Question: How Many Sitemaps Should I Have for My Website?

The number of sitemaps you should have for your website depends on the size and complexity of your site. A single sitemap can list up to 50,000 URLs. Therefore, if your website has more than 50,000 URLs, you will need multiple sitemaps.

There are also different types of sitemaps, such as URL sitemap, image sitemap, video sitemap, etc. Depending on the nature of your content, you may want to create separate sitemaps for each type.

You can group these sitemaps together with a sitemap index file. The sitemap index file simply lists all of the sitemaps on your site. This makes it easier for search engine bots to discover and crawl all of your pages.

Here's an example of what a sitemap index file might look like:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<sitemapindex xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
   <sitemap>
      <loc>http://www.example.com/sitemap1.xml.gz</loc>
      <lastmod>2023-02-23T18:00:15+00:00</lastmod>
   </sitemap>
   <sitemap>
      <loc>http://www.example.com/sitemap2.xml.gz</loc>
      <lastmod>2023-02-23T18:00:15+00:00</lastmod>
   </sitemap>
</sitemapindex>

In this example, there are two sitemaps (sitemap1.xml.gz and sitemap2.xml.gz) listed in the sitemap index file.

Keep in mind the best practice is to keep your sitemaps up-to-date and free of errors, as this will help search engines to effectively crawl and index your site.