml) that lists the URLs on your website, helping search engines like Google discover, crawl, and index your pages more efficiently. While Google can find pages by following links, a sitemap ensures newly published pages, deep pages, and pages with few inbound links are discovered quickly — especially important for large sites and programmatic SEO page sets.
What a sitemap should include
Include all canonical, indexable URLs — pages you want in Google's index. Exclude: pages with noindex tags, duplicate pages, redirect URLs, error pages, and admin/internal pages. For large sites, use a sitemap index file that references multiple sub-sitemaps (e.g. one for blog posts, one for template pages, one for tools). Include `<lastmod>` to help Google prioritise recently updated pages.
Sitemap submission and monitoring
Submit your sitemap via Google Search Console (Settings → Sitemaps) and Bing Webmaster Tools. Google will also discover it automatically if referenced in robots.txt (Sitemap: https://example.com/sitemap.xml). After submission, monitor the 'Discovered', 'Crawled', and 'Indexed' counts in Search Console — a gap between discovered and indexed pages indicates indexation issues.
Dynamic sitemaps in Next.js
Next.js 13+ generates sitemaps dynamically via the app/sitemap.ts file — returning an array of URLs with metadata. This is ideal for programmatic SEO sites where new pages are added frequently. The sitemap updates automatically as new data is added, without manual regeneration.
XML Sitemap & Canvas Builder
canvasbuilder.co uses a dynamic Next.js sitemap.ts that auto-includes all template pages, tool pages, blog posts, compare pages, glossary pages, and other programmatic SEO content — currently listing 180+ URLs.
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