How to Add a Sitemap to a WordPress Blog


A sitemap is a XML document that lists all the pages in your website. Adding a sitemap to your blog will notify the search engines of all your new posts. When a search engine robot visits the XML sitemap, it will follow all the links on to sitemap to your site so that it will get indexed.

A sitemap is a way of telling the search engines that you have updated your blog. It allows the search engines to quickly and easily index a new content on your blog In a XML sitemap, you can specify how often your pages are updated and the date of each post last modified.

In order to rank well on the search engine, search engines must be able to find and access the pages on your blog. Sitemap is important if your blog is just created, contain flash and dynamic content, and has many archived pages that are not interlink in between pages.

By having a sitemap, you don’t have to rely on external link to get search engines to crawl your website.

If you have a self hosted blog, you can easily create a sitemap with Arne Brachhold’s WordPress plugin called Google XML Sitemaps. Once installed, the Google XML Sitemap will automatically generate and update a sitemap everytime you publish a new post. The Google XML sitemaps is available for WordPress versions 1.5 and above. No PHP skill is required to generate the sitemap. The Google XML sitemap also generate a static XML file and zipped version which you can download to your computer as backup.

To add a sitemap to your WordPress blog, follow the instructions below.

Download Google XML Sitemaps

  • Unzip the folder to your computer.

Save on Hard Drive

  • Click on the folder and upload the google-sitemap-generator folder inside to wp-admin/plugins/ with an FTP application.

Extract Google XML Sitemaps

  • After finish uploading, go to the Dashboard >> Plugins.

Plugin Menu

  • Search for Google XML Sitemaps and Activate it.

Activate Google XML Sitemaps

  • Go to Settings > XML-Sitemap

Google XML Sitemaps Settings

  • You will see a message “The sitemap wasn’t built yet. Click here to build it the first time.” Click on the underlined Click here link.

Build Sitemap

  • After that, you can access your sitemap by clicking on the underlined sitemap link.

Access Sitemap

  • If you want to download your sitemap to your computer, click on zipped inside the bracket.

Download Zipped

                  After you have successfully added a sitemap, you will want to ping it to the search engines.

                  After you have successfully added a sitemap, you will want to ping it to the search engines.

                  To submit your sitemap to Google, type in the browser http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/ping?sitemap=sitemapurl and press enter. Replace sitemap URL with the URL to your blog’s sitemap. You can also ping your sitemap to Google Blogsearch at http://blogsearch.google.com/ping.

                  To submit your sitemap to Bing, type in the browser http://www.bing.com/webmaster/ping.aspx?siteMap=sitemapurl and press enter. Replace the sitemap URL with the URL to your blog’s sitemap.

                  To submit your sitemap to Yahoo, type in the browser

                  http://search.yahooapis.com/SiteExplorerService/V1/ping?sitemap=sitemapurl and press enter. Replace the sitemap URL with the URL to your blog’s sitemap.

                  To submit your sitemap to MSN, type in the browser

                  http://webmaster.live.com/ping.aspx?siteMap=sitemapurl and press enter. Replace the sitemap URL with the URL to your blog’s sitemap.

                  To submit your sitemap to Ask.com, type in the browser

                  http://submissions.ask.com/ping?sitemap=sitemapurl and press enter. Replace the sitemap URL with the URL to your blog’s sitemap.

                  Although Yahoo does not guarantee inclusion in their directory, you can submit your sitemap to them.

                  Filed Under: Computers & Technology

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                  About the Author: Justin Belden is a freelance web & graphic designer with over 15 years' experience. He is also an Avid member of the Design/Development community and a Serial Blogger who loves to help people by sharing interesting and informative tips and trick related to computer and technology.

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