Adding a sitemap onto your site makes it much easier for search engines to crawl through your website and see what kind of content you are producing. You can also make it easier for search engines such as Google to find your website by adding your sitemap right onto Google Webmaster Tools. This will get the content on your site not only found easier, but also faster.
WordPress SEO by Yoast
The first thing you want to do, is download WordPress SEO by Yoast. This is a plugin that allows you to see how well your content is ranked for Search Engine Optimization (SEO), make a custom title and description for your post/page that shows up on search engines, creates a site map for your site, and a variety of other options as well.
After you have activated WordPress SEO by Yoast, an orange tab that says “SEO” will appear on the side bar of WordPress right under the settings tab. Hover over this, and you will get a variety of options- “Dashboard”, “Titles & Metas”, “Social”, “XML Sitemaps”, etc. Click on the link that says “XLM sitemaps.
At the top of the page you are brought to, you want to check the box that says “Check this box to enable XML site-map functionality”. Directly below this, you will see “You will find your XML site-map here:”, with a gray box that says “XML Sitemap”. Click on this box.
You are then brought to a new page that lists the different site maps for your website. Browse through these and find which one is the most current one and also has all of your information in it as well. You want to copy the link to the sitemap you wish to have on Google Webmaster Tools.
Google Webmaster Tools
Log into your Google Webmaster Tools dashboard, you will see the three main options available- “Crawl Errors”, Search Queriers”, & “Sitemaps”. Click on “Sitemaps”, and then click on the red button that says “Add/Test Sitemap”. You will then have the option to paste the link to the sitemap you copied earlier. After you submit your link, it will take Google a few minutes to confirm the sitemap. Give it some time, and if it doesn’t go through refresh the page. If you have any problems with the link you submitted, you can test a new link or simply submit the link you already tried once more.
