WordPress Google XML Sitemaps Plugin Tutorial
WordPress Google XML Sitemaps Plugin Explained for WordPress SEO
WordPress Google XML Sitemaps Plugin is one of the most important WordPress plugins for website SEO. The importance of this WordPress plugin comes from the importance of its functionality as a sitemap for your WordPress Website.
This WordPress Google XML Sitemaps Tutorial will explain how to effectively use the WordPress plugin for optimum WordPress Website Optimization.
WordPress Google XML Sitemaps Plugin Options Tutorial
In this tutorial we will show each option in the WordPress Google XML Sitemaps Plugin and explain its functionality and the recommended usage.
First Option Manual Sitemap Rebuild and Search Engine Notification
Google XML Sitemaps Plugin allows for Manual Sitemap building and automated sitemap building as well as search engines notification. The following picture illustrates the display box for the plugin option.
As shown in the picture above Google XML Sitemaps shows the Last Build time for the xml sitemap and the zipped sitemap too. The plugin automatically notifies Google, Bing, and Ask search engines of the sitemap build time to allow them to crawl and index new changes. There is information about the sitemap build time in seconds. Building your sitemap should be less than one second unless you have a massive website that has many pages and posts it can take longer.
Google XML Sitemaps Basic Options
Here you can set many options that will affect how WordPress website sitemaps are built and if to notify search engines of changes or not. Heres a picture showing Basic options for Google XML Sitemaps Plugin.
- Sitemap File Creation : This gives an option to create XML sitemap file as well as zipped sitemap file, both should be checked for better crawling resluts.
- Building Mode : Allows the user to choose weither to allow manual and automatic rebuild of the sitemaps when the content of the WordPress Website is changed.
- Update Notification : Here the user can choose to notify search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing, and Ask when the website sitemap is rebuilt.
- Advanced Options : The advanced options offer to bump up the newer posts to the top of the sitemap, set execution time and memory limits for the sitemap building, Enable MySQL standard mode, allow building the sitemap in background so you do not have to wait when saving an new page or post.
Additional Pages Option
In the additional pages option you can add adittional pages to include in the website sitemap that are not included in the WordPress Website. If you have static HTML Pages seperate from the WordPress website then you should add those pages here. The following shows this option box for the Google XML Sitemaps Plugin.
Sitemap Contents and Excluded Items Google XML Sitemap Option
This option is very important and should be taken with care before choosing the options. If your website uses tags as keywords or archives old content or has author pages, etc. Choosing the correct options for the WordPress website can be tricky. Make sure you know what you want search engines to see in your website. In the below picture posts, pages, and homepage are included only. Click the last modification time to tell search engine crawlers that the website sitemap have changed.
If you want to exclude any pages from the website sitemap, WordPress Google XML Sitemap Plugin allows the user to exclude any pages that the user do not want to include in the website sitemap.
Post Priority and Sitemap Location
Here the WordPress XML Sitemaps Plugin can give priority to posts in terms of the number of comments for each post. Posts will be reordered according to the comment count in the sitemap. Choose the second or third option if you have comments enabled on the WordPress Website, otherwise choose the first option.
Location of the sitemap file is can be set to be detected automatically or manually if the sitemap file location is not in the root directory (http://www.Your Domain.com/sitemap.xml). See picture below.
The Last WordPress Google XML Sitemaps Plugin Options
The last WordPress XML Sitemaps Plugin Options are to choose change frequency and priorities. Every WordPress websites has its own settings for this option. Those options are only recommendations for search engine crawlers on how frequently the should visit the WordPress Website for changes. Search engines will have their own schedule, but its highly recommended to have reasonable change frequency values to recommend for busy search engine crawlers.
