If you want to make sure that the search engines can easily find all the pages of your WordPress blog or website, it is absolutely essential to have an XML Sitemap. A Sitemap is a document which contains all your site’s architecture (the links to all the website’s pages) and helps the users or the search engines to find pages belonging to your website.
No matter if the website is built for users or for search bots, using a Sitemap has multiple benefits; such as easier browsing through the website’s pages and more visibility in search engines by facilitating the complete indexing of your blog or website. A Sitemap can improve the search engine optimization (SEO) of your site. Specialists recommend to use a Sitemap for all websites, especially for those which make use of Adobe Flash or JavaScript in their menu instead of HTML links. A Sitemap can be an HTML, an XML or a TXT document.
Besides the advantage of a better indexation, a Sitemap also brings the web crawlers more often to the website by automatically letting them know when changes occur if you submit them to Google Webmaster Tools. However, it is strongly advised to submit your website’s Sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools, given the fact that the Sitemap document is structured in a way that the search engines can read, plus additional information like the date of the last change that occurred on a page or a post.
How to create a Sitemap in WordPress
- Open the WordPress administration interface, select Plugins and click Add New. Here you have to select the Google XML Sitemap plugin and install it. The WordPress SEO by Yoast plugin also has similar functionality.
- After the plugin installation, you need to activate it by clicking ‘Activate plugin’.
- Go back to the main WordPress menu, select Settings and go to XML Sitemap. Here you can keep the default settings for now.
- The next step requires you to click the button which says ‘Click here to build it the first time’, at the top of the page.
- In case the Sitemap document wasn’t generated, check that the root directory of your website is writable.
- Head back to the main menu, go to Settings > Reading and make sure that the check box next to ‘Discourage search engines from indexing this site’ is not checked.
How to tell search engines about your website
At this point, your site is probably already ‘caught’ by search engines like Google or Bing. However, this is not enough for the visibility of your site. Though it isn’t mandatory to have a Google Master Tools (GMT) account to index your site, it is highly recommended to do so. In addition to this, the benefit is that the search engines will now show you any errors, pages indexed and other relevant and helpful stats. Once your site is added to your GMT account, make sure that you have also registered the Sitemap.
- Log in to your GMT account and select your website or blog.
- Select Optimization, go to Sitemaps and click Add/Test Sitemap
- Introduce the address of your Sitemap, including the Sitemap file itself – Sitemap.xml
- Click ‘Submit Sitemap’ button.
Once your Sitemap is registered, it can take up to a few days until Google starts to index the content of the website. After that, you will have the possibility to see how many pages were indexed and how many are still waiting to be indexed.