Place your XML sitemap at your domain root as sitemap.xml — that's example.com/sitemap.xml. This is the standard location where Googlebot, Bingbot, and other crawlers expect to find it, and it's accessible without subdirectory confusion. If you run a large site with multiple sitemaps (product pages, blog posts, category pages), you can use a sitemap index file at the root that points to individual sitemaps in subdirectories or even on subdomains. After placing the sitemap file, add a reference in your robots.txt file (usually at example.com/robots.txt) with the line "Sitemap: https://example.com/sitemap.xml". This tells crawlers exactly where to look without guessing. Then submit the sitemap URL directly in Google Search Console under the Sitemaps report and in Bing Webmaster Tools. Submission triggers faster discovery and lets you monitor indexing status and errors. For WordPress sites, plugins like Yoast SEO or RankMath generate sitemaps automatically at the root or under /sitemap_index.xml. Shopify creates them at /sitemap.xml by default. If you're on a custom CMS or static site, you'll generate the XML file manually or via build scripts and upload it to your root directory via FTP or your hosting control panel. A few things to watch: if your sitemap exceeds 50,000 URLs or 50MB uncompressed, split it into multiple files and use a sitemap index. If you have staging or development environments, make sure they don't submit sitemaps to Search Console or reference production URLs. At Ottawa SEO, we audit sitemap accessibility during technical SEO reviews — broken sitemap links or sitemaps blocked by robots.txt are more common than you'd think, especially after site migrations. We also check that only indexable, canonical URLs appear in the sitemap; including noindexed pages or redirect chains just wastes crawl budget. Proper sitemap placement and hygiene won't magically boost rankings, but it ensures Google and Bing can discover and crawl your important pages efficiently, which matters most for large or frequently updated sites.