The Complete Guide to XML Sitemaps for PrestaShop SEO

An XML sitemap is a file that lists every important page on your website, helping search engines discover and index your content efficiently. For PrestaShop stores with hundreds or thousands of products, a well-structured sitemap is not just helpful — it is essential for SEO.

Why Sitemaps Matter More for E-Commerce

E-commerce stores have characteristics that make them harder for search engines to crawl:

• Large page counts: A store with 500 products, 50 categories, 10 CMS pages, and multiple languages can easily have 2,000+ URLs.
• Deep page hierarchy: Products nested in subcategories may be 4-5 clicks from the homepage.
• Frequent changes: New products, price updates, stock changes — search engines need to know what has changed.
• Faceted navigation: Filters create thousands of URL combinations that need to be managed carefully.

Without a sitemap, Google relies entirely on crawling links. Pages that are poorly linked internally — or that require many clicks to reach — may never be discovered. A sitemap gives Google a complete roadmap of your store.

What to Include in Your PrestaShop Sitemap

Not every URL should be in your sitemap. Include:

• Product pages — Every active, in-stock product with its canonical URL.
• Category pages — All active categories and subcategories (but not paginated versions).
• CMS pages — About us, contact, shipping policy, and other content pages.
• Blog posts — If you have a blog (you should), every published post.
• Manufacturer/brand pages — If they have unique content.

Exclude:

• Filtered/faceted URLs (these create duplicate content).
• Cart, checkout, and account pages (no SEO value).
• Search result pages.
• Pages blocked by robots.txt.
• Pages with noindex tags.

Sitemap Structure Best Practices

Use Multiple Sitemaps

A single monolithic sitemap file becomes unwieldy with large catalogs. Split your sitemap into logical segments:

• sitemap-products.xml — All product URLs
• sitemap-categories.xml — All category URLs
• sitemap-cms.xml — CMS and content pages
• sitemap-blog.xml — Blog posts
• sitemap-images.xml — Image sitemap for Google Image search

Then use a sitemap-index.xml that references all individual sitemaps. This is cleaner, easier to debug, and Google processes it more efficiently.

Include Last Modified Dates

The <lastmod> tag tells Google when a page was last updated. This helps search engines prioritize crawling pages that have changed recently. For product pages, this should update whenever the price, description, or stock status changes.

Set Priority Thoughtfully

The <priority> tag is a hint to search engines about relative importance. Your homepage gets 1.0, categories get 0.8, products get 0.6-0.7, and blog posts get 0.5. Do not set everything to 1.0 — it makes the signal meaningless.

Submitting and Monitoring

After generating your sitemap:

1. Submit it in Google Search Console under Sitemaps.
2. Add the sitemap URL to your robots.txt file.
3. Monitor the indexing status — Google Search Console shows how many submitted URLs are actually indexed.
4. Regenerate regularly — automate sitemap generation so new products are included immediately.

A gap between submitted and indexed URLs indicates problems: duplicate content, thin content, or crawl errors that need investigation.

Image Sitemaps: The Overlooked Opportunity

Google Image search drives significant traffic to e-commerce stores. An image sitemap tells Google about your product images, including their titles, captions, and the pages they appear on. This is especially valuable for stores with high-quality product photography — your images can appear in Google Image results and drive traffic you would otherwise miss.