How to add an Automatic Sitemap to WordPress

Posted on 19. Jul, 2009 by Isaac Yassar in WordPress

sitemapHave you got an XML sitemap for your WordPress powered website / blog (own domain)?

The existence of a decent sitemap is critical in order to be indexed by search engine well. You can’t just expect spider bots to index all of your URLs (Universal Resource Locator) on your site well. They won’t do it right, trust me.

From my sitemap-less experience, bots often miss index my posts’ URLs because there are so many URLs on the main page of my site. And sites / blogs usually has more than 100 URLs in their main page, including pages, posts, read more buttons, comments links, feed links, ads, and everything click-able on your sidebar (especially cloud tags). Bots have problems dealing with more than 100 URLs in a page, you know.

By default, WordPress does not create a sitemap for you. And you won’t have any sitemap if you don’t do anything about it. Fortunately, there is a good plugin to help you create a sitemap easily.

Google XML Sitemap will create compliant XML sitemap of your WordPress blog. This plugin supports all of the WordPress generated pages as well as custom ones. Every time you edit or create a post, your sitemap is updated and all major search engines that support the sitemap protocol, like ASK.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO, are notified about the update. Isn’t that sweet? :-)

To download the plugin now, click here.

After downloading, you can install it on your WordPress. To install, you need to go to your WP dashboard >> plugins >> add new >> upload. You can use the wizard there to find the zip file of the plugin and hit the button to upload. Afterward, the page will load and offer you to activate it or not.

Afterward, you can visit the setting page of this plugin (Dashboard >> Settings >> XML-Sitemap), on the top of the page you will see the notification that you have no sitemap yet, click the link to create a new sitemap nearby. You can leave all the advanced settings alone because it is already well configured automatically. Feel free to customize it if you wear eyeglasses and pretty techie ;-)

Troubleshoot: after you click the “build” link, if the page keeps loading, just stop it after a minute or two. Afterward, reload the page and you will get the notice that your sitemap is created successfully, along with the details. Creating a sitemap is very fast, mine is only 0.7 second, though I did experience the continuous load. Update: it was a bug, the new Google XML Sitemap version 3.1.5 has fixed it.

After created, you can check your sitemap in the address of http://www.YourDomain.com/sitemap.xml . Change YourDomain with your site’s address.

Oh and don’t bother wondering if there are better sitemap plugins for WordPress than this one, it is the most popular one out there.

OK, who wants a sitemap for a better SEO and traffic? :D

Tags: plugin, SEO, sitemap, WordPress

13 Responses to “How to add an Automatic Sitemap to WordPress”

  1. Nicola

    19. Jul, 2009

    Great information, Isaac. At this time, I use “Simple Google Sitemap“. Once you make a new post, this plugin create a dynamic sitemap, that allows you to save a lot of your time.

    Nicola

    http://www.The3dtechnologies.com

    http://www.Nickdeiana.com

    Reply to this comment

  2. Isaac Yassar

    21. Jul, 2009

    @Nicola
    Thanks. So, I guess both plugins work well. More choices for us then :)

    Reply to this comment

  3. Candee

    31. Jul, 2009

    Hi Isaac!

    Your website is great, and I appreciate all the help. Unfortunately I am very low-tech, and don’t understand a great deal of it. (I guess I’m going to have to buy a “WordPress for Dummies” book.

    Anyway, specifically, I wanted to take your advice regarding site maps. That sounded simple enough. So I downloaded the Google XML Sitemap, as you suggested, but now I don’t know how to install it on my blog and activate it. How do I get it into my site? I am new to blogging and appreciate your help.

    Candee

    Reply to this comment

    • Isaac Yassar

      31. Jul, 2009

      Hi Candee, thanks for the complement.

      To install it, you need to go to dashboard >> plugins >> add new >> upload. Then you can browse to find the zip file of the plugin and hit upload button. After loading, the page will offer you to activate it or not.

      Btw, have you visited WordPress Help Section? There are many good documentations there, and they are free ;-)

      Reply to this comment

      • Candee

        31. Jul, 2009

        Isaac,

        Thanks for you help, but I can’t seem to locate >>plug-ins>> on my dashboard. Where should I be looking?

        Thanks for your advice. I’ll check out the Help Section too.

        Candee

        Reply to this comment

        • Isaac Yassar

          31. Jul, 2009

          Hi Candee.

          I just noticed that you are in WordPress.com . This plugin is for WordPress for own domain publishing (WordPress.org). I don’t think WordPress.com has this function. Sorry :-)

          Reply to this comment

          • Candee

            01. Aug, 2009

            Hi Isaac,

            I understand now. That clears up why I couldn’t find it. Haha!

            I just sent you an email response. You can disregard it now. Thanks so much for your help!

            Candee

            Reply to this comment

  4. Moe

    19. Aug, 2009

    Hi Issac, thanks for this helpful post about adding an automatic sitemap. However, I am trying to add disclaimer and privacy policy (the boring stuff) and I have no idea yet, under which tool/page/widget to put. I appreciate you or your blog readers would help me with that. Cool and Clean blog you have. Thanks.
    Moe

    Reply to this comment

    • Isaac Yassar

      19. Aug, 2009

      Thanks Moe. You can put them in a special page, like what I do here in this site. I have its link on my navbar (below my header).

      Reply to this comment

  5. Moe

    19. Aug, 2009

    Wow, thanks for your fast response. When I log in as an administrator under which button do I use for “About” Privacy Policy” and so on…Thanks again Issac for your help.

    Reply to this comment

    • Isaac Yassar

      19. Aug, 2009

      You’re welcome. You can create a new page (not post) and give it a title of ‘Policies’ or ‘Disclaimer’. Then you just need to fill the content of the page like when you write a post. That’s how I did mine :-)

      Reply to this comment

  6. Moe

    19. Aug, 2009

    Thanks Issac. I am going to try it now :-)

    Reply to this comment

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