List all important pages on the website
Organize pages by section or category
Choose a sitemap format
Create an XML sitemap for search engines
Create an HTML sitemap for users if needed
Include only canonical URLs
Exclude duplicate, blocked, or low-value pages
Add last modified dates if available
Validate the sitemap for errors
Save the sitemap file as sitemap.xml
Place the sitemap in the website root directory
Reference the sitemap in robots.txt
Submit the sitemap to search engines
Update the sitemap whenever pages change