How to Create a Sitemap for WordPress Site?

A sitemap is  XML file that lists all posts, pages URLs and other content on a website. This helps search engine like Google, Bing to discover and crawl all the pages on a site more efficiently. Creating the sitemap for website is an important step for crawling  it for search engines and improving site visibility in search results.

• Efficient Crawling: Helps search engines find all your pages.
• Improved Indexing: Ensures important content gets indexed promptly.
• Enhanced SEO: Contributes to higher rankings and visibility.
• Faster Discovery: New content gets indexed quicker.
• Error Identification: Helps find and fix site issues.
• User Experience: Makes navigation easier for visitors.

There are three main approaches to creating a sitemap for a WordPress site:

The most common way of creating the sitemap is by using WordPress plugin. These are the popular plugins which was available to generate a sitemaps.

• Yoast SEO
• All in One SEO
• Google XML Sitemaps

Example with Yoast SEO:

Step 1: Navigate to WordPress dashboard & Select add new from the Plugins menu from top left.

Step 2: Install and activate the Yoast SEO plugin

Step 3: Go to SEO > General > Features in the WordPress admin

Step4: Toggle the XML Sitemaps feature to “On”

Step 5: Save the changes

Step 6: The sitemap will be available at yourdomain.com/sitemap_index.xml

 If you prefer not to use a plugin, you can manually create a sitemap.xml file. This involves creating an XML file with the correct structure and adding it to your WordPress theme’s directory.

Note: Save this given file as sitemap.xml and upload it to your WordPress theme’s directory (usually wp-content/themes/your-theme).

Here’s an example of what the sitemap.xml file should look like:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
  <url>
    <loc>https://w3wiki.net/</loc>
    <lastmod>2023-04-01</lastmod>
    <changefreq>weekly</changefreq>
    <priority>1.0</priority>
  </url>
  <url>
    <loc>https://w3wiki.net/about/</loc>
    <lastmod>2023-03-15</lastmod>
    <changefreq>monthly</changefreq>
    <priority>0.8</priority>
  </url>
  <!-- Add more <url> elements for each page on your site -->
</urlset>

Since WordPress version 5.5, WordPress can automatically generate a basic sitemap. This sitemap includes all the public pages, posts, categories, and tags, to access the automatically generated sitemap.

• Make the site is set to allow search engines to index it (Settings > Reading > Search Engine Visibility)
• Visit yourdomain.com/wp-sitemap.xml to see the sitemap

In conclusion, creating  sitemap for the WordPress site is most  important step which keeps my site visible to  search engine.  You can use a plugin, manually create the file, or let WordPress generate a basic sitemap automatically. Once you have the sitemap, submit it to search engines to help them discover and index your site’s content more efficiently.