There is one great misconception about making websites in WordPress, it is linked with the optimization of websites in WordPress, and the misconception is that it is enough to just make a website and that it is SEO friendly and optimized. Well, that’s not really the case, nothing will happen by itself, you have to push your site a bit. Nothing comes for free so some things have to be done, and today we will start talking about the mistakes that are common when SEO optimizing websites.
Website optimization in WordPress without an XML sitemap
Sitemaps are a way for Google to find out everything about the pages on your website, and that couldn’t be discovered any other way. There are a lot of sources of various SEO experts around the world, but you have to stick with one rule, the thing that is recommended by Google in their guides for site making and optimizing is the law and you need to follow that. If Google says that XML sitemaps helps them in finding pages on your website and that they can’t find all the pages any other way, we will make it and allow them to index our site faster. Indexing websites is the first thing that is a condition for the start of website optimization.
But, that’s not all that makes Sitemaps. It can also be used to give valuable extra information about your site (for example, how often you update the site and your pages). And if you have started a new site with only one or a few backlinks that point to your site, the map can create a big difference in enabling Google to find and index all the relevant pages on your site.
Simply said, a map of the site is a specially formatted list of pages on your site that you want to be indexed. You can make it manually, but there are many sites that can do that automatically for you, as well as many plugins for WordPress, because we are talking about optimizing sites for WordPress here.
Website optimization in WordPress – Plugins for XML sitemap
- Google XML Sitemaps: with over 12 million downloads and an average grade of 4,7 out of 5, you can be sure that this free plugin is going to do a great job for you.
- WordPress SEO Yoast: This free plugin has a large number of SEO functions, and one of them is the excellent XML Sitemap Generator.
The process of making and updating maps is almost completely automated. You can set a few options that suit you and let the plugin do the rest. Google says that making a sitemap will only bring you benefits, and that there is absolutely no way you can be punished for it, so why wouldn’t you skip on making sitemaps on your WordPress website? You surely wouldn’t want to miss out on all the benefits it will bring, and if you are not a patient person, even better, it will make Google index your pages faster.
