When it comes to improving your Magento 2 website ranking in search results, every detail matters. One of such details is an XML Sitemap.

What Is An XML Sitemap?

In simple terms, it is a file containing information about the structure of your website content. In other words, it is a kind of navigational instrument that helps search engine bots (or web crawlers) to crawl your site more efficiently. There is also such a thing as Multiple XML Sitemaps.

Why Using Multiple XML Sitemaps?

There may be many reasons to use several sitemaps instead of one. First of all, it is a perfect solution for large websites having more than 50,000 links.

Another point is that Multiple Sitemaps provide you with better management and structure organization options. For example, you can organize your sitemaps by your products, categories, type of content, etc. The better your content is categorized, and the less messy your links are organized, the smoother and easier crawling is.

One more benefit is more efficient issues/errors monitoring since when you have multiple sitemaps, you can get a clear picture of what is performing well and where you have indexing errors.

Unfortunately, Multiple XML Sitemaps are not supported in Magento 2 by default. Magento 2 comes only with the possibility to generate a basic single XML Sitemap per store view. What you can configure in the Magento 2 backend is the settings of Frequency and Priority of your content updates for Categories, Products, and CMS Pages options.

According to Google, it is recommended to limit a single sitemap to 50MB (uncompressed) and 50,000 URLs. You will have to split your sitemap into multiple sitemaps if you have a larger file or more URLs. You can create a file that points to a list of sitemaps (a sitemap index file) and submits that single index file to Google.

In order to go beyond the limits of the default Magento 2 and give you more freedom, we have come up with the XML Sitemap Splitter extension for Magento 2. This extension allows you to create and intelligently manage multiple XML Sitemaps per store view, using an intuitive and user-friendly admin panel where you can make all the necessary tweaks.

How Does "Magento 2 XML Sitemap Splitter Extension" Work?

The Magento 2 XML Sitemap Splitter Extension automatically generates your XML Sitemap at the store view level and splits it into smaller sitemaps for Categories, Products, and CMS pages. This splitting feature was designed to help you structure and optimize your XML Sitemap and thus, make your store rank better in search engines.

Within Products options, you can additionally configure the sitemaps for products “In Stock”, products “Out of Stock”, products images, and products review as well as setting Frequency and Priority of your content updates separately. Apart from that, you will be receiving comprehensive daily generated reports showing the most relevant and up-to-date information. All of the above was created to make the management easier, quicker and bring you more actionable results regarding crawling and indexing issues tracking.

We also offer live demos of the Magento 2 XML Sitemap Splitter Extension where you can check out all the features to get a better understanding of how everything works and what your XML Sitemaps will look like.

Here are the key features of the Magento 2 XML Sitemap Splitter Extension: 

• Generates and splits XML Sitemap for products (in stock, out of stock, review) pages, categories pages, and CMS pages
• Split XML Sitemap by the maximum number of URLs that can be included in each XML sitemap file
• Include or exclude product images in the XML sitemap
• Include or exclude product image title, caption, license, and custom license in the XML sitemap
• Generate a separate mobile XML sitemap and submit it to search engines, allowing search engines to better serve search requests from mobile;
• Email notifications of daily generated XML Sitemap report with customizable template
• Pinging search engines each time your XML Sitemaps are generated or updated
• Configure, generate and manage XML sitemaps from the admin panel
• Multiple websites, stores, and store views supported
• Generate XML sitemaps from the command line (CLI)

The Magento 2 XML Sitemap Splitter by Ulmod was explicitly developed to overcome the limitations of the default Magento 2 XML Sitemap, to provide you with more opportunities and valuable features. It simplifies the whole process of generation and splitting your store's XML Sitemap making your store more visible to search engines and thus, boosting your chances for higher ranking and consequently, presenting your product to as many people as possible.

It's good to validate your XML sitemap and check if all the links contained in your sitemap work properly, or if there are errors. XML sitemap errors such as HTTP errors, compression errors, incorrect namespace, or empty sitemap, can affect your ranking. These errors can make it hard to crawl your website. If some of your website's pages can't be crawled appropriately, then they won't be indexed by search engines.

If you need more information about all the features of the extension, please visit the Magento 2 XML Sitemap Splitter Extension page, walk through its user guide, and try the live demos.