SOP: Quarterly sitemap clean-out

SOP: Quarterly sitemap clean-out
Stale URLs erode crawl trust. Run this every 90 days.

Step 1 — Pull all sitemap URLs.

Step 2 — Status-check the full list. Remove every URL that is:
— ✅ Not 200 (drop all 3xx, 4xx, 5xx)
— ✅ Not self-canonical
— ✅ Now noindex
— ✅ Redirecting elsewhere (list the destination instead, if indexable)

Step 3 — Diff against your CMS: any indexable page MISSING from the sitemap gets added.

Step 4 — Re-check lastmod values aren't all frozen at one old date.

Step 5 — Re-validate XML and file size after edits.

Step 6 — Resubmit in GSC and log the new 'Discovered URLs' number.

Definition of done: sitemap == set of current 200/indexable/self-canonical URLs, with zero redirects and zero orphans, confirmed by a fresh crawl.