Creating a sitemap in WordPress is like creating a readable map for Google to quickly see your site and display it to visitors in search results. To put it more professionally, a sitemap is a file that lists every URL or address on your website that should be indexed by search engines like Google.
Therefore, creating a sitemap in WordPress and other web page creation technologies is one of the ways to optimize your site for SEO. Using a sitemap in WordPress, search engine robots can better see the structure of a site. If you want to learn more about creating a sitemap in WordPress, read this tutorial to the end.
What is a sitemap in WordPress and why is it important?
A WordPress sitemap is a list of all the pages, tabs, and generally URLs or addresses on a WordPress website. Sitemaps help visitors and search engines navigate through all the pages of a site faster and easier. In addition, the sitemap also shows the relationship between different pages and the importance of each page.
Through a sitemap, you can tell search engine crawlers to see your new page or post sooner. In addition, the sitemap also informs search engines about pages on the site that have not been indexed before.
What is the difference between an XML sitemap and an HTML sitemap?
Generally, there are two types of sitemaps: HTML and XML. When creating a sitemap, you will definitely come across the question of what is the difference between the two and which is more important. The main difference between the two is that an XML sitemap is located in a separate URL and focuses on search engines and SEO. Whereas, an HTML sitemap can be placed on web pages for website visitors and focuses more on improving the user experience.
How to Create a Sitemap in WordPress
Create a Sitemap with the Yoast SEO Plugin
Yoast SEO is one of the popular plugins for SEO in WordPress, and with the help of this plugin, you can create an XML sitemap. In the first step, you need to download and install the plugin from the WordPress repository. If you are looking for the Yoast Pro version, you can download it from our site’s store section.
Download the free version of Yoast
After activating the plugin, you can view the XML sitemap from the Dashboard> Yoast> Settings> Site Features.
By clicking on the View XML Sitemap button, in the image above, the sitemap created by the Yoast plugin will be displayed and you can place it in the search console for better indexing of pages.
Create a sitemap with the Rank Math plugin
Rank Math is another popular SEO plugin in WordPress that can generate an XML sitemap for your site. For this purpose, download and install Rank Math from the WordPress repository.
Creating a sitemap with the Google XML Sitemaps plugin
The Google XML Sitemaps plugin is suitable for those who prefer advanced sitemap settings and the option to immediately submit to search engines. One of the notable features of the XML sitemap created by this plugin is its automatic notifications to search engines when new content is submitted or published. You can also install this plugin from the WordPress repository.
After activating the plugin, a new menu related to XML-sitemap will be added to the WordPress dashboard settings menu. In this section, you will be provided with advanced settings regarding the sitemap contents and, of course, you can also view the sitemap link.
How to register a sitemap in Google Search Console
So far in this tutorial, you have become familiar with the methods of creating a sitemap in WordPress; now it is time to introduce the sitemap URL to Google Search Console. To do this, copy the sitemap address and paste the address in the sitemaps section of Google Search Console and click the submit button.
Conclusion
In this tutorial, the importance of creating a sitemap in WordPress and its impact on SEO were mentioned. You also saw that with the help of SEO plugins, it is easy to create an XML sitemap. Whether in Yoast or RankMeth, in the free versions of these plugins that are available in the WordPress repository; it is possible to create a sitemap. Since we created this XML sitemap for better indexing by search engines, we finally need to introduce it to Google Search Console.
