Create a WordPress sitemap: better with plugins

Once you’ve created a WordPress website you’ll want to improve its search engine ranking. This is where a struc­tured data overview, the WordPress sitemap, plays an important role. Using a plugin is rec­om­mend­ed to store the data relevant for search engines.

• Log into the WordPress backend
• Select “Plugins > Install” from the dashboard
• Type “XML Sitemap Generator for Google”, for example, into the search box
• Install and activate the plugin
• Customize content types, time periods, and the robots.txt file
• Deposit WordPress sitemap in search engines

Two types of sitemaps are important for a website:

An HTML sitemap lists all content as a clearly struc­tured, readable directory of clickable links of all pages and posts, similar to the main menu on a website. Plugins that can be used for this purpose allow sorting, including or excluding post and/or page content according to various criteria. For a fully cus­tomiz­able HMTL sitemap, you usually have to purchase the paid variant of the WordPress plugin in question.

The XML sitemap is the rec­om­mend­ed format for dis­play­ing the hi­er­ar­chi­cal structure of a website, not only under WordPress. This makes the website more search­able for search engines, its so-called crawla­bil­i­ty increases. XML is an ab­bre­vi­a­tion for “Ex­ten­si­ble Markup Language” and consists of a text file, which is readable by humans and machines across all known web browsers.

As of WordPress version 5.5, the content man­age­ment system generates its own sitemap, which can be accessed via:

A sitemap lists all in­for­ma­tion about a WordPress website. However, details such as lists of reg­is­tered users, cat­e­gories, archives or keywords or image galleries are less relevant or even dis­ad­van­ta­geous for search engines and can lead to mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tions and unwanted search results when crawling a website. Therefore, only in­for­ma­tion relevant for search engines should be included in the sitemap.

But what content should be sum­ma­rized in a sitemap and what is the easiest way to do that? For this purpose, various WordPress plugins exist that support different ap­proach­es. These include:

• Yoast SEO
• Rank Math
• Simple Sitemap (creates HTML sitemap)
• Better WordPress Google XML sitemaps
• XML Sitemap Generator for Google

Using the XML Sitemap Generator for Google we show you how to optimally prepare the sitemap of your WordPress website and make it available for search engines like Google or Bing.

Log into the WordPress backend as admin and navigate to “Plugins > Install”. In the search box to the right above the plugin directory, enter the name of the extension: “XML Sitemap Generator for Google”. The plugin will appear in the results and you can im­me­di­ate­ly verify if it is com­pat­i­ble with your current WordPress version.

Click “Install now” and “Activate” to add the plugin to the WordPress backend and create an entry under “Settings” called “XML Sitemap”. The admin interface of the plugin will be displayed in English, ir­re­spec­tive of the language set in your backend.

Within “Sitemap defaults” you define if the date of a file creation or mod­i­fi­ca­tion should appear in the sitemap (1). The area “Page/area” allows the inclusion or exclusion (2) of defined com­po­nents of the WordPress website in the generated sitemap. This decision depends on the content or the target audience of the website. A news website or blog will certainly include the “Post Page” and probably update (3) it more often than a simple company website that doesn’t require major content changes. For “Relative priority” follow plugin sug­ges­tions.

In “robots.txt” you can exclude certain areas of the website from search engine crawling, among other things. The example above shows that two WordPress di­rec­to­ries and the sitemap generated by WordPress were excluded from crawling. These files and di­rec­to­ries are not con­sid­ered by search bots. For more in­for­ma­tion on WordPress robots.txt read our detailed guide on the topic.

Ready? Don’t forget to save and apply your changes by clicking “Save Changes”.

The WordPress sitemap should be reg­is­tered with leading search engines. A separate account is needed for each one. Check out an overview for the most important search engines in our guide on reg­is­ter­ing a website. The “XML Sitemap Generator for Google” plugin links to them directly from the admin interface.

You can view which in­for­ma­tion Google and other search engines picked up from your WordPress sitemap sub­mis­sion via the following entry in the search field of the re­spec­tive search engine:

All indexed content is listed. With this in­for­ma­tion a sitemap can be adapted (again and again) to the needs of the website.

Find more WordPress SEO tips and rec­om­men­da­tions for suitable WordPress SEO plugins in our Digital Guide.