Notes on sitemaps,
SEO, and shipping.
Guides, teardowns, and things I learn while building SiteLens and auditing client sites.
Why I built SiteLens
I kept opening competitor sitemaps in my browser to study their content strategy. The nested XML was a mess. So I built a tool. My team uses it every day now.
How to find any website's sitemap (5 methods that still work)
The sitemap tells you what a site wants Google to see. Here are five ways to find it, ranked by how often they actually work.
XML sitemap errors: the full reference
Every common sitemap error, what breaks, and how to fix it. Based on real bugs I have seen in client audits.
Nested sitemap indexes, and why most tools fail at them
Big sites chain sitemaps three or four layers deep. A lot of free tools stop at layer one. Here is how the spec actually works and how to read them properly.
Stale URLs in your sitemap are eating your crawl budget
Google only crawls so much of your site each day. If half your sitemap is five years old, you are wasting the budget. Here is how to find and fix it.
Free alternatives to Screaming Frog for sitemap work
Screaming Frog is great but the free version caps at 500 URLs. Here is what to use when you hit the limit and do not want to pay $279 a year.
How to audit a sitemap before a site migration
Most ranking drops after a migration are self-inflicted. Start with the sitemap. Here is the checklist I run before every client migration.
Sitemap vs robots.txt vs canonical: what each one actually does
Three different files, three different jobs. Everyone mixes them up and bad things happen. Here is what each one controls and how they fight each other.
The 50,000 URL sitemap limit, and the other specs nobody reads
Sitemaps have real limits in the official spec. Most people ignore them until their site breaks. Here is the full list of what matters and what does not.
Broken links in your sitemap are telling Google you do not know your own site
A 404 in your sitemap is a worse signal than you think. Here is why they happen, how to find them, and how to stop them coming back.