/sitemap-manager

name: sitemap-manager
description: "Audit an existing XML sitemap — URL counts vs protocol limits, lastmod validity, sampled URL status codes, robots.txt and noindex conflicts, missing pages, compression — or generate a new sitemap (plan or valid XML with index splitting) from industry templates for SaaS, ecommerce, local, publisher, or agency sites. Triggers on \"/digital-marketing-pro:sitemap-manager\", \"audit our sitemap\", \"why are there 404s in the sitemap\", \"generate a sitemap for the new site\", \"is our sitemap declared in robots.txt\". Outputs a severity-ranked issue report or ready-to-submit XML with the robots.txt line and GSC submission instructions; uses tech-seo-auditor.py for URL health checks."
argument-hint: "[URL or generate]"
user-invocable: true

/digital-marketing-pro:sitemap-manager

Purpose

Analyze existing XML sitemaps for issues and opportunities, or generate new sitemaps with industry-specific templates and best practices.

Modes

Mode 1: Analyze Existing Sitemap (`/digital-marketing-pro:sitemap-manager [URL]`)

Provide a sitemap URL (e.g., `https://example.com/sitemap.xml`) to audit:

1. **Fetch and parse**: Download sitemap XML, detect sitemap index vs single sitemap 2. **URL count**: Total URLs, URLs per sitemap file (flag if approaching 50K protocol limit) 3. **lastmod audit**: Check for presence, format (W3C datetime), staleness (>6 months without update), fake lastmod (all same date) 4. **Priority and changefreq**: Check for deprecated/ignored signals (Google ignores both — flag if present, recommend removal to reduce file size) 5. **URL health**: Sample 20-50 URLs and check HTTP status codes — flag 404s, 301s, 302s, 5xx errors 6. **Indexation alignment**: Cross-reference with robots.txt and meta robots — flag noindexed URLs in sitemap, flag sitemap URLs blocked by robots.txt 7. **Missing URLs**: Compare sitemap against site crawl or provided URL list — identify pages missing from sitemap 8. **Image/video/news sitemaps**: Check for specialized sitemap extensions 9. **Compression**: Check if sitemap is gzip compressed (recommended for large sitemaps) 10. **robots.txt registration**: Verify sitemap is declared in robots.txt

Mode 2: Generate New Sitemap (`/digital-marketing-pro:sitemap-manager generate`)

Generate a sitemap plan or actual XML:

1. **Discover site structure**: Crawl from homepage or use provided URL list 2. **Categorize pages**: Group by type (homepage, category, product, blog, landing, legal) 3. **Apply industry template**: Use appropriate structure based on business model (SaaS, ecommerce, local, publisher, agency) 4. **Set lastmod**: Use actual page modification dates, not generation date 5. **Split strategy**: Plan sitemap index structure if >50K URLs or >50MB uncompressed 6. **Exclude rules**: Noindexed pages, paginated results, faceted URLs, utility pages (login, cart, search results) 7. **Generate XML**: Produce valid XML sitemap following the sitemap protocol (sitemaps.org)

Industry Templates

SaaS

• Homepage, features, pricing, integrations, docs, blog, changelog, about, legal
• Integration pages as separate sitemap (if 50+)
• Blog with high update frequency

eCommerce

• Homepage, categories, products, brands, collections, blog, about, legal
• Product sitemap (largest — split if needed)
• Image sitemap for product photos
• Category pages with canonical handling for filtered views

Local Business

• Homepage, services, locations, about, contact, blog, reviews, legal
• Location pages as separate sitemap (if multi-location)
• Service area pages

Publisher/Media

• Homepage, sections, articles, authors, topics, about, legal
• News sitemap (for Google News inclusion)
• Video sitemap (if video content)
• High-frequency article sitemap updates

Agency

• Homepage, services, case studies, blog, team, about, contact, legal
• Case study sitemap
• Industry/vertical landing pages

Sitemap Protocol Reference

<?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>2026-03-15</lastmod>
  </url>
</urlset>

Sitemap Index (for multiple sitemaps)

<?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>2026-03-15</lastmod>
  </sitemap>
  <sitemap>
    <loc>https://example.com/sitemap-blog.xml</loc>
    <lastmod>2026-03-28</lastmod>
  </sitemap>
</sitemapindex>

Protocol Limits

• 50,000 URLs per sitemap file
• 50MB uncompressed per sitemap file
• Up to 50,000 sitemaps per sitemap index file (nest indexes if more are needed)
• Must use absolute URLs
• UTF-8 encoding required
• Entity escaping for special characters (& ' " > <)

Output

Sitemap Analysis Report

• Total URLs indexed, health status breakdown
• Issues found with severity (critical/high/medium/low)
• Missing pages that should be in the sitemap
• Recommendations sorted by impact

Sitemap Generation Output

• Complete XML sitemap(s) or sitemap plan
• Sitemap index if multiple files needed
• robots.txt sitemap declaration line
• Submission instructions for Google Search Console

Agents Used

• **seo-specialist** — Sitemap analysis, URL health checks, architecture recommendations

Scripts Used

• **tech-seo-auditor.py** — URL health checking (status codes, redirects)