Technical Foundations · 1.5
XML Sitemap
A file you hand directly to Google, saying “here's every page I have, please check them all” — invisible to visitors, purely a background technical signal.
Why this matters
The customer’s side
They'll never see this file directly, but they feel the consequence of it — a brand-new listing that hasn't been picked up by Google yet simply doesn't show up when someone searches for it, even if it's genuinely the perfect match.
The search engine’s side
Faster, more reliable page discovery
Without a sitemap, Google has to discover your pages on its own, which is slower and less reliable — new pages can sit undiscovered for far longer than they should.
See it happen
Same four new pages. Watch how long Google takes to find them, with and without a map.
Without a sitemap
Google finds them eventually, on its own schedule.
With a sitemap
You told Google where to look. It checked immediately.
How to check yours
Method 1 — Check the file directly
confirms whether a sitemap exists at all.
- 1.Visit yourwebsite.com/sitemap.xml directly in your browser (e.g. reyselettings.co.uk/sitemap.xml).
- 2.If it loads, paste the contents into an AI tool and ask it to summarise what's listed, and whether anything important seems missing based on your site.
Method 2 — Google Search Console's Sitemaps report
shows whether Google has actually fetched it, and how many of the pages inside it are indexed — the file existing isn't the same as Google using it.
- 1.Go to Google Search Console and select your property.
- 2.Click “Sitemaps” under “Indexing” in the sidebar.
- 3.Check the status reads “Success,” and compare the discovered pages number against how many pages your site actually has.
How to fix what you find
No sitemap exists, on WordPress
install Yoast SEO or Rank Math — either one generates a sitemap automatically, for free.
No sitemap exists, on Squarespace, Wix, or similar
these platforms generate one automatically, just at a slightly different address — check your platform's help docs, or ask an AI tool for the exact sitemap URL your specific builder uses.
A sitemap already exists
submit it to Google Search Console directly, so Google knows to check it:
- 1.Go to Google Search Console and select your property.
- 2.Click “Sitemaps” under “Indexing” in the sidebar.
- 3.Enter the full address: https://yourwebsite.com/sitemap.xml
- 4.Click “Submit.”
- 5.Check back in a few hours to a few days, and compare the “Discovered pages” number against how many pages you actually believe your site has.
Keeping on top of it
Every new page needs adding to this file too — easy to forget in the middle of running the actual business. Worth a quick check whenever you publish anything new.
How Reyse handles this
Done With You
we tell you exactly how to check whether new pages have been picked up.
Done For You
we handle this directly every time something new goes live.