Context
A marketer, strategist or content author would like to use industry standard SEO tools to ensure that all required content is discoverable and included in search engine indexes. To do this a sitemap is required. This recipe will walk the developer through the steps to configure a Sitemap in XM Cloud
Execution
This solution assumes the developer has already configured an XM Cloud site and the Next.JS web application. XM Cloud uses SXA sitemap functionality by default. However it’s possible to implement additional Sitemap’s directly in the head application to target other sets of content, such as PDF’s or Images.
Avoid building the XM Cloud sitemap with custom implementations on the Content Management role, it can lead to maintenance challenges, compatibility issues, and unnecessary complexity—leveraging the built-in sitemap generation ensures reliability, scalability, and alignment with best practices.
Setting this up will require:
- An SXA Site with properly configured site definitions
- The site has been published to Experience Edge.
To configure the Host name for your Sitemap you’ll need to update the target hostname and hostname on the Site level. Detail on this configuration can be found on the Configure a sitemap documentation.
XM Cloud sitemaps can be managed using the configuration options available in Sites. Configure the sitemap to guide search engines through your site's structure. The sitemap is regenerated after the publishing process ends, depending on the refresh threshold configuration. To ensure that the sitemap link is generated properly for your hosted/live sites, you must configure the target hostname on the site host item. Find the sitemap of hosted/live sites by typing /sitemap.xml after the hostname
XM Cloud generates the Sitemap media item when an item is published on the Site, but only after a period of time has passed since the last sitemap generation job occurred. This media item contains the Sitemap.xml file that is served in Experience Edge.
XM Cloud sitemaps are configured on /sitecore/content/<site collection>/<site>/Settings/Sitemap. Detail of this can be found on the Configure a sitemap documentation.
Excluding Items and Publishing
To configure an item so that it’s excluded from the Sitemap you will need to update this on a content level item. Details on this configuration can be found on the Configure a sitemap documentation.
Insights
Managing the sitemap in the Head Application
XM Cloud sitemaps can also be managed directly within the Head application by leveraging Next.js's built-in sitemap metadata API. This approach allows developers to generate and serve sitemaps dynamically within the app directory.
By defining a sitemap.ts file within the app directory, you can programmatically structure the sitemap data based on your site's content, fetching necessary routes from the Experience Edge.
While XM Cloud provides built-in sitemap generation, if your sitemap requirements are more complex—such as needing dynamic URL generation, multiple sitemap files, or further conditional route inclusion—managing sitemaps within the Head application can be a viable option. This approach allows greater flexibility, enabling you to fetch and structure sitemap data dynamically based on your XM Cloud content, apply custom logic, integrate with external data sources if needed.
The Experience Edge sitemap GraphQL query
The following query is used to retrieve the generated sitemap for a site on Experience Edge:
query SitemapQuery($siteName: String!) { site { siteInfo(site: $siteName) { sitemap } } }
How to Effectively Troubleshoot Issues
Below are some helpful tips to troubleshoot issues with the generation of your Sitemap XML. Keep in mind that the below has to be actioned in the Content Editor.
The Sitemap is not reflecting the most recent published changes
Sitecore will cache the last built Sitemap, and even though you’ve published, it won’t rebuild the sitemap until a specific amount of time has passed. You can change these default cache timeouts in the <site collection>/<site>/Settings/Sitemap item, though it is recommended to use the default settings. The two settings on the Sitemap item to look at changing during testing are the Refresh threshold and Cache Expiration.
Understanding where the generated Sitemap is stored
If you have clicked the check box on <site collection>/<site>/Settings/Sitemap on the field labeled Generate sitemap media items - if checked sitemaps will be stored in media items then the generated output of the Sitemap will be stored in the Media Library. On the <site collection>/<site> item you will see a field called Sitemap media items which will specify the sitemap(s) that are being used. You can either view this field with the raw values view turned on in order to see the item ID and then search with the ID to find its location in the content tree, or you could also search for sitemap to find it as well. Another option is to navigate to the Media Library and the following folder: Project/<site>/<site>/Sitemaps/<site> and you'll find a list of your sitemaps.