How to create XML sitemaps for WordPress using the XML Sitemaps plugin

This article describes how to create XML Sitemaps in WordPress using the XML Sitemaps plugin. XML sitemaps will help search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo or Ask.com to better index your site.

What and why do you need XML sitemaps?

An XML sitemap is a file with a complete list of important pages for search engines to understand your website's structure and speed up content discovery. XML sitemaps act as a roadmap for search engines to quickly find relevant pages on your site, which is particularly good for page ranking. You might want to consider having XML sitemaps if your site has any of the following use cases:

• You have a huge website, but the content is not hyperlinked together well.
• Your pages are dynamically generated.
• You have a site that uses a lot of rich media content.

What is the XML Sitemaps Plugin?

The XML Sitemaps Plugin creates XML sitemaps for major search engines to better index your site for a faster content search. In addition, it notifies the major search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, and Ask.com of any new content posted on the website.

Installing and configuring the XML Sitemaps plugin

To install and configure the XML Sitemaps plugin, follow these steps:

1. Log in to your WordPress site with an administrator account.
2. On the Dashboard in the left sidebar, click Plugins, and then click Add New:

   

3. Search for XML Sitemaps plugin:
   

   

4. To install the XML Sitemaps plugin, click Install Now, and then click Activate:
   

   

5. On the left sidebar, click Settings, and then click XML-Sitemaps:
   

   

6. The plugin configuration page appears.You can modify the basic options, notifications, advanced options, additional pages, post priority, and more:
   

   

   

7. To view the created sitemaps, use your web browser to visit http://www.example.com/sitemap.xml, where example.com represents your domain name.

More Information

For more information about the XML Sitemaps plugin, please visit https://wordpress.org/plugins/google-sitemap-generator.