A sitemap is essentially a machine-readable table of contents for your site. It tells Google what you have on your site and helps them find everything.
Usually search engines crawl from link-to-link. So in order for search engines to find all your pages, they would all have to be linked together – which they are not, natively.
In order for search engines to find all your pages- you can submit a sitemap.
Note: It is best practices to be intentional and clear about your navigation and linking.
To Create a Sitemap in WordPress
If you are using the SEO Plugin that we recommend – SEO for WordPress by Yoast – the sitemap is created for you by default. The address, by default will be:
yourdomain.com/sitemap_index.xml
To Add your Sitemap to Google Search Console
- Log into https://www.Google.com/webmaster with your google username and password.
- Select your site from the list (if there’s a list)
- Click “Crawl”
- Click “Sitemaps”
- Enter the sitemap URL
Conclusion
Is this the most important piece of SEO? No – not by a long ways. But it is one more thing that you’ve likely heard and can easily do in a few seconds. AND a sitemap by Yoast is set-it and forget-it!
Gotta love that!
Video Explanation of Sitemaps
& Submitting them to Google Search Console
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