Sitemap, also known as a site map or website map, is a very important tool in website SEO. This article introduces how togenerate a sitemap.xml site map for a WordPress website, and whichsitemap pluginsare worthRecommendedusing.
What is a sitemap and what is its use?
Explanation of the term SiteMap
Sitemap, called site map or website map in Chinese, is a file that generates all the pages of your website into an XML format webpage file. For example, the sitemap address of Naibabiji is as follows:
The sitemap contains the addresses of all pages on your website that are allowed to be crawled by search engines. Through this file, every crawlable webpage on your site can be found, hence it is called a site map.
The Role of Sitemap
The main function of a sitemap is to guide search engines, because search engines are machines and cannot click links on your website like ordinary people. They can only discover URLs by crawling web page code.
So we submit a URL list containing all the pages on the website that we allow search engines to crawl, making it easier for search engines to crawl these pages.
Why are they called URLs allowed to be crawled by search engines?
Some pages on the website are not recommended for search engines to crawl, so they will not appear in the sitemap. The sitemap contains only the links we want search engines to crawl.
Here you can also learn aboutrobots.txt, which is also a tool related to search engine crawling.
Sitemap Plugin Recommendations and Generation Methods
The sitemap.xml file is basically automatically generated using plugins. It is recommended that everybuilding your own websitewebmasters generate a sitemap file.
Usually, the sitemap is a virtual file at the root of your website, such as sitemap.xml. You cannot see it in the server space, but you can access it via URL.
Below are 4 commonly usedsitemap generation plugins。
Searching for sitemap in the WordPress admin will yield many results. Naibabiji here introduces the following four plugins.Methods for generating a sitemap。
- Yoast SEO
- Google XML Sitemaps
- All in One SEO Pack
- Rank Math
Yoast SEO
Yoast SEO is a WordPress SEO plugin. The sitemap feature is part of the premium version. If you installed the free version from WordPress, the sitemap function will not work properly. You can download a premium version:WordPress's #1 SEO Plugin Yoast SEO Chinese Premium Version Download and Tutorial
If you are using the Yoast SEO premium version, the XML sitemap feature is enabled by default. You can directly access it via你网址/sitemap.xmlto access your website's sitemap file.
Google XML Sitemaps
If you are using the free version of Yoast SEO, Yoast SEO will warn you that two sitemap plugins may conflict. However, the Google XML Sitemaps plugin can still generate an XML sitemap file.
After installing and activating the plugin, it will automatically generate an XML format sitemap. If it doesn't generate, save the settings once manually.
All in One SEO Pack
All in One SEO Pack is the second most popular SEO plugin on WordPress. Its sitemap feature is free to use. The method is as follows:
After activation, the XML sitemap settings link will appear in the All in One SEO Pack menu. Keep the default settings.
will automatically generate a sitemap, and the URL is also:你网址/sitemap.xml
If your sitemap returns a 404 error, refer to this article:Solution for All in One SEO Pack plugin sitemap.xml 404 error
Rank Math
Rank MathThis is also a WordPress SEO plugin. It is completely free and has more features than the two SEO plugins mentioned above. Unfortunately, it currently does not include Chinese language support (Naiba has localized a version himself; those who need it can join QQ group 774633089 to download).
After enabling the plugin, it will automatically create a sitemap file for you. Accessing sitemap.xml will automatically redirect to sitemap_index.xml.
The above isplugins and methods for adding a sitemap to WordPress. After having the sitemap file, you can submit it to search engines to improve website indexing.
Search Engine Sitemap Submission Addresses
Almost every search engine supports sitemap submission. You can submit your sitemap to the search engine webmaster backend, or add it to the robots.txt file.
Of course, you can choose not to do it, and search engines will still index your website.
