How to Easily Add an XML Sitemap to Your WordPress Website

Do you want to appear in all your website content on search engines and help to index your WordPress website with organic traffic? Great! You must have heard about the XML sitemap – Right?? It is one of the key factors to make your website more SEO- friendly and User-friendly.

We know most of you have questions on your mind: Is an XML sitemap needed to make your website visible on the search engine? Why is it so important?

We’ve covered the short description of the XML sitemap and how to create an XML sitemap in WordPress.

Let’s get started.

What is an XML Sitemap? Why is it important?

In a nutshell, an XML Sitemap is a list of URLs that tells google to crawl and index every piece of content on your website.

It is important for SEO because google easily crawls your website’s pages, which provides benefits to your WordPress site, such as

• The search engine bots crawl and index the content faster than they usually do.
• It helps to understand the website’s overall structure as well as internal links.
• It is especially important for the dynamic site (such as e-commerce sites)
• If any changes are made on your site, the sitemap informs search engines about updates.

How to Create an XML WordPress sitemap using Yoast SEO?

We would like to recommend the Yoast SEO plugin because it is one of the best WordPress SEO plugins that help to optimize your WordPress website.

• First, you need to install a plugin (Yoast SEO)  from the WordPress Plugin Directory.
• Once it is activated, move towards the SEO >> General page from the WordPress Dashboard and navigate to the Features tab.
• Scroll down to the XML sitemap and ensure to turn on the option and then click save changes button.
• Now your new sitemap is ready. To see the XML sitemap, click on the question mark.

Once you create the WordPress sitemap, next submit the sitemap to google before that let’s use another method to create a sitemap.

How to Create an XML WordPress sitemap using the Google XML sitemap Plugin?

It is also one of the best WordPress plugins to create an XML sitemap for a WordPress site. It helps to improve the SEO, helps to index your site on the search engine, supports custom URLs, and informs search engines about the new content. This plugin’s installing procedure and working mechanism are not as tough as you think.

You can download the Google XML sitemap plugin from the WordPress plugin directory. Once it is installed and activated, Navigate to Settings >> XML Sitemap, where you can find the WordPress sitemap URL.

How to submit the WordPress sitemap to search engines?

Though search engine bots find the content on your website. But submitting a sitemap will crawl and index your content even faster. Google Search Console is a tool powered by google itself where you can submit a sitemap and get your website a higher position in the search engine. Let’s see how to submit your XML sitemap in WordPress:

Once logged in to Google Search Console, you need to verify the website owner’s identity and then navigate to Index >> Sitemap. Then, you need to enter the URL of the sitemap and click on the submit sitemap button. Now, Google starts to crawl your pages and appear quickly in the search engine.

Wrapping Up

To sum it all up, with the help of a WordPress plugin, you can create and submit your website’s XML sitemap, which helps to make your site visible in the search engine quickly. If you find this article helpful, then don’t forget to comment and follow us on Facebook and Twitter.