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. Palash

    Hi,
    Recently I have started blogging. I am using Google XML sitemap plugin. I have submitted site on my webmaster tools in a few days ago, but it was not index till now. So what can I do?

  2. Pervez

    Hi,

    I want to configure priority in sitemap manually, for example set priority 90% for pages, 50% for categories, 80% for stores etc. It is quite importent for our site. Do you know which plugin allow me this.

  3. Sreekant

    Hi Harsh,

    You have written some incredible list of plugins. But.. I have a doubt in my mind…I just wanted to know, if we should copy each of the sitemap xml created by Yoast plugin like for the posts, pages.. and put that in the google webmaster for Google to crawl over our new posts.

    Best wishes
    Sreekant

    1. Harsh Agrawal

      @Esha
      In what case one should use mobile sitemap plugin? As in majority of the cases we don’t need any mobile sitemap. Here is what Joh muller have said for the same

      That SEO tool is wrong, you don’t need – and shouldn’t have! – a mobile sitemap if your site doesn’t have a feature-phone (WAP/WML, etc) version. If your site is responsive and works well on smartphones, that’s enough for us (if you use one of the other methods, make sure to follow those instructions separately). Feel free to point them at this thread, if they need more information.

  4. Sweta Mishra

    Hey Harsh can i ask you what sitemap plugin you are using for Shoutmeloud? because i’m pretty confused about my site’s appearance in google since i’m using seo by yoast.

    1. Harsh Agrawal

      @Sweta
      Now, I’m using sitemap feature of SEO by yoast.

      1. Sweta Mishra

        Okey thanks.. i am using the second one.

  5. AnhThien8

    Did any issue if I disable WordPress SEO XML function and using GG XML sitemap instead ?

    1. Harsh Agrawal

      It won’t have any negative issue. You can do that.

  6. Sachin calicut

    Hi , i was searching for a better Sitemap plugin and reached here ,the yoast plugin create site maps URL like site.com/sitemap_index.xml , is that cause any issues ?

  7. Faust

    Several blogs that I have few plugins installed, I have WordPress SEO Yoast disabled, other plugins that are cpu instensive. I believe this would increase server load in the cpanel backend. just a thought imho

  8. Keith Davis

    Hi Harsh
    I’m a Yoast SEO plugin man so I use the XML sitemap function that is part of the plugin.

    I’m well pleased with the SEO results and the sitemap function.

  9. Jaqueline Smith

    Hey Harsh,

    Thanks for the guide but i’d like to ask you something, I’ve recently started some Blogger blogs, is it necessary to build sitemap for blogger? if yes then how do i start building it?

  10. Bappy

    To be honest, I yet have a long way to go to get to know WordPress properly. But right now I think my favorite plugin would be WordPress SEO by Yoast! This is incredibly powerful to help someone find out if there is any big SEO mistakes he has made.

    1. Harsh Agrawal

      That’s true Bappy, SEO by yoast is indeed one great plugin.Thanks for dropping by and for your comment.

  11. Nilantha Jayawardhana

    Very useful post. Thanks..

    I used Google XML sitemaps for my blog. After 2 days, there are warnings “high response time”. Then I created a sitemap from an online sitemap generator and it is working. No errors.

    Now, I submitted a sitemap using Yoast SEO. I have submitted 3 sitemap for one blog. Is it good, bad or useless?

    1. Harsh Agrawal

      Since you have dynamic sitemap using SEO by yoast, it’s not a problem.

  12. Mustafa Gaziani

    Hi Harsh,

    You have mentioned a great plugin to build sitemap. I’m using this plugin too as this plugin has lot of more feature for SEO as well. This plugin automatically create sitemap which is best option for those people who don’t have focus on sitemap.

    Google XML sitemap is also a best plugin to use for making sitemap.

    Thanks for sharing.
    Keep it up 🙂

  13. Mohit

    Is there a plugin, where a sitemap can be displayed based on category segregation / paginated…

    1. Harsh Agrawal

      @Mohit
      Are you referring to HTML Sitemap which is created for readers? I would rather suggest to create an Archive page for this purpose.

  14. Siraj Mahmood

    Hello @Harash
    Today I got your new post newsletter, After read this one post Some things came on front. Every Blogger and site owner should need a optimize sitemap that contains simply URL and Secondly important thing is Frequency which will tell to Bot when they crawl this URL, It should be a same time or specific time Such as Daily, Weekly,Yearly, Hourly. Because some unknown or newbies don’t focus on it. This can lead to be a big disaster with your blog because some other black hat sites can copy your data before crawl your page this thing generate duplicate content in search engine. But this option does’t exist in Yoast Seo For wordpress, That,s why I’m using Google Sitemap for WordPress for my blog.

    1. Harsh Agrawal

      @Siraj
      Wow that was quite an addition and you added a valuable point on setting up the priority. That was a good comparison between SEO by yoast and XML sitemap and Yoast should add priority feature to make his sitemap module more feature rich. Though I couldn’t find much detail about importance of setting priority on official Google page here. This is what they have to say:

      Describes the priority of a URL relative to all the other URLs on the site. This priority can range from 1.0 (extremely important) to 0.1 (not important at all).
      Does not affect your site’s ranking in Google search results. Because this value is relative to other pages on your site, assigning a high priority (or specifying the same priority for all URLs) will not help your site’s search ranking. In addition, setting all pages to the same priority will have no effect.

      Adding more to it, in WordPress this is typically not a major issue just because WordPress uses Ping services to notify about new posts. Usually search engine picks up new content based on ping-services and this works great when someone follow a publishing schedule. As this way search engine bots follow a pattern to come and visit your blog for new content.

      You might like to check out this list of Ping-services for WordPress: https://www.shoutmeloud.com/wordpress-ping-list.html

  15. Karan Bhagat

    Hello Harsh Sir
    You have mentioned WordPress SEO by Yoast for this purpose. I am totally confused between two plugins i.e WordPress SEO by yoast and All In One SEO pack. Can you please suggest me which one to use not only in terms of Sitemap but in other point of views as well.

  16. Yogesh Patel

    Hello Harsh,

    Nice List but I have a question related to Google XML Sitemap plugin. Recent updated version arranges sitemap in monthly sitemaps archive. I am person who generally republish older posts again. So, how will the plugin adjusts with that? Any side-effects?

    1. Harsh Agrawal

      @Yogesh
      I believe it will add the updated post link at the top of sitemap, this is what I have seen. They also have last updated timestamp which is again useful for search engine to recrawl old content and find the updated time. To answer your question, there are no side-effects.

  17. Anuj Sharma

    Hi Harsh,

    One of my friend told me about Yoast News features two days back, and this article came to me as a confirmation. It’s seems to me like that you were hearing the conversation, and wanted to help me with my doubts (Smile).

    Alright, so the query is this. If someone is already using Yoast Free version and the site has all type of content both news and general articles. What would you suggest (a.) Upgrade to the News Plug-in of Yoast (b.) Get the BWP GXS one

    Also, suppose if one goes with the News Plugin of Yoast would it have other features which would support the general articles?

    Your help will be much appreciated.

    Best wishes,
    Anuj

  18. Prem Krishnan P

    Hi ,
    Google XML site map new version has awesome features. It categorize the site , Post & page separately. I have downloaded the new version of Google XML sitemap a few days back for my new website.

    1. Dan

      I think we use the same one…. “Google XML Sitemap Generator” https://wordpress.org/plugins/www-xml-sitemap-generator-org/

      We use Yoast as well, but we prefer the dedicated sitemap plugin features, so we just submit this sitemap to google instead of the yoast one.

      If you’re serious about SEO and want to customise your sitemap this is certainly one of the better options.

      the new version also included support for custom posts and editing your robots.txt file. The custom posts was a really nice feature to have and one that we had longed for.

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