How To Add A Google Sitemap To A WordPress Blog
A few simple steps and a great WordPress plugin that will automatically build a sitemap for your blog and notify Google of all your new posts. This is one of the more important steps involved when setting up your new WordPress blog if you want organic search engine traffic.
First install the latest Google Sitemap Generator for WordPress here plugin and follow the installation instructions. This plugin needs write access to your blog directory so make the blog folder writable (CMOD 666 or 777). After activating the plugin you will now have a new Sitemap sub-menu under your Options menu in the WordPress dashboard
Click the Sitemap menu and click the link to build the sitemap. If all went well it will generate a new sitemap. If not directions and links to more help will be available.
After your sitemap is built go over to Google Webmaster Tools and login or create an account. Now here is where to pay attention OK? You can add your main domain/website and your blog at Google but make sure you add them both. If your WordPress blog is in a directory within your website, submit the blog as another website. If your whole website is run by WordPress then add just the main domain. If your blog is part of your website then add the blogs URL as a website in Google Webmaster Tools.
If your blog is your in a directory on your website then add it as a website like this: http://www.esmartjob.com/blog
After you add your website and or blog to Google then submit your sitemap for that URL. http://www.esmartjob.com/blog/sitemap.xml.
I have got quite a few emails from people who I have installed WordPress blogs with what they think are problems with their blogs. But they will try to add a sitemap for their blog on the main domain instead of the blog directory. If you need help with this or want your WordPress blog optimized I can help here: Help With WordPress
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Comments
the link you posted is to sitemap v2, you should really use sitemap v3., It has more features, like the capability to ping google, yahoo and ask com when the sitemap is rebuilt (so that they know when to download it ) and some others and I find it is pretty stable even if it’s still beta.
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Thanks Patches,
Link changed to V3, or here: http://www.arnebrachhold.de/2006/01/07/google-sitemap-generator-for-wordpress-3-beta
Jeff
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How To Add A Google Sitemap To A WordPress Blog…
A few simple steps and a great WordPress plugin that will automatically build a sitemap for your blog and notify Google of all your new posts….
Have been using it a while myself as well and works perfectly, even with wordpress 2.3
.
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Hi,
Indeed its good to have the sitemap generated by the plugin. I am presently using Google XML Sitemaps. The site map created only listed the URLs of the pages that I have created BUT does not indicate what any particular page is all about. I have seen site maps that shows the subject matter or title of the page listed. Where did my site map go wrong or may be I am using the wrong plug in. Really appreciate your comment and advice. Thank you.
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Mohd the sitemap plugin is for the search engine bots not for humans. I have no idea how to format it to have the descriptions of the posts.
I guess you need a different plugin.
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One of the best and most simple wordpress plugins. Checking your sitemap is working and being picked up by Google via Google webmaster tools here is vital. Your next step would be to look into robots.txt for your domain using webmaster tools again!
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thanks… i use this plugin too..
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I use this plugin on all of my wordpress sites. It is so simple to use and helps to get your site/pages indexed.
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When using the Google Sitemaps Generator plug-in, I have seen or found an option to add a link eo the sitemap.xml file to any of the page navigation links. I have seen many sites that have Sitemap in one or more of their navigation area(s) – is it important to have a link to the sitemap.xml file somewhere in the pages/posts of a website so that it can be found or will the automatic submission take care of it? What about other engines that are not automatically notified?
Using the plug-in was easy – thanks.
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Jeff Replied:
April 13th, 2009 at 3:52 pm
Ken, I am far from an SEO or sitemap expert… but I believe the bots will find and crawl your sitemap automatically no matter what search engine it is. So I don’t think having the .xml file linked to any page is necessary. Nor would I do it because it will not look very good or provide any use to your visitors. That is what this post is for: adding a sitemap for your visitors.
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Jason Replied:
April 17th, 2009 at 11:36 pm
Ken, the automatic (or rather, manual) submission described in Jeff’s original post is sufficient to tell Google where your XML sitemap is — there’s no need to link it from any of your pages.
As for how to bring an XML sitemap to the attention of search engines other than Google… well, I’ve heard of such search engines, but I haven’t seen one in years.
Uh, seriously though, Yahoo allows manual submission of sitemaps: go to http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/submit and choose “Submit site feed”.
Jeff, with the rise of Wordpress as a defacto CMS, your original post from back in 2007 is just as useful as ever. Nice work!
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Jeff Replied:
April 18th, 2009 at 7:38 am
Thanks for helping out and the kind words Jason.
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Great info, thx. Although I never use sitemaps. Google will index my site without sitemap, sooner or later.
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Sitemaps are really important and should be used. Its a quality sign for google bot.
greetings
Marc
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It is not necessary for indexing to have a sitemap, but nice plug in anyway…
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Jeff Replied:
June 8th, 2009 at 5:08 pm
And where does the post anywhere insinuate that a sitemap is necessary for indexing? Oh… nowhere but thanks for the drive-by.
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Well I do believe that it still helps when it comes to indexing. Specially for a website’s inner pages which are a bit far away from your home page. A sitemap is a must for me
Anyway, I just read this post and it made me very interested about it. Wanna try it now!
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Thanks for info, Im currently running websites on custom made CMS platforms but lately im thinking about working on wordpress in the future. I personally use only back links and interna linking to index my inner pages but I guess a sitemap wont hurt
Tx again,
Dubrovnik
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