sitemap xml wordpress. XML generation for import into wordpress - creating a satellite

If you have installed the Google XML Sitemaps plugin for your WordPress site and want to learn more about installing, configuring and using it, then this article will help you find answers to frequently asked questions.

Google XML Sitemaps is one of the most popular plugins for WordPress site, for this reason many users have some questions regarding the use of the plugin. Let's look at everything in order.

General questions regarding XML Sitemaps

• What is a Google Sitemap? Basically, a Google Sitemap is a file that contains URLs and Additional information for all pages or documents on your site. Google and other search engines can read this file and add certain pages to their index.
• How can I create a Google Sitemap for my WordPress blog? it main function Google Sitemap plugin for WordPress. It is easy to install and will generate a sitemap containing all the pages of a WordPress site.
• How will Google Sitemap affect my rankings and positions in SERPs? There is no evidence that Google Sitemaps directly affect the ranking of a site. However, a map can help Google index and crawl your pages better and faster. All this will inevitably lead to more complete indexing of pages.

Questions about installing Google XML Sitemaps

• How to install the plugin? Just install it like you would any other WordPress plugin. The easiest way to install a sitemap is by using the "Add Plugin" feature in WordPress. Read about it separately.
  If a given function is not available for some reason, you can download it to your computer and upload it to your server. You don't need to change anything in the web server configuration, file permissions, or upload any other files.
• Do I need to change any settings? The default settings are suitable for most blogs. Don't be afraid to change priorities, change frequency, or sitemap content. If you ever need to reset your settings to default, click the button at the end of the settings page.

Overview of Google XML Sitemaps Settings

Website update notifications - google setting XML sitemaps:

• Google Blog Update Notification: This is a Google notification setting that will fire every time a new post is posted or an old one is edited. Google will receive a sitemap, which will possibly speed up the indexing of your new post in the shortest possible time.
• Tell Bing about blog updates: These are Bing notification settings. Since Yahoo is powered by Bing, your posts should also appear on Yahoo soon.
• Adding a Sitemap URL to : If you activate the plugin to add your sitemap URL in the robots.txt file, this will allow search engines that do not support notifications, such as Baidu or Yandex, to find the sitemap. The sitemap is generated by WordPress, so make sure the robots.txt file is saved in your blog folder!

Google XML Sitemaps settings look something like this:

Advanced options:

• Try increasing the amount of memory. This option should generally not be needed in most cases, but if you ever get a memory error when requesting a sitemap, you can try increasing the limit here.
• Enable XSLT styles: Typically an XML sitemap looks like this: XML document, which is difficult to read, for a person. The plugin comes with a special style that makes it more readable. Just use the default plugin to use the style, or enter the full URL with your own if you want to use it. Please make sure it is in the same directory!
• Move sitemap base URL: Use this option if you want the sitemap to appear in the root directory of your domain if WordPress is installed in a subdirectory.
• Include sitemap in HTML format: If this option is activated, the plugin will also generate a sitemap in HTML format. This can be useful for bots that don't understand the XML standard.
• Allow anonymous statistics: This option will send some anonymous information to the plugin author. The following data will be sent by the plugin: WordPress version, PHP versions, language, number of posts in your blog (in steps of 50) and a unique string to avoid duplicates. Why is this needed? The author can optimize the plugin for the most commonly used WordPress/PHP versions and improve translations for the most common languages. The plugin will never send anything personal, such as your blog URL, title, name, or email address.

Additional pages:

• Here you can specify files or URLs that should be included in the sitemap but do not belong to your blog. For example, if your domain is www.foo.com and your blog is at www.foo.com/blog you can include your page at www.foo.com
  Note: If your blog is in a subdirectory and you want to add pages that are not in or under the blog directory, you must place the sitemap file in the root directory.

Page priority messages:

• Do not use automatic priority calculation: All messages will have the same priority on the site. It can be defined according to the "Priorities" function.
• Comment graphs: Uses the number of comments to calculate the priority of the posts.
• Medium comment: Uses the number of comments to calculate the priority of posts. Base calculation - the average number of comments per post.

Site map content:

• WordPress standard content: Check the items you want to include in the sitemap.
• Custom taxonomies: Check out any custom taxonomies you would like to include.
• Include last modification time: This will add the last modified date for all your map entries. Search engines can use this information to return to the page again if it has changed. It is highly recommended that this option be enabled.

Exclude items:

• Exclusion of categories: If you exclude a category here, entries from that category will not appear in the xml file.
• Exclude entries: Use this option to exclude certain site entries. You must enter a post ID. Separate messages with commas. can be found in a dedicated article.

Change frequency / priorities:

• Change Frequencies: With this setting, you can give search engines a hint of how often the content of your pages changes.
• Priorities: with this setting you can give search engines a hint how important your blog content is . This value is always assigned in relation to all other pages on your blog, so set all values ​​to not be high (= 1.0) which doesn't make any sense.

Other Features of Google XML Sitemaps

Directing the sitemap to the root domain:

If your blog is in a sub-directory (example.com/blog/~~pobj) the sitemap will be generated at example.com/blog/sitemap.xml~~pobj. If you want to move the site to example.com/sitemap.xml~~V, please enter "http://example.com/blog/" under "Override Base URL from Sitemap" on the plugin settings page and add the following rule to .htaccess file under root domain:

Rewrite Engine On
RewriteRule ^ (sitemaps - + ( +))?.? \xml(.\gz)$/your-blogdir/sitemap$1.xml$2[L]

Replace "your-blogdir" with the name of the subdirectory of your WordPress installation.

Common Google XML Sitemaps Issues and Errors

Google Webmaster Tools show information about indexed pages:

Sometimes you may have issues with a sitemap that shows multiple sitemap pages in "view" but not as "indexed". Or perhaps the number of indexed pages will be less than the submitted urls. We recommend that you check the following:

• Check if the site URL is correct. Google differentiates between HTTP/HTTPS, WWW/non-WWW, root/subfolder. So if you blog at http://www.blog.com/ make sure you add http://www.blog.com/ to Google Webmaster Tools, and http://www.blog.com/ sitemap.xml sitemap.
• The site's sitemap does not have errors, but the sitemap may contain warnings, such as if your site was loading slowly when Google tried to crawl it.
• If the sitemap contains links to pages that are not available, try searching for them in WordPress. The plugin reads all posts that are published and do not have passwords. If something appears in your sitemap, then it is in your WordPress database.
• Statistics in Google Webmaster Tools, are not real-time data. They are for informational purposes only. Use the "site:" operator in Google search to find which pages of your blog are actually currently being indexed. It can take hours or even days for the data to get into Google Webmaster until the new URLs appear as being indexed, but in fact they are already included in the search results.

Google Webmaster Tools: "Missing XML Tags" reports.

This usually happens if Google reads the sitemap without any content. Check the sitemap and see if there are any URLs inside. If not, please try the following:

• If externals.xml is the problem. Have you added any external pages? If so, please check that the URL for each is correct. Also make sure there is no blank line in the "Additional Pages" section of the plugin's settings page. Also try to save all the settings again using the "Update Settings" button at the end of the page.
• If the sitemap problem is archives.xml. If you don't have any posts (only pages), you can disable "Enable Archives" to fix this issue.

Google Webmaster Tools says "Invalid XML" or browser says error on line X-X in column 6.

An XML declaration is only allowed at the beginning of a document. Please open the sitemap in a browser and select " Source". Is there a blank line or spaces before the XML tag? This is problem. Your RSS feeds may not be working either. What is RSS possible. The reason for this problem is new line or spaces in another plugin or your theme's functions.php file. Make sure the functions.php file ends with ?> and there is no blank line or spaces after it. If this does not work, try disabling other plugins one by one to find the malicious one.

Google Webmaster Tools, 404 Not Found report for sitemap.

• Check your permanent WordPress settings and click the save button.
• If you are using Nginx as your web server, please add rewrite rules manually. They should be presented on the Plugins page of the settings.
• If you are using W3 Total Cache and have the "Do not handle 404 errors for static objects with WordPress" feature "under Browser Cache" enabled, please add the rules below to make "404 errors, exception list":
  * sitemaps [a-z0-9 _ \ -] * \ (XML | XSL | HTML). (.\gz)?
  New versions of W3 Total Cache (> 0.9.4) already include fixes.

My XML Sitemap is not updating

Are you sure about this? Since version 4, the plugin uses new format for site. The main sitemap (sitemap.xml) has only one entry per month for posts. Click the current month you will be able to see the actual posts. You will probably also find your new publication there.

In general, the Google XML Sitemaps settings are quite simple, but the plugin, according to its purpose, plays a huge role when working with search engines. Ignoring creating XML maps can adversely affect the promotion of the site in the future.

In order for the site to be indexed by search engines more efficiently, you need to make a WordPress sitemap xml. The technology has been used for a long time and search engines like it when such a sitemap is present in the files. In the article we will analyze how to create it and properly configure it.

What is an XML sitemap

To give a definition and answer the question of what an xml map is, I will visually show how it looks.

What does the map look like visually?

This is a list with sections by the date they were published in WordPress, or modified. Each section contains the URLs added in the given period..xml.

Search robots, if there is an xml sitemap in WordPress, go there and look at which pages have been added or changed, rather than starting to sort through all the blog posts in a row and take all the entries into the index again.

Where is the sitemap in wordpress

On any resource running on WordPress, the file should be located at your-domain.ru/sitemap.xml . There shouldn't be any other way.

Why is this the way, because in most cases access to folders like wp-content are closed from indexing different ways, for example, through robots. Therefore, we place it in the first-level directory, that is, immediately after the domain url.

We create an automatic sitamap for Yandex and Google with a plugin

The correct solution is Google XML sitemap Generator, don't look at the name, it alone creates an automatic and correct sitemap for everyone on WordPress search engines. Go to the panel in the search for plugins and look for standard method.

Google XML Sitemap Generator

Install and activate, go to the settings section.

Disabling unnecessary items

In chapter Basic settings remove all checkboxes:

• The first two will be marked, they notify the search engines of the changes made. You shouldn't do this, it's better to manually send links to webmasters' accounts
• The third checkbox will say that a new Robots will be added and will make an adjustment. I do not recommend doing this, follow the recommendations from the article about
• Disable include sitemap in HTML format. He will make his own, but for other robots, it is not valid and carries the danger of a coverage error

We remove the priority

We go down below and configure the rest of the parameters.

1. Disable automatic detection priority, no need to put some articles above others
2. If the resource is well promoted by headings, then you can turn them on, I uncheck

Link

This completes the setup, and let's move on to other methods for creating XML in the WordPress engine.

How to create a Sitemap with YoastSEO and All in one SEO pack

There are two great tools out there, YoastSEO and All in One SEO Pack, both of which can generate sitemaps.

I will warn you right away, the page created by these two plugins will be supported only by Google, Yandex will display the message “errors found in sitemap files”. I strongly recommend using the first method.

Yoast SEO

In YoastSEO, it is enough to do one operation, enter the General section > Features tab and move the switch to the ON position.

Inclusion in Yoast

Instantly, the generator will create a virtual document and you can go to the address that was shown earlier.

All in one SEO pack

To be included in the All in one SEO pack, activate the corresponding module. Go to the AIOSP menu in the modules section and activate it.

Module in AIOSP

Turn off taxonomies

We were able to create xml on , but I do not advise you to use the first method. To better illustrate the process, I will attach the author's video.

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We enter an XML map into Yandex and remove the error “there are no sitemap files used by the robot”

The next step is to add the xml to the webmaster yandex in order to remove the error “there are no sitemap files used by the robot”, this is how it looks in the panel.

We will show the Yandex search engine where to get the document.

1. Go to the webmaster's office in the section Indexing > Sitemap
2. Enter the address of the card in the field
3. Click Add
4. We see that the url has been added to processing, if the process goes well, then the next day a letter will come with congratulations or with a mistake

How to Customize a WordPress Map Using an Online Generator

In cases where a WordPress resource is made as static, that is, it does not change. It makes sense to make a sitemap using an online generator and upload it to the server yourself.

Plus the way that we do without a plugin, minus - when adding new pages, the file will have to be uploaded to the server.

My sitemap generator service

Smart service mysitemapgenerator , go in and enter the site URL. Provides free processing of 1000 entries.

Online service

I will leave the parameters by default, optionally enter an e-mail to receive the result by mail. Download the document after the end of the process.

Downloading the completed map

A document with an incomprehensible name will come, rename it to the proper form.

Rename

Upload to server

After that, we send it to Yandex Webmaster for verification and wait for processing. There is an analogue, this is the xml-sitemaps online generator, the principle of action is the same. As a result, we were able to create a sitemap in WordPress and upload it bypassing the search engine. Good luck!

In effective indexing of a site, especially if it is still quite “young”, it is required to use the so-called site map. This is a simple text file in XML format, which contains all available, based on the settings, resource links. They inform search bots about the priority of links, their refresh rate, date and location. This is an important part of working on a site, so let's look at a few plugins for creating a WordPress sitemap.

The sitemap was first introduced in June 2005 by Google Corporation. Since then, and to this day, all search engines support it, as mentioned above, for better and easier indexing and crawling of the resource. But you also need to understand that it doesn't affect rankings. And if the question arises: “Does it have to be?”. The answer is no. The site without it will still work and get into the index, but with certain difficulties.

The fact is that Sitemap XML makes it much easier for bots to find site URLs and understand their structure. It serves as a navigation for search engines and the collection of technical data such as updates, dates, and so on. Let's tackle our selection of Sitemap plugins.

Dynamic Sitemap.xml

One moment... Before moving on to the next step, I'll be clear about the physical sitemap.xml or sitemap.xml.gz files at the root of the site. All this is an outdated format. For some time now, all plugins of this category have moved to a new level. They use a dynamic sitemap that doesn't require manual file creation as was the case before.

The map file is created virtually, that is, you only need to install the necessary plugin, configure it as you wish, and see the result. But be sure to indicate the address of the card. Example - http://site.ru/sitemap.xml

It is one of the most popular SEO plugins with large quantity different parameters and with additional modules. One of these is the sitemap, which is connected on the tab "All in One SEO Pack - Module Management". The settings contain all the important details, from priority to the choice of records for indexing.

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Official video of Sitemap settings example

Warning! No need to create a sitemap with several plugins at the same time. One more suitable option of your choice is enough. Whether it is a separate plugin or an additional module, but only that it is used alone. AT otherwise there may be a conflict and incorrect work.

Yoast SEO

The second plugin is also from the SEO category and is also very popular. In it, the map is included on the tab "SEO - Dashboard - Features - Advanced settings pages". After that, new functions will appear in the main menu.

One of the very first, at the present time, popular plugins that generates a Sitemap. It lacks any other tools, it does only one task - it creates a sitemap. It is stable and will not affect the load and speed of the site in any way.

How to add a sitemap to search engines

After you generate the map, make all the necessary settings, check its availability, we will only have to add it in the search engine webmaster's office.

Yandex. We go to the office at the link https://webmaster.yandex.ru. Log in and select your site. On the left in the panel, open the tab "Indexing - Sitemaps". At the top of the page is a line for specifying the address of the card. We register and click the "Add" button.

Google. We go to the master's office http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/ under your login, select your site. On the toolbar on the left, open the "Crawling - Sitemaps" tab. At the top there is an add button, you need to click on it and enter the address.

bing. Opening the webmaster's office https://www.bing.com/toolbox/webmaster, you can enter under accounts Microsoft. Select your site and click on the tab "Site settings - Sitemap" on the left panel. At the top there is also a line where you need to enter the address and click on the "Send" button.

It is foolish to hope that the site will independently take positions in the top search engines. To do this, you need to create favorable conditions!

Today, I want to talk really about an important setting that ranks 2nd among technical errors sites. But before moving on to reading the article further, make sure that you have - by the way, this mistake takes an honorable 3rd place.

Research conducted by the Ingate Development team

Search robots visit web resource only for a limited, very short time, so it makes sense that they only index the pages they need.

Of course, sooner or later they will most likely find and index important pages, but it's all about speed! During this time, your content can be stolen, since the site, the text on which is indexed first, is considered the primary source. Therefore, our task is to facilitate the work of robots as much as possible. After all, they may not reach some pages. for a long time or not to find them at all, but this will not happen with the sitemap file!

How to make a sitemap for wordpress?

You can create a sitemap.xml with online generators, but why, if for most CMS there are solutions.

After installation, go to the tab General, chapter Capabilities and include the XML sitemap. After that, a sitemap will be created for all pages and sections.

In the settings, you can exclude sections and prohibit individual pages from being indexed, that is, they will be excluded from the sitemap.

For example, in the tab Display in search results, chapter Archives, you can exclude the archives of authors and by date, thereby avoiding duplicates.

And in the plugin settings, when creating an article, you can enable or disable the display of the article in the search results. The sitemap will automatically adjust to your choice.

In general, this is a topic for a separate article! The plugin covers a wide range of SEO settings that are necessary when promoting a site.

How to add a sitemap file to Yandex and Google webmaster?

Although the sitemap address is written in robots.txt and search robots will find it over time, I advise you to inform the search giants about it yourself.

Yandex Webmaster

Login to your account and open the tab Indexing and click on the section below.

Enter the address, then click the Add button.

Add/verify Google sitemap

Go to Search Console - Google Webmaster, tab Scanning, the section highlighted in the picture below:

In the right upper corner click add / check the file, then paste the location address and click send.

I hope I was able to help you understand the importance and setup of sitemap.xml for your web project.

For those who still have questions - Welcome to the comments! I will try to understand and help in solving your problem.

Post navigation

Good afternoon, dear readers of the blog site. Today I decided to tell you about the Google XML Sitemaps plugin, which helps to improve mutual understanding between you and it is difficult to imagine a webmaster in the current realities who would neglect such an opportunity.

It's no secret that modern projects on the Internet are aimed at maximizing the attraction of new readers to their resource. This plugin just helps them in this, which in automatic mode updates the sitemap.xml file when new articles are added to your site.

Let's take a closer look at how to install this plugin and how correct setting Google XML Sitemaps will allow you to increase the indexing speed of your articles, and this is a very important point in blogging.

So, to install this plugin, go to the WordPress admin panel and in the "Plugins" tab (1) click "Add New" (2).

On the page that opens, in the "Search Plugins" field, enter Google XML Sitemaps and press "Enter".

As a result of the search, click the "Install" button as shown in the picture below.

After a few seconds, you will see that the plugin has been successfully installed. Click on the active field that says "Activate Plugin".

This completes the installation. As you can see, the search and activation of the plugin are similar to the plugins that I talked about and. If you haven't read these articles yet, please read them! I think they will be useful to you.

Customizing Google XML Sitemaps

To customize this plugin for yourself, go to the "Plugins" tab and click "Settings" in its descriptions.

Basic parameters

In the window that opens, in the menu "Basic parameters" there are 6 submenus.

Let's take a closer look at what exactly each of them means.

• The first two paragraphs indicate that you agree to the notification of search engines Google systems and Bing about changes to your blog.
• The third item allows you to add the sitemap address to the virtual . To be honest, I still didn’t fully understand what it was for, and on the Internet there are two opinions that you need to leave it active and uncheck it. They are due to the fact that by default this item is active, I decided to join the first group of users and did not change anything.
• The next two items "Try to increase the memory limit" and "Try to increase the usage time limit" are needed to reduce the load on your site. Basically it can be useful for people with a lot of articles, pictures, videos and audios. These settings are made individually for each project, by changing which you can harm your article indexing. I would advise you to leave this point unattended.
• Item "Try to automatically compress the sitemap…." I also leave inactive.
• The next item "Include sitemap in HTML" allows you to make your sitemap available in HTML format.
• Last item this menu"Allow anonymous statistics" allows anonymous sending of statistics without transferring personal data. I have banned it.

Additional pages

The next menu with the fewest settings is "Additional Pages".

It allows you to add third-party pages to your sitemap, that is, not belonging to your blog.

Article Priorities

Next up is the Article Priorities menu.

I advise you to select the first option, as this means that no article posted on your site will receive priority in the process of placing it in the XML map. In fact, priority is not of any decisive importance in indexing, and the calculation of the number of comments will only create an extra load on your server.

• Here we tick off those types of pages that will fall into your map. By default, the program selects the first three items. I would advise you to check the box next to the fourth line "Enable categories". This is because category pages are an additional entry point for visitors from search engines. It would be foolish to refuse them. Is not it?
• The last item is “Include the last….” adds date and time recent changes to the records. Search engines use this information to make timely changes to the pages they provide.

excluded categories

The next section is "Excluded categories".

In this paragraph, you can exclude any categories from created map or individual articles by entering their identifier separated by commas in the bottom field.

Let me remind you that you can see the ID by going to the “Posts” menu in the WordPress admin panel. Further, by hovering over the article you need, in the lower left corner of your browser, you will see the numeric identifier you are interested in.

Change Frequencies

Next menu « Change frequencies.

It allows you to set the frequency of crawling your content by search robots. Most of all I liked the honesty and openness of the developers this service. They indicate in the cap that setpoints are not a priority for search engines. This means that despite the given values, search engines will visit your pages at the time they want.

Priorities

Well, the last item of the settings is “Priorities”.

Here you can set priorities from 0 to 1 for each item. At home, I did not touch anything and left it by default.

This completes the configuration of this service, click "Update Settings" and do not forget to add Sitemap.xml to the search engines. How to do this I will tell in one of the following articles. So don't miss out on her release.

I'll probably finish for today. If you have any questions, do not be shy - write in the comments.

Video "How to Install and Configure the Google XML Sitemaps Plugin"

In the video, I tell everything in detail and show it with a specific example. So I wish you a pleasant, and most importantly - useful viewing. And I also recommend subscribing to our youtube channel, there are a lot of interesting things!

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I wonder how you create a sitemap? Share your experience!

Anton Kalmykov