There are two main ways to specify multiple sitemaps in your robots.txt file:
1. Listing Individual Sitemap URLs:
This method involves listing the URL of each sitemap file on a separate line within your robots.txt file. Here’s the format:
Sitemap: https://www.yourwebsite.com/sitemap1.xml
Sitemap: https://www.yourwebsite.com/sitemap2.xml
Sitemap: https://www.yourwebsite.com/images/sitemap-images.xml (if you have a separate image sitemap)
2. Using a Sitemap Index:
This method is generally preferred because it’s cleaner and easier to manage, especially if you have a large number of sitemaps. Here’s how it works:
- Create a Sitemap Index File. This file will list the location of all your individual sitemap files. The format for entries in the Sitemap Index file is similar to a standard sitemap file.
- In your robots.txt file, specify the location of the Sitemap Index File:
Sitemap: https://www.yourwebsite.com/sitemap-index.xml
Here are some additional points to keep in mind:
- Make sure your sitemap files are accessible by search engine crawlers (usually by placing them in the root directory of your website or a subfolder).
- There are limitations on the size and number of URLs a single sitemap can contain. If your sitemap exceeds these limits, you’ll need to split it into multiple files.
- You can find more information and technical specifications for sitemaps on the official sitemaps protocol website: https://www.sitemaps.org/