3 Best Sitemap Plugin For Your WordPress Blog

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Best Sitemap Plugin For WordPress
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Sitemap of your blog is one of an essential element and the first step for making your blog search engine friendly. Sitemap file contains links to all the posts, pages of your blog and you can submit the file to Google search console, Bing webmaster tool to help search engine crawl & index your site effectively.

We already have a detailed write up on Google crawling and indexing, which will give you detailed information on sitemap and how a search engine crawls your website.

One of the coolest thing about WordPress platform is, you don’t need to manually generate sitemap after writing a new post. You just need to pick the best Sitemap plugin and install it at the time of setting up your blog.

Once you have generated the sitemap file using any of the below-listed plugins; you submit it to Webmaster tools, and this plugin auto includes new posts, pages in your existing sitemap file.

In this post, I will discuss some of the popular WordPress Sitemap plugins that you can use on your blog. Do remember, you just need one plugin to generate sitemap and there is no point in using more than one plugin for the same purpose.

Moreover, you should also generate an image and video sitemap for your blog, which will help you to drive traffic from image and video searches.

Best WordPress Sitemap Generator plugins 

1. WordPress SEO by Yoast:

Yoast WordPress Sitemap plugin
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SEO by Yoast is most popular SEO plugin for WordPress, and you can refer to this guide to learn everything about this plugin. This plugin has a module which will let you generate a sitemap for your WordPress blog.

The reason for adding this plugin at the top of the list is; you might be using SEO by Yoast plugin on your blog and instead of having another plugin to generate the sitemap, you should use sitemap module of this plugin.

Once you have installed and activated the SEO by Yoast plugin, simply go to SEO > XML sitemaps and generate the sitemap for your blog. For Google news WordPress site, you need to buy a premium version to generate news sitemap file.

2. Google XML sitemap plugin:

Google XML Sitemaps plugin
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This plugin has been around for years, and if you are not using our no.1 sitemap plugin, you should use this one. Google XML Sitemaps plugin is easy to use and is not memory exhausting anymore.

Years back they had few issues with server memory, but now this plugin has matured, and you would like it to use it on your blog.

3. Jetpack plugin Sitemap feature:

If you already have the plugin activated & running, ensure you are using the latest version of Jetpack. If you are not using Jetpack plugin, watch the above video & you will be compelled to start using this awesome free plugin.

Now, head to Jetpack > Settings > Engagement & look for module call Sitemaps & activate it.

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Unlike other sitemap plugins for WordPress, here you don’t need to configure anything. This is a limitation for big WordPress sites but a new or medium size blog; you don’t need to configure anything apart from submitting your sitemap to search engines.

Once you have activated the sitemap module, you can access your sitemaps from these links:

  • Normal sitemap: yoursitename.com/sitemap.xml
  • News Sitemap: yoursitename.com/news-sitemap.xml
Sitemap generated by Jetpack WordPress
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Personally, I’m a huge fan of SEO by Yoast sitemap feature & I recommend the same for sitemap feature. But, if you are configuring a WordPress blog without SEO by Yoast plugin, you can use this module for generating a sitemap for WordPress site.

Also: Read more about Jetpack plugin here

What I don’t like about above plugins is: They don’t let us create the sitemap for images or videos. I believe this is one feature that the above-mentioned stand alone plugins should offer. Here are options for image sitemap and video sitemap plugin:

Conclusion: Which one you should use

If you are using SEO by Yoast plugin, then use the sitemap feature of that plugin only. If you are not using SEO by Yoast or need a free WordPress news sitemap plugin, use BWP GXS plugin.

If your scenario doesn’t fit above two plugins, then you should use Google XML site maps plugin. You should definitely use image and video sitemap plugin to generate an image and video sitemap and submit it to Webmaster tools.

Do remember, you just need one plugin for generating sitemap and it’s better to limit the number of WordPress plugins on your blog as too many plugins will slow down your blog.

Read: How many WordPress plugins are too many?

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Authored By
A Blogger, Author and a speaker! Harsh Agrawal is recognized as a leader in digital marketing and FinTech space. Fountainhead of ShoutMeLoud, and a Speaker at ASW, Hero Mindmine, Inorbit, IBM, India blockchain summit. Also, an award-winning blogger.

41 thoughts on “3 Best Sitemap Plugin For Your WordPress Blog”

  1. Mritunjay

    I use the free version of Yoast plugin for SEO. It is the best plugin for generating XML sitemap. Thanks for sharing this info.

  2. kajal

    Thank you for the guide however i’d like to ask you something, I’ve currently started some Blogger blogs, is it vital to construct sitemap for blogger? if yes then how do i start building it?

  3. Joseph Chikeleze

    Nice list of sitemap plugins. Am currently using yoast premium SEO plugin for my sitemap.

    Thanks

  4. Pawan Sahani

    I don’t want to install separate plugin on my blog to create sitemap. I use only Yoast SEO, I never faced any issue with this plugin.

  5. Jaswinder Kaur

    Thanks Harsh for this wonderful list of Sitemap WordPress Plugins.

    But I use Google Sitemap by BestWebSoft, it is good.

    It submits map to all search engines, but always my sitemap is pending.

    Anybody knows, why google is not crawling my site’s Pages?

  6. Ramzan Ullah

    Hi
    I was facing problem with Yoast SEO sitemap. I tried some others and finally i have installed Google Sitemap by BestWebSoft. which works best for me.

  7. Bill Patterson

    Is there any sitemap plugin that will allow pdf files to be listed too beside the site pages?

  8. Simaran Singh

    Hi @Harsh,
    Earlier I was using only Yoast SEO plugin, but after reading this great article, I tried “Udinra all image sitemap plugin” as my Blog is full of images.
    But, now when I go to Yoast SEO plugin, it is giving me a warning message
    “The following file(s) is/are blocking your XML sitemaps from working properly:
    /html/sitemap-image.xml
    Either delete them (this can be done with the “Fix it” button) or disable Yoast SEO XML sitemaps.”
    Please Guide me on this.

    1. Harsh Agrawal

      Hey Simram,

      Currently, there are two sitemaps which are created. One from Yoast and other from Udinra. You have to keep just one and disable the other.

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