For any website, it is important to optimize your site for organic search traffic. This task can be daunting for several busy website owners. Sitemaps are a few of the best tools available that can improve your website’s SEO. Sitemaps not only offer website information to search engines to quickly index your website but also ping them when you update your site. In this blog post, we will look at the 7 best WordPress sitemap plugins for WordPress website owners.
Let’s start our discussion by understanding what a sitemap is.
What is a WordPress Sitemap?
A sitemap is an XML list that notifies search engines about the content and the structure of your site. The sitemap incorporates information about page URLs, when was the content last updated, type of content, etc. Additionally, you also have the option to keep your posts from indexing on search engines in case you wanna keep them private.
Search engines such as Google can crawl your site on their own but it will take time. However, if you provide a sitemap then, the indexing process will be faster as the sitemap will offer search engines with all the website information.
Sitemaps can be generated manually, however; the best way to generate a sitemap is with the help of WordPress sitemap plugin. Sitemap plugins notify the search engines even the minute changes done on your website, so that the information stays up to date.
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Now, let’s discuss the best WordPress SEO plugins with sitemap features;
WordPress SEO Plugins with Sitemap Features
As sitemaps are a crucial part of SEO, creating a sitemap is the basic function of SEO plugins. Below are the best WordPress sitemap plugins with amazing sitemap features.
Yoast SEO
Yoast SEO is the most popular SEO plugin for WordPress and it incorporates a sitemap feature. This sitemap feature makes it the best plugin to build a sitemap for a WordPress site. Yoast SEO is available in both free and premium versions.
The free version of Yoast includes sitemap features that are enabled by default.
Yoast Key Features:
- Automatically generates a sitemap
- Restrict the number of sitemap records
- Mark post types as noindex
- Add an external sitemap
- See the sitemap
All in One SEO
All in One SEO plugin offers various types of sitemaps including the standard XML map, a news sitemap, a video sitemap, and an RSS sitemap. The pro version of this plugin adds news, video, and RSS.
The free version of this plugin offers you sitemap functionality. You can use this plugin to enable indexes, enter the number of links per sitemap, pick the post types and taxonomies, disable by date, disable by author, and several other features.
All in One SEO is available in both free and premium versions. The pricing of the pro version is $49.50 per year. With the Pro version, you can add news, video, and RSS sitemaps
Key Features:
- Standard XML sitemap
- News sitemap
- Video sitemap
- RSS sitemap
- Advanced settings for each type of sitemap.
Rank Math SEO
Rank Math SEO incorporates a fast loading sitemap that works with several distinct post types including attachments, projects, custom posts, etc. Additionally, it incorporates several detailed options for customizing your sitemaps. generate location KML files for local sitemaps. Rank Math SEO plugin comes in both paid and free versions.
Key Features:
- Quick loading
- Free local sitemaps generator
- Incorporate images in your sitemaps
- Exclude posts
- Exclude terms
- WooCommerce sitemaps
- Works with custom post types
SEOPress
SEOPress generates a sitemap for post types, taxonomies, videos, images, and HTML. The sitemap features are incorporated in the free version of SEOPress.
This SEO plugin by default enables the general XML sitemap and image sitemap. The settings of this SEO plugin are quite easy. It gives you the ability to modify the general options and options for the post types, taxonomies, and HTML sitemaps separately. You can observe the sitemap, ping Google, and clear the permalinks.
Web pages, posts, or terms can be excluded from the sitemap. You can even sort the order and disable the publication date. It is restricted to 1000 posts per post type.
SEOPress plugin comes in both paid and free versions. SEOPress PRO pricing is $39/ year / unlimited websites.
Key Features:
- XML sitemap
- Image sitemap
- Author sitemap
- Video sitemap
- HTML sitemap
- Individual options for each and every type
- Manually Ping Google
- Flush the permalinks
JetPack
Jetpack, the famous plugin from Automattic (Creators of WordPress) is an ideal WordPress sitemap plugin. JetPack free version comes with a wide range of traffic tools and also consists of the sitemap feature. With the sitemap feature, you can automatically generate the sitemap for your public pages and posts.
Additionally, you can also generate a sitemap, particularly for Google News. If another sitemap plugin is already in use, the Google News sitemap feature will automatically be disabled. The JetPack SEO plugin will even notify you if the search engine visibility is disabled in the WordPress settings.
Key Features:
- JetPack plugin can generate sitemaps for both your public pages and posts
- Add new custom post types
- Ability to create a sitemap for Google News
- If any other sitemap plugin is used by your WordPress website, JetPack’s sitemap feature will be automatically disabled.
Now, as we have discussed some of the best WordPress sitemap plugins, let’s discuss dedicated WordPress sitemap plugins.
Dedicated WordPress Sitemap Plugins
The Dedicated WordPress sitemap plugin offers no other feature besides generating a sitemap. Let’s take a look at few widely popular dedicated sitemap plugins.
Google XML Sitemaps
Google XML Sitemaps is said to be one of the oldest and widely used WordPress sitemap plugins available for one of the extensively utilized Content Management System. This WordPress plugin is multilingual-ready and supports WordPress multisite installations. The priority of the posts is calculated on the basis of the number of comments on that particular post. Though, you can disable the priority feature.
This plugin is a free WordPress sitemap plugin.
Key Features:
- The priority of posts are calculated on the basis of comments
- Incorporates several translations
- Support for WordPress multisite
- Allows other plugins to add to the sitemap
XML Sitemap and Google News
XML Sitemap & Google News is a free sitemap generator plugin that generates both standard XML sitemap and Google News Sitemap. This plugin gives you control over which sitemaps to be enabled, what kind of posts and taxonomies are incorporated, how the priority is calculated and whom to ping while the website is being updated.
You can likewise set the rules for robots.txt, add external pages and add external sitemaps. It’s compatible with multisite and is compatible with multiple languages. Some of the features that the XML sitemap plugin offers are clear cache, ping search engines, etc.
XML sitemap plugin offers few basic features for free. But, for pro features, it will charge you $20.98/year.
Key Features:
- Generate Google News sitemap
- Pick up the post types and taxonomies
- Ability to add external pages and external sitemaps
- Compatible with WordPress Multisite
- WordPress multilingual (WPML) compatible
Conclusion
That’s our say at 7 best WordPress sitemap plugins for website owners. We have listed the best SEO plugins with sitemap features and several of these plugins are free.
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We wanna hear from you. Let us know your favorite WordPress sitemap plugin in the comment section below!
