Google (XML) Sitemaps Generator for WordPress

Last updated on December 15, 2009. Tags: ,

While I frequently encounter XML sitemaps in various SEO blogs and other resources, I was at first skeptical on using one myself despite the fact that Google itself highly recommends it. My point is that why would I need a sitemap, and an XML sitemap for that, when my site is structured in a way that all pages can be traced through a network of internal links.

I stumble upon this plugin while looking for means to make my site more search engine friendly. One particular feature of this plugin that made me decide to use it is its ability to auto update whenever you made a new post. Meaning, there's no need to manually edit the XML sitemap, the plugin adds a link to the new post when that post is published.

So I decided to upload this plugin to my hosting, installed it, and followed the rest of the instructions in the 'read me' file. Then, I configured how it works using the new XML-Sitemap feature under the Settings tab in WordPress Dashboard. Finally, I included the sitemap in my Google Webmaster tool account. These are what I pretty much do in all my sites that use this plugin,

To my surpise, Google quickly index every new blog post I made. When I still don't have this sitemap plugin, new posts takes around 5 days or more before getting indexed by Google, but with this plugin, Google can index a new post within 24 hours. For example, that post about auto generated robots.txt can now be found in Google. I just published it yesterdays

The plugin can be downloaded here:  Google (XML) Sitemaps Generator for WordPress. It was developed by Arne Brachhold. I don't have the money for now so I'll just pass some link love.

Despite the name, it's useful not only in getting indexed by Google, but also by Yahoo, MSN/Bing and Ask.com, though I just checked Yahoo, Ask and Bing, and apparently, my new post yesterday about robots.txt is not yet indexed by those search engines. I'm not sure if the plugin is just more efficient in Google, or there are times when other search engines indexed my new posts faster than Google. I didn't do any comprehensive study of this plugin's behavior (and no plan to do it for now anyway).

For most of the websites that I develop, this plugin works perfectly fine and therefore, there's no need for tweaks and hacks so I won't be discussing any.

Posted by Greten on October 3, 2009 under WordPress plugins

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