A sitemap is very important for any website. A good sitemap can help you to rank upper in search engines and google crawlers read it quickly were on other hand a bad sitemap can impact your website ranking.
If you want to install and use properly a sitemap on your WordPress website follow the below steps:
What it’s it?
A sitemap is a list of pages on a website. It can be either a document in any form used as a planning tool for Web design or a Web page that lists the pages on a website.
An XML sitemap is a well structured sitemap that helps search engines index your website more effectively. They can be used to improve the crawling and indexing of your website making it easier for search engines to find and index your website.
XML sitemaps are particularly useful for websites with a large number of pages or for websites that are regularly updated. If you have a website with a lot of content(with many pages), an XML sitemap can help search engines find and index all of your pages.
Why It’s important?
They are important because it help search engines crawl and index your website. They also give visitors an overview of your website’s structure, making it easier for them to find the information they’re looking for.
They can also be used to help improve your website’s internal linking, boost your SEO activity, and make it easier for search engines to find and index all of your site’s pages.
If you’re not sure how to create & use a perfect sitemap, don’t worry – there are many sitemap generators available in the online market that can help you a lot. Once you have your sitemap, all you need to do is submit it to the major search engines and you’ll be well on your way to improving your website’s visibility and ranking.
How a Sitemap work on a WordPress
WordPress has an inbuilt sitemap feature. This feature is designed to help you automatically generate a sitemap for your WordPress website.
The WordPress sitemap feature is easy to use and can be found in the settings area in your WordPress admin panel. Go to Settings > Sitemap and then select the pages you want to include in your sitemap. Once you have done this, you can then save your sitemap and submit it to the main search engines.
You can also use plugins to help you generate and submit your sitemap. One popular plugin is Google XML Sitemaps, which is available for free from the WordPress plugin warehouse. There are also many premium plugins available that offer additional features which paid for their features but you can use free ones to submit your sitemap.
What is Custom Sitemaps on WordPress?
WordPress has a limitation of sitemap. You can submit up to 100 pages on an inbuilt sitemap on an WordPress. But what if you want to submit more pages to sitemap? You have to create your custom sitemap.
Creating a custom sitemap for your WordPress site is rather easy, and there are many different plugins you can use to do it. Once you’ve installed and activated a plugin, all you need to do is create a new sitemap and add your pages to it. After that, you can submit your sitemap to search engines like Google and other search engines so they can start indexing your pages and rank them.
How to create your own sitemap
There are many WordPress sitemap plugins available, but we recommend using Yoast SEO. It is a popular SEO plugin that also includes a sitemap feature. To generate your sitemap with Yoast SEO, simply install and activate the plugin, then go to SEO → XML Sitemaps and click the Generate XML sitemap button.
Once your sitemap is generated, you can submit it to Google Search Console for indexing and ranking. Simply go to Google Search Console and add your sitemap URL. Once your sitemap is verified and indexed, Google will start crawling and indexing.
XML Sitemap Generator
The XML Sitemap Generator is also a good and free plugin for WordPress to generate full sitemap, it also notify search engines when you change pages or add a new page.
To use it:
1). Login to your WordPress
2). Go to Plugins and select Add New
3). Type “XML Sitemap Generator” in the Search box and press enter
4). Install the first plugin that comes
5). Activate the plugin
6). Go to Settings and select XML Sitemap
7). Select Generate Sitemap
8). Copy the link that is generated and add it to your Google Search Console account
How to Check Your WordPress Sitemap
You can view or check your XML sitemap by adding “/sitemap.xml” to the end of your domain.
If you can’t view your XML sitemap or if it’s not working properly, it could be a sign that there are problems with your website. This could damage your website’s capability to get traffic from search engines. So if you can’t view your XML sitemap, be sure to check with your web developer or web development agency to see if there’s a problem.
Conclusion
A sitemap is a file that contains a list of all the pages on your website. It is typically used by search engines to crawl websites and index their content.
Sitemaps are important because they help Google (and other search engines) understand your website and its content. Without a sitemap, Google might not be able to find and index all the pages on your website.
Creating your own sitemap has many benefits. For one, it can help improve your website’s search engine optimization (SEO). Additionally, it can help make sure that all the pages on your website are properly indexed.
