/seo-sitemap

name: seo-sitemap
description: Pull a domain's XML sitemap (and sitemap-of-sitemaps), then compare against the most recent SE Ranking website audit. Surfaces (a) sitemap entries the crawler couldn't find (orphans from the sitemap), (b) audit pages missing from the sitemap (probably an oversight), (c) sitemap entries that are now 404, (d) lastmod inconsistencies. Use when the user asks for "sitemap analysis", "check my sitemap", "sitemap vs audit", "missing pages", "orphan pages", or "sitemap health".

> Example output: [examples/seo-sitemap-notion-so-20260514/SITEMAP.md](../../examples/seo-sitemap-notion-so-20260514/SITEMAP.md)

Sitemap Analysis

Compare a domain's XML sitemap against the most recent SE Ranking website audit. Surface what the sitemap claims vs what the crawler actually found, in both directions.

Prerequisites

• SE Ranking MCP server connected.
• Claude's `WebFetch` tool available.
• User provides: a target domain. Optional: the sitemap URL if not at `/sitemap.xml` (auto-discovery from `robots.txt` is attempted first).
• **Predecessor:** `seo-technical-audit` (or any prior SE Ranking audit) on this domain. Without an existing audit, this skill has nothing to compare against — chain `seo-technical-audit` first.

Process

1. **Validate target & confirm audit**

• Normalise the domain.
• `DATA_listAudits` → confirm an audit exists for this domain. If none, surface a clear message: "Run `seo-technical-audit` first; this skill compares the sitemap to that audit's crawl."
• Use the most recent `done` audit by default.
• **Firecrawl availability check.** If `mcp__firecrawl-mcp__firecrawl_map` is available, Mode-2 (URL discovery via crawl) is offered when the sitemap is missing or suspect. Cost: ~0.5 Firecrawl credits per URL discovered, hard cap 500 URLs (~250 credits). Without Firecrawl, the skill runs Mode-1 only and notes the gap if Mode-2 was needed. User may pass `--no-firecrawl` to force Mode-1 even when Firecrawl is available (saves credits at the cost of orphan/missing analysis when sitemap is broken).

2. **Build URL lists** `WebFetch` (sitemap) + `mcp__firecrawl-mcp__firecrawl_map` (optional Mode-2)

• **Mode-1 (default).** Try `https://{domain}/sitemap.xml`. If 404, fetch `/robots.txt` and look for `Sitemap:` directives. For sitemap-of-sitemaps, recursively fetch each child sitemap. Build the canonical URL list from the sitemap.
• **Mode-2 trigger.** Switch on Mode-2 when (a) no sitemap is reachable, (b) the sitemap returns < 10% of the audit's `DATA_getCrawledPages` count, or (c) the user explicitly requests `--discover`. Always surface the trigger and the cost estimate to the user before running Mode-2.
• **Mode-2 execution** (requires Firecrawl): call `firecrawl_map(url=domain, limit=500)`. The response is the URL list Firecrawl could discover from the homepage and internal linking. Use this list as the "sitemap-equivalent" in step 6 — the diffs run identically, just with discovered URLs in place of declared sitemap URLs.
• **If Mode-2 is needed but Firecrawl is unavailable:** continue with whatever sitemap data Mode-1 returned (possibly empty). Surface clearly in `SITEMAP.md`: `Mode-2 (Firecrawl URL discovery) needed but Firecrawl not installed — sitemap-vs-audit diffs run on partial data only.`

3. **Pull the audit's crawled pages** `DATA_getCrawledPages`

• All URLs the crawler found, with status codes, indexability flags, depth.

4. **Pull domain pages** `DATA_getDomainPages`

• Domain-level page inventory (broader than the audit's crawl scope in some cases).

5. **Pull orphan-page issues** `DATA_getAuditPagesByIssue`

• Filter for orphan-page and depth-related issues. These intersect with sitemap analysis.

6. **Compute the four diffs**

• **Missing from sitemap:** URLs in `DATA_getCrawledPages` (status 200, indexable) that don't appear in the sitemap. Probably should be added.
• **Orphans from sitemap:** URLs in the sitemap that the crawler didn't find via internal links (cross-ref `DATA_getAuditPagesByIssue` orphan flags). The sitemap is the only thing pointing at them — investigate whether they should be linked internally.
• **Broken sitemap entries:** sitemap URLs that returned non-200 in the audit's crawl. Remove from sitemap or fix the URL.
• **Lastmod issues:** sitemap entries where (a) all `<lastmod>` dates are identical (lazy generation) or (b) `<lastmod>` is older than the audit's crawl date for the page even though the page changed (stale).

7. **Validation**

• URL count <50,000 per file (sitemap protocol limit). Flag if exceeded.
• Sitemap referenced in `robots.txt`.
• Encoding: each URL is XML-safe (ampersands escaped, etc.).
• HTTPS consistency: sitemap URLs match the canonical protocol.
• **`<lastmod>` is the only optional tag Google still consumes.** Validate it (step 6). `<priority>` and `<changefreq>` have been **explicitly ignored by Google for years** (per [Google's sitemap docs](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/sitemaps/build-sitemap) — "Google ignores `priority` and `changefreq` values"). Don't validate them; if present, flag as low-signal noise the user can strip to shrink the sitemap.

8. **Synthesise** `SITEMAP.md`

Output format

Create a folder `seo-sitemap-{target-slug}-{YYYYMMDD}/` with:

seo-sitemap-{target-slug}-{YYYYMMDD}/
├── SITEMAP.md                       (synthesised report — primary deliverable)
├── recommended-sitemap-diff.md      (proposed changes: add X, remove Y — load-bearing artefact engineering applies to sitemap.xml)
└── evidence/
    └── source-data.md               (consolidated raw step output: fetched sitemap content, Firecrawl-discovered URLs if Mode-2 ran, audit's crawled-pages list, the four diffs (missing/orphans/broken/lastmod-issues) — preserved for reproducibility)

Top-level: `SITEMAP.md` + `recommended-sitemap-diff.md`. The seven raw step files (`01-sitemap-raw`, `01b-firecrawl-discovered`, `02-