--- title: "How to Use the Simple XML Sitemap Drupal Module" description: "Search engine optimization (SEO) involves every aspect of your branding efforts: Core website design, URLs, and accessibility Blogs and other multimedia Social media activity The Metatag Drupal SEO..." url: https://www.inmotionhosting.com/support/edu/drupal/drupal-xml-sitemap/ date: 2021-03-29 modified: 2026-03-11 author: "InMotion Hosting Contributor" categories: ["Drupal"] type: post lang: en --- # How to Use the Simple XML Sitemap Drupal Module [**Search engine optimization (SEO)**](https://www.inmotionhosting.com/support/website/seo/seo-getting-started-guide/) involves every aspect of your branding efforts: - Core website design, [URLs](https://www.inmotionhosting.com/support/website/seo/seo-markup-hierarchy/), and [accessibility](https://www.inmotionhosting.com/support/website/6-ways-to-improve-website-accessibility/) - [Blogs](https://www.inmotionhosting.com/support/website/seo/seo-markup-hierarchy/) and other multimedia - [Social media](https://www.inmotionhosting.com/support/website/seo/buffer-social-media-manager/) activity The [**Metatag** Drupal SEO module](https://www.inmotionhosting.com/support/edu/drupal/drupal-metatag/) helps with a lot of the core and social media components. But you still need to address the final item on your [SEO checklist](https://www.inmotionhosting.com/blog/seo-checklist/): a **Drupal XML sitemap**. - [What is an XML Sitemap?](#what) - [How to Install the Simple XML Sitemap Drupal Module](#install) - [How to Create a Drupal XML Sitemap](#create) Discover the ultimate in [Drupal Web Hosting](https://www.inmotionhosting.com/drupal-hosting). Elevate your website’s performance, scalability, and speed for an exceptional user experience. ## What is an XML Sitemap? A sitemap is a standardized file webmasters can create to help Google and other major search engines understand important meta information about your website: - The most important webpages for potential visitors  - When a page was last updated and how often it’s updated - All URLs within your website layout that would otherwise be ignored during index Having a Drupal XML sitemap ensures that when a search engine *crawls* your website for future search engine results, your website will be better indexed. It is also more likely to be positioned in relevant search results. To exclude specific files, create a [robots.txt file](https://www.inmotionhosting.com/support/website/how-to-stop-search-engines-from-crawling-your-website/). XML is the same file type used for [RSS feeds](https://www.inmotionhosting.com/support/edu/drupal/rss-feed/). XML markup is similar to HTML but uses custom elements specified by the respective software using it and the purpose of the file. There are HTML sitemaps as well. Instead of guiding search engine crawlers, an HTML sitemap is simply a link tree to help visitors find a specific page while already on a large website.  XML sitemaps enhance SEO.  HTML sitemaps aid user experience (UX). A sitemap.xml file belongs in the root directory of your website. But it is beneficial to submit your sitemap to the search engines for your target geographic market, especially [Google](https://www.inmotionhosting.com/support/website/google-tools/submitting-a-sitemap-to-google-using-webmaster-tools/) and [Bing](https://www.bing.com/webmasters/help/sitemaps-3b5cf6ed). These two platforms are the most popular worldwide and direct submission further improves indexing. Here are examples of how our site shows in Google and Bing. ![InMotion Hosting sitemap in Bing search](https://www.inmotionhosting.com/support/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/sitemap-inmotion-google.png) ![InMotion Hosting sitemap in Google search](https://www.inmotionhosting.com/support/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/sitemap-inmotion-bing.png) Baidu and Yandex also have webmaster toolkits for submitting XML sitemaps. You can create a sitemap manually with a text editor, but that equates to a waste of time and high possibility of errors. A Drupal XML sitemap module keeps your sitemap updated automatically. Below we’ll cover the [**Simple XML Sitemap Drupal module**](https://www.drupal.org/project/simple_sitemap), not to be confused with the [XML Sitemap](https://www.drupal.org/project/xmlsitemap) module. ## How to Install the Simple XML Sitemap Drupal Module Follow the steps below to install the Drupal SEO module from the admin dashboard. 1. [Log into Drupal](https://www.inmotionhosting.com/support/edu/drupal/how-to-log-into-the-drupal-admin-dashboard/). 2. [Install the Drupal module](https://www.inmotionhosting.com/support/edu/drupal/install-2/) using the [**Simple XML Sitemap**](https://www.drupal.org/project/simple_sitemap) download link. 3. On the next page, select **Enable newly added modules**. 4. Check the boxes for *Simple XML Sitemap* and *Simple XML Sitemap (Search engines)*. There’s also a *Simple XML Sitemap (Views)* option if you want to use the [Views module](https://www.inmotionhosting.com/support/edu/drupal/views-intro/). 5. At the bottom, select **Install**. ![Simple XML Sitemap modules](https://www.inmotionhosting.com/support/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/drupal-simple-xml-sitemap-1024x274.png) ## How to Create a Drupal XML Sitemap At the top of your navigation menu, select **Configuration**. Under *Search and metadata*, select **Simple XML Sitemap **to create a Drupal sitemap. You may need to [clear your Drupal cache](https://www.inmotionhosting.com/support/edu/drupal/drupal-performance-optimization/) to see the option under *Search and metadata* immediately. The first page is the *Sitemaps* tab with the default sitemap status. Click **Rebuild queue & generate** to create a sitemap. You can edit how often the sitemap regenerates from the *Settings* tab. By default, it runs according to your [Drupal cron](https://www.inmotionhosting.com/support/edu/drupal/managing-cron-intervals-in-drupal-8/) settings. Here, you can also control if the sitemap is stylized as an XSL stylesheet for human readability and performance settings for sitemap generation. ![Stylized Drupal XML Sitemap](https://www.inmotionhosting.com/support/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/drupal-simple-xml-sitemap-stylized-1024x114.png) The *Inclusion* tab allows you to add comments, custom links, images, and more within your Drupal XML sitemap. Each can boost SEO rankings depending on the purpose of your website. Including comments will show how interactive you are with visitors. It is something to consider for photo galleries and forums. The *Search engines* tab lists results for any sitemap submissions to Bing and Google. Specify which sitemap variant you send to each platform within the *Search engines* settings. Learn more from our[ Drupal Educational Channel](https://www.inmotionhosting.com/support/edu/drupal/).