Goal
To set up your sitemap for the first time, or to audit your existing sitemap
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SOP-055
How to Setup and Optimize an XML Sitemap
Set up your sitemap for the first time, or audit your existing one to contain your core URLs and be properly configured to be perfectly crawlable by search engines
Type
SOPs · PDF
Execution time
0.5-4 hours
Last updated
26 March 2024
Who does this
The person responsible for SEO or website management
Length
12 pages
Ideal outcome
Your sitemap has been properly fetched by Google, contains your core URLs and is properly configured making it perfectly crawlable by search engines
Why it matters
Having a sitemap allows search engine crawlers to more easily find the content you want them to find, and to understand how important each page is
Before you start
You need to have access to your website’s Google Search Console property. If you don’t have it set up yet, you can follow SOP 020 (web version). If you are using WordPress on your website you will need to have the Yoast SEO Plugin installed and activated on your website. If you don’t have Yoast on your WordPress website yet you can follow the chapter on installing Yoast by going to SOP 008 (web version)
Key steps 26 steps
What is inside 30 headings
1 Included Resource
2 Designing your sitemap 4
- Gather a list of all the URLs of your website.
- Open the Template 020: Sitemap Designer Worksheet (web version) included with this SOP → Click File → Make a copy…
- Paste your URLs in the Spreadsheet:
- For each URL, select if you would want to include it in the sitemap or not. If you choose not to include it you should select a reason why not. Mark it as “Yes” as long as it follows all of these guidelines:
3 Generating your sitemap 16
- Open your sitemap spreadsheet that you’ve created in “Designing your sitemap”. Filter all the URLs that you have selected that you want to appear on your sitemap.
- Open Google Chrome and head over to Timestamp Generator
- Start copying and pasting the URLs from your spreadsheet into the text box of the XML Sitemap generator, according to the “Priorities” and “Frequencies” that are on your Sitemap Design. Click “Add to Queue” until you’ve added all your URLs according to their Priorities and Frequencies.
- When all your URLs have been added to the queue, scroll down and click “Create Sitemap”:
- Your browser will start downloading your XML sitemap.
- The file will be named “sitemap.xml” if that is not the case, make sure you rename it to “sitemap.xml”.
- You will now need to upload that XML file to the root of your domain.
- If you have a “Robots.txt” file you should also add this line to your file Sitemap: http://www.llmdecode.com/sitemap.xml
- Install Yoast SEO Plugin by following SOP 008: Initial WordPress setup (web version).
- On your WordPress Admin Panel’s sidebar, click “Yoast SEO” and select “General”
- Under “Features”, enable the “XML Sitemap Functionality”:
- Click “User Sitemap” and enable “Author / user sitemap” if your website has multiple authors and you would like Google to easily index the content of those authors separately.
- Click “Post Types”:
- Click “Excluded Posts”: If when designing your sitemap you detected pages or posts that should be excluded from your sitemap you should enter their ID here.
- Click “Taxonomies”: If you are using the “category” and “tag” features of WordPress on your pages and posts leave those options as default. If you are not using them, disable them.
- Click “Save changes”
4 Submitting your sitemap to Google Search Console 6
- Go to Google;
- Log in with your Google Account;
- If you have more than one website, select your website’s property.
- On the sidebar select “Sitemaps”:
- Under “Add a new sitemap” enter the name of the file of your sitemap (If you have followed this SOP and generated the Sitemap manually enter ‘sitemap.xml’, If you have generated the Sitemap through WordPress’s plugin Yoast SEO, enter ‘sitemap_index.xml’) after your domain name, and click “Submit”:
- Click “Got it”:
The document 12 pages
The file is locked
It comes with the SOP Library.
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