/seo-sitemap

name: seo-sitemap
description: >
  Analyze existing XML sitemaps or generate new ones with industry templates.
  Validates format, URLs, and structure. Use when user says "sitemap",
  "generate sitemap", "sitemap issues", or "XML sitemap".
user-invokable: true
argument-hint: "[url or generate]"
license: MIT
metadata:
  author: AgriciDaniel
  version: "1.9.6"
  category: seo

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

| Issue | Severity | Fix | |-------|----------|-----| | >50k URLs in single file | Critical | Split with sitemap index | | Non-200 URLs | High | Remove or fix broken URLs | | Noindexed URLs included | High | Remove from sitemap | | Redirected URLs included | Medium | Update to final URLs | | All identical lastmod | Low | Use actual modification dates | | Priority/changefreq used | Info | Can remove (ignored by Google) |

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.