Generate XML Sitemaps using Better WordPress Google XML Sitemaps

XML Sitemaps are important factor for indexing your website in search results. There are many XML sitemap plugins in WordPress. This article shows steps to generate XML sitemaps using Better WordPress Google XML Sitemaps plugin in WordPress. Better WordPress Google XML Sitemaps Plugin is a fast, scalable and resource efficient sitemap plugin that supports Sitemap Index, Google News Sitemap and Multi-site installation. Apart from hooks, this plugin has an extended functionality using custom modules through which custom sitemaps can be defined. Let’s talk about some of its features and its installation procedure below:

Features

It supports WordPress Multi-Site installations along with image sitemap (featured image posts).
It adds sitemap file to the robots.txt file of your website.
Posts/Pages can be included/excluded manually or dynamically as per your requirements from the sitemap.
Custom XML sitemaps can be created extending the features of the plugin using additional modules.
Single sitemap can be grouped into several specific sitemaps inside it.

Generate XML Sitemaps using Better WordPress Google XML Sitemaps Plugin

Step 1. Plugin Installation

To install the plugin, go to Plugins > Add New. Then search for the keyword “Better WordPress Google XML Sitemaps Plugin” and click on the “Install Now” button. Then click on “Activate Plugin” to activate it.

Now, a new WordPress menu appears as “BWP Sitemaps”. Hovering it, four sub menu appears: XML Sitemaps, Extension, Advanced Options, Sitemap Log.

Step 2. Generating & Configuring XML Sitemap

The first sub-menu is XML Sitemaps. Within this settings page, click on “click to generate your Sitemap index” button to generate sitemap for the first time. While generating the sitemap, there are various options available that can be set up as needed. The Sitemap can be enabled for taxonomies, posts, pages and categories. The individual posts or term can be excluded or included as necessary from sitemap.

In the settings page, the number of items to output in sitemap can be limited. Similarly, the default change frequency, default priority and minimum priority can be set accordingly.

The second sub-menu is Extensions.

Extensions of this plugin support Google Image Sitemap and Google New Sitemap. If your theme supports featured image, you can add this Google Image Sitemap feature to post-based sitemap. Both posts and pages can be enabled for this feature. Similarly, you can add Google News Sitemap to your sitemap xml thereby enabling Google News to see your news whenever you publish them. This option further let you control the news content submitted to Google News.

Also Read: Setup AddToAny Share Buttons Plugin in WordPress

The third sub-menu is Advanced Options.

You can add your sitemap file to the robots.txt file. The generated xml sitemap file can be cached for certain period of time for better performance. You can add additional customizable modules with this plugin. In fact, you can extend features of the plugin itself with additional modules to generate custom sitemaps. Modules are PHP files which tells the plugin about how to build the sitemap file. You can add sitemap that is not part of the WordPress framework. Using these modules, you can better take advantage of compression and caching features.

Finally, Sitemap log can be maintained which includes notices, errors and success messages that are logged as your sitemap generated.

Thus, Better WordPress Google XML Sitemaps Plugin generates a sitemap index file which consists individual sitemap file for each of the specific section of your WordPress installation.

The screenshot above is the sitemap generated using this plugin. In this way you can generate sitemap using Better WordPress Google XML Sitemaps Plugin in WordPress. You might want to checkout other XML sitemaps plugin in WordPress.

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Dhiraj Bikram Khadka

Dhiraj Bikram Khadka is a Freelance Technical Writer cum WordPress Developer. He has been working in this area since 2006 AD. As a Web/WordPress Developer, he works on HTML/DHTML, CSS, PHP/MySql, javascript, jQuery, AJAX and more... Having a degree of M.E. (Information Systems Engineering), he is more interested towards contemporary developments in golbal technical arena. His hobbies include reading articles about Theoretical Physics, travelling and making friends. He is currently working as techinical writer for mustbeweb.com.