Analyze and Generate SEO Sitemaps

This skill operates in two modes. Analyzing an existing sitemap, it validates XML format, checks the 50,000-URL-per-file protocol limit, confirms all listed URLs return HTTP 200, checks that <lastmod> dates are accurate rather than all identical, notes that <priority> and <changefreq> tags are ignored by Google and can be removed, verifies the sitemap is referenced in robots.txt, and compares crawled pages against sitemap entries to flag missing pages. It checks quality signals like a sitemap index for over 50k URLs, content-type splitting, exclusion of non-canonical/noindexed/redirected URLs, and HTTPS-only URLs, ranking issues by severity (over 50k URLs in one file is Critical; non-200 or noindexed URLs are High; identical lastmod dates are Low). Generating a new sitemap, it detects or asks for business type, loads an industry template, interactively plans the site structure with the user, and applies the same quality gates used in programmatic SEO planning - a warning at 30+ location pages requiring 60%+ unique content, and a hard stop at 50+ location pages requiring explicit justification - before producing valid XML output (split into a sitemap index if needed) and a STRUCTURE.md documenting the site architecture. It reiterates safe-at-scale page types (integration pages with real docs, glossary pages, unique product pages) versus penalty-risk patterns (city-name-swapped location pages, unsupported "best X for Y" pages, unreviewed AI-generated pages).

Use it when analyzing an existing XML sitemap or generating a new one, or when sitemap issues, generation, or validation are raised specifically. On an unreachable URL it reports the HTTP status code; if no sitemap is found it checks common locations (/sitemap.xml, /sitemap_index.xml, the robots.txt reference) before concluding it's missing; on invalid XML it reports specific parsing errors with line numbers; on rate limiting it backs off and reports partial results with retry guidance.

Inputs: an existing sitemap URL to validate, or a business type/site structure to generate a new sitemap for.
Outputs: for analysis, a VALIDATION-REPORT.md with a severity-ranked issues list and recommendations; for generation, a sitemap.xml (or split files with a sitemap index), a STRUCTURE.md architecture document, and a URL count/organization summary.

<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
  <url>
    <loc>https://example.com/page</loc>
    <lastmod>2026-02-07</lastmod>
  </url>
</urlset>

SEO practitioners and developers who need to validate an existing sitemap's health or generate a new, correctly structured one - with the same location-page quality gates used in programmatic SEO to avoid thin-content risk.