Few parts of a WordPress site matter as much as its sitemap. Search engines read it to discover what to crawl, and a dedicated plugin keeps that file of URLs current, which speeds up indexing once Google and others receive it.
Put it near the top of your to-do list once a new WordPress site is live.
After the setup, new pages show up in the sitemap on their own, so there is no list to maintain by hand. Your only job is to submit the sitemap once in Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools and any other search engine you care about.
Posts are not the whole story. If your blog has images or videos, they deserve a sitemap too, and well-optimized images in particular can bring in a lot of visitors.
Below is a round-up of the best sitemap WordPress plugins for getting your content indexed quickly.
Leading Sitemap Plugins for WordPress
| Product | Best for | Price | Rating | Active installs |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Yoast SEO | Free + paid | 4.8/5 | 10M+ | |
| Google XML Sitemaps | Free | 4.8/5 | 1M+ | |
| All in One SEO Pack | Free + paid | 4.7/5 | 2M+ | |
| Sitemap Generator | Free + paid | 3.7/5 | 3,000+ |
WordPress SEO by Yoast
WordPress SEO by Yoast ranks among the top SEO plugins available for WordPress. It covers the whole SEO job in one package: site-wide settings, on-page work and the sitemap are all handled without fuss.
Most WordPress sites can benefit from it, and because the sitemap is built in, you can skip a dedicated sitemap plugin and keep your plugin list shorter.
With Yoast active, go to Yoast SEO > Settings > Site features in the dashboard menu and, under Technical SEO, switch the XML sitemaps toggle on.
The sitemap updates itself as you add or remove content, and post types set to noindex are left out of the sitemap.
Multisite networks are supported too, so a multisite setup needs no extra plugin for its sitemap. A premium edition adds further features and more insight into your site.
Google XML Sitemaps
Downloaded more than one million times, this plugin is a long-standing favorite for WordPress sitemaps. It helps Google, Bing and other search engines index your posts.
Regular posts and custom post types are both covered, so special content types do not call for a second plugin.
Crawlers can locate new posts fast and add them to the index right away, which means search traffic starts arriving sooner.
All in One SEO Pack
All in One SEO Pack, with more than 1 million downloads, is another popular WordPress SEO plugin, and it includes an XML sitemap. It dates back to 2007, so it has a long track record.
Configuration goes deep: you can hand-pick which post types or taxonomies belong in the sitemap.
For more technical needs, compression is available, and a setting keeps the XML file itself from appearing among search listings.
Sitemap Generator
On shared hosting, this plugin is a practical choice. It creates sitemaps for images and videos as well as for regular posts.
Its free tier tops out at 500 URLs; going past that limit means buying the paid add-on.
Wrapping Up
A sitemap is central to any website: when search engines struggle to find your content, you miss out on a large share of search visitors. Keep your site simple to crawl and index, and submit your sitemap in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools so search engines can find new content.
