One of the first things you need to do after creating a new website is to create XML Sitemap file for the site. In simplest words, an XML file that contains list of links (URL of published articles on the site). It also contains other important metadata about the links. The XML file is not for human but it’s a way to notify search engine such as Google, Bing, Yahoo or other search engine about what’s happening to your site.
Creating the XML Sitemap for your site is very easy. There are many XML sitemap generators available. Luckily, for WordPress, there are some good plugins available to help you create the sitemap for your site.
In this article, we’ll share you two of the best plugins.
Google XML Sitemaps plugin
This is one of my favorite plugins. Google XML Sitemaps plugin has been downloaded more than 11 million times and the plugin author do a very good job in maintaining the plugin.
The plugin comes a settings page that has lots of options to configure. However, the default settings should be good for most sites. In other words, you only need to install and activate the plugin and you’re ready to go.
WordPress SEO
If you’re WordPress SEO user, this plugin already comes with this feature. However, it’s not activated by default and you need to enable it from the settings page.
Similar to Google XML Sitemaps plugin, you may also configure the settings for this XML feature. However, the default settings should be good and work for most sites.
Should you use Google XML Sitemaps plugin if you already use WordPress SEO plugin? Well, you certainly don’t have to. However, for some reasons, few people have a hard time with the XML Sitemaps feature in the WordPress SEO plugin. Therefore, they might want to use Google XML Sitemaps plugin instead.
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