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/seo-sitemap

@93b720e
by Agrici.Danielagricidaniel/claude-seo18k stars
2,664

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".

Ask your Agent

Use this Skill: https://skilld.dev/gh/agricidaniel/claude-seo/seo-sitemap

This session only. Nothing lands on disk.

SKILL.md

≈53 tokens always: the name and description. ≈1.4k when used: this file.

Sitemap Analysis & Generation

Mode 1: Analyze Existing Sitemap

Discover candidates before reporting a sitemap missing:

"${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/scripts/claude-seo" run sitemap_discovery.py <url> --json

The helper reads every bounded Sitemap: declaration in robots.txt, validates cross-host targets through the shared SSRF-safe fetch layer, and still probes common paths when a declared sitemap is stale or invalid. Use only entries in found; preserve declared failures as findings instead of treating a robots.txt line alone as proof that a sitemap works.

Validation Checks

  • Valid XML format
  • Per-file limit: ≤50,000 URLs AND ≤50MB uncompressed (whichever is hit first)
  • All URLs return HTTP 200
  • <lastmod> accurate: must be a valid W3C Datetime and reflect the last significant content change (main content, structured data, links, not copyright/boilerplate edits). Google only honours <lastmod> when consistently and verifiably accurate, so warn when values are suspiciously uniform or newer than the page's real content.
  • 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
>50MB uncompressed 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)

Extension sitemaps (image / video / news)

Google documents three subtypes with their own rules, validate per-subtype:

  • Image (http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-image/1.1): only two valid tags remain, <image:image> and <image:loc> (max 1,000 <image:image> per <url>). <image:caption>/<image:geo_location>/<image:title>/ <image:license> were deprecated (2022), flag as info-level removable.
  • Video: required <video:video> with <video:thumbnail_loc>, <video:title>, <video:description>, plus <video:content_loc> or <video:player_loc>; mRSS also supported. Flag deprecated/removed tags (<video:category>, <video:gallery_loc>, <video:price>, <video:tvshow>, player autoplay/allow_embed) as info-level removable; recheck Google docs before citing a removal date.
  • News: max 1,000 <news:news> per file (not 50,000); include only articles from the last 2 days; required <news:publication>/<news:name>/ <news:language>/<news:publication_date>/<news:title>; submit/discover through Search Console or robots.txt/sitemap index; use Publisher Center only for publication management where relevant. When the news: namespace is detected, override the generic 50k check with the 1,000 cap.

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 whichever comes first: 50,000 URLs or 50MB uncompressed, 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: Run sitemap_discovery.py and report "not found" only when its found list is empty after declared and common candidates are checked
  • 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

Source: SKILL.md on GitHub

Third-party checks

1 warning1d5 checks · Risk SAFE
  • Gen Agent Trust Hub1d

    The skill facilitates SEO analysis and generation of XML sitemaps by fetching data from external URLs through a local script. It creates an indirect prompt injection surface by processing untrusted external content, although it mentions using security measures like an SSRF-safe fetch layer.

  • Socket1d

    No alerts

  • Snyk1d

    Risk: MEDIUM · 1 issue

  • Runlayer6mo

    1/1 file flagged

  • ZeroLeaks5mo

    Score: 93/100 · 2 sections analyzed

Provenance

Signed by skilld at 93b720e. This ties the file your Agent reads to that commit on GitHub. It does not review the instructions.

Last checked against GitHub 2 days ago.

Activeupdated 2 days ago

Capability

user-invocable
true
argument-hint
[url or generate]
metadata
{
  "author": "AgriciDaniel",
  "version": "2.4.1",
  "category": "seo"
}

Topics

  • SEO
  • sitemap
  • xml
  • validation
  • url-analysis
  • robots-txt
  • schema
  • content-audit

README badge

README badge for agricidaniel/claude-seo/seo-sitemap

What it does

Analyzes existing XML sitemaps for format validity, URL health, and Google ranking signals, or generates new sitemaps from industry templates with structure planning and quality gates. Validates URL counts, detects noindexed or redirected URLs, flags deprecated tags, and splits files exceeding 50k URLs using sitemap index format.

Generated from the current SKILL.md.

Frequently asked

What validation checks does this skill perform on existing sitemaps?
It checks XML format validity, URL count against the 50k per-file protocol limit, HTTP response codes, lastmod date accuracy, presence in robots.txt, and flags deprecated tags like priority and changefreq. It also compares crawled pages against the sitemap to identify missing pages.
Can this skill generate sitemaps for sites with many location pages?
It will warn at 30+ location pages (requiring 60%+ unique content per page) and hard-stop at 50+ location pages unless justified. Location pages with only city names swapped are flagged as penalty risk.
How does this skill handle sitemaps with more than 50,000 URLs?
It generates a sitemap index file and splits URLs across multiple sitemap files, following the protocol limit of 50k URLs per file.
What output files does this skill produce?
For analysis, it generates VALIDATION-REPORT.md with findings and recommendations. For generation, it produces sitemap.xml (or split files with index), STRUCTURE.md documenting the site architecture, and a URL count summary.

Generated from the current SKILL.md. These answers refresh after source changes.