What should be done to have a sitemap on a WordPress website? As it is clear from the name of this term, sitemap is one of the points that should be done during website indexing and preferably introduced to Google Search Console. In this way, Google will enter its crawlers more easily and quickly into your website and start analyzing your website.
Apart from the optimal use of crawlers, this will also cause bugs and content pages to be found only on your website; In this way, you can more easily find the problems of your website to have a more user-friendly website and a more optimized website SEO.
Sitemap with Yoast WordPress plugin
Perhaps one of the strengths of WordPress websites is their relatively easy SEO. SEO of WordPress websites is generally not a difficult task, which is done by using powerful SEO plugins. Plugins like Yoast are very important and useful tools in WordPress SEO.
Does creating a site map have an effect on the site’s SEO?
The answer is yes. Creating a sitemap helps Google’s crawlers to easily crawl the site’s content and helps improve your SEO a lot. One of the best SEO plugins (in Farsi language) is Yoast plugin, which in addition to very useful features in SEO of pages and pages, has technical SEO capabilities to some extent and many SEO requirements can be fulfilled in it. Using this plugin, you can complete your sitemap by doing a few simple steps.
Activate sitemap in Yoast WordPress plugin
- First, go to the WordPress dashboard and find yoast.
- Go to the general section.
- See the features section.
- Turn on xml if it is off.
The importance of a healthy sitemap can be summarized in 2 general points:
- Absence of tabs or single posts (tabs/single posts are contents that do not have any outgoing or incoming links)
- A site with a complete map and pages connected to each other
The simpler and more specific your website map is, the more convenient and efficient your website will be. This will not only make your website easier to use, but will also give you more points in SEO rankings.
Since WordPress websites generally work with ready-made templates, the possibility of non-following and single pages or unusable pages is more than coding websites or WordPress websites with a dedicated template. But due to the use of plugins, these problems can be seen and you can fix the problems of the website more easily.
Why is sitemap important for Google?
At the beginning of the article, we stated that sitemaps play an important role in introducing the site to search engines (Google and others). Sitemap helps crawlers and Google tools to review your website more easily and optimally. This not only causes your website to be rated and recognized faster, but also increases the quality of the site by you and fixes the problems.
A simpler example is like your trip to an unknown city; Imagine you don’t have a map or signposts; This not only makes the journey to the said city difficult for you, but also long. But with, for example, Google maps or other apps, you can easily find the best route and even use the program itself for navigation.
What is the importance of sitemap for website content?
This means that if a sitemap uses good XML codes, provides valid and orderly URLs for crawlers, and meets other search engine requirements, the URLs in it will be considered in subsequent crawls. This increases the chances of various pages being seen in search engines. Finally, having an accurate sitemap is very helpful in determining the importance of content (pages/articles) for search engines (Google).
Do we really need a site map?
According to the given explanation, if you still think you don’t need a sitemap, this is your choice. But if you include the following, Glavizh strongly advises you to have a site map and considers it mandatory.
What is the main purpose of creating a sitemap?
Although the sitemap will be useful for the website in any situation, it is very effective and efficient in the following situations:
- You have a new site with new pages that are not well linked yet (internal and external links); You know that Google bots and other web crawlers follow links and go from one page to another; So if your site does not have links, they may not find your pages.
- Your site is really big and Google’s crawlers might miss crawling some of your updated pages.
- You use dynamic URLs for your content on your site.
- The archived content of your site is not well linked to the active pages.
- If your site’s pages are difficult to recognize or contain heavy non-text content, such as Flash.
Conclusion
Finally, having a sitemap is very important in the opinion of the Gelavizh SEO team and every professional SEO. The more you pay attention to Google’s requests and comply with them better and more accurately, the sooner Google will value your website and the more accurate it will be.
Note that there are many websites that do not comply with small or large things, which in turn makes your website better than other competitors. If you don’t do this, you will be in the category of these people and others will easily ignore you in the SEO discussion and progress.
SEO competition in Google is based on a series of small and sometimes big tasks. Observing these principles as much as possible will improve the development of your website and, as a result, earn more money along with more market share than your competitors.
Gelavizh website design and development services
The Gelavizh team can accompany you in website design and professional SEO of your site. Professional SEO services will help you achieve your goals in a cost-effective manner. By spending less money and time, you will achieve a better result in sales, providing services and visiting your site. Click on the blue link to view website design,SEO and digital marketing services, to see examples of Gelavizh projects. You can also contact us for consultation through the contact section or by filling out the consultation form.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
1. What is sitemap in WordPress?
A sitemap (or site map) is a file that lists every URL on your website that should be indexed by search engines like Google. WordPress.com automatically generates an XML sitemap for you.
2. Does sitemap improve SEO?
A sitemap can significantly improve your search engine optimization (SEO) by helping Google crawl the right pages.
3. Do all websites need a sitemap?
You don’t have many media files (video, image) or news pages that you want to show in search results. Sitemaps can help Google find and understand video and image files, or news articles, on your site. If you don’t need these results to appear in Search you might not need a sitemap.
4. How do I add a sitemap to a WordPress website?
After installing Jetpack, the next step is to enable the sitemap feature. To do this, go to your WordPress.com dashboard, select Tools → Marketing → Traffic. Here, you’ll find an option to Generate XML Sitemaps. Toggle this switch to activate the feature.
5. Why couldn’t my sitemap fetch?
If the sitemap status is Couldn’t fetch on the top level Sitemaps page, this means that Google couldn’t retrieve the sitemap file itself. There are several possible reasons for this: The sitemap is blocked by your robots. txt file.
