How to Create and Submit an XML Sitemap in WordPress

An XML sitemap is a machine-readable index of the URLs on your site that you want search engines to crawl and consider for indexing. It is not the same thing as a human-readable site map page that helps visitors navigate your content. This guide covers what a sitemap actually does, how WordPress generates one, how to verify it, how to submit it to Google and Bing, and when specialized sitemap types are worth adding.

What an XML sitemap does and why WordPress needs one

An XML sitemap is a structured file, usually found at a URL like /sitemap.xml or /sitemap_index.xml, that lists the pages, posts, and other content types on your site along with metadata like the last modified date. Search engine crawlers read this file to discover URLs they might not find through normal link crawling, and to get a signal about which pages have changed recently and might be worth recrawling.

This is different from a human-readable site map, which is a page designed for visitors, usually linked in a footer, that presents your site structure as a bulleted list or nested menu. A human site map helps people navigate. An XML sitemap helps crawlers discover and prioritize. Some sites have both. Only the XML version matters for search engine crawling and indexing.

WordPress needs a sitemap for a straightforward reason: crawlers cannot index what they cannot find, and they cannot find everything through internal links alone, especially on larger sites, sites with orphaned pages, or sites that publish new content frequently. A sitemap gives crawlers a direct, complete list instead of relying entirely on link discovery. It will not force indexing of low-quality pages, and it will not fix a site that search engines have decided not to trust, but it removes discovery as a bottleneck. If pages are not appearing in search results at all, a missing or broken sitemap is one of several possible causes worth ruling out, alongside issues covered in why Google is not indexing your WordPress site.

How WordPress generates a sitemap by default, and why a dedicated SEO sitemap is usually better

WordPress core has shipped a basic XML sitemap by default since version 5.5. If you have not installed any SEO plugin, your site likely already has a sitemap available at /wp-sitemap.xml. This core sitemap covers posts, pages, authors, and taxonomies automatically, and it requires no configuration.

The core sitemap is functional but limited. It offers very little control: you cannot easily exclude specific post types, low-value pages, or noindexed content from it, you cannot prioritize certain URLs, and it does not support specialized formats like video or news sitemaps. It also will not reliably reflect changes you make elsewhere in your SEO setup, such as marking a category as noindex, since it is not aware of plugin-level SEO decisions.

A dedicated SEO plugin sitemap, like the one built into Rankwyn's sitemaps and indexing feature, replaces or supplements the core sitemap with one that is aware of your actual SEO configuration. That means noindexed pages are excluded automatically, you can choose which custom post types and taxonomies are included, you can exclude specific URLs or entire sections, and the sitemap is paginated into sub-sitemaps as your content grows so no single file becomes too large for a crawler to process efficiently. For most sites running any kind of SEO plugin, letting that plugin manage the sitemap and disabling or ignoring the core one is the more reliable path, because it keeps the sitemap in sync with the rest of your SEO settings instead of maintaining two separate, potentially conflicting sources of truth.

How to find and check your current sitemap URL

Before submitting anything, confirm your sitemap exists and is generating correctly. Start by checking the most common locations: /sitemap.xml, /sitemap_index.xml, and /wp-sitemap.xml. Whichever SEO plugin you use will typically document its default path, and most plugins display the exact sitemap URL somewhere in their settings screen.

Open the sitemap URL directly in a browser. A working sitemap index will show a list of sub-sitemaps, one for posts, one for pages, one for each taxonomy you have included, and so on, each with its own URL and a last modified date. Click into one of those sub-sitemaps and confirm it lists actual URLs from your site with recent, accurate last modified dates. If the file returns a 404, redirects unexpectedly, or displays raw PHP errors instead of XML, something in your setup is broken and needs fixing before you submit anything to search engines.

Also check that your sitemap is referenced in your robots.txt file, usually as a line like Sitemap: https://yoursite.com/sitemap_index.xml near the top of the file. This is not strictly required for submission to work, since you can submit a sitemap directly in Search Console regardless of what robots.txt says, but it is a standard convention that helps any crawler discover the sitemap even without a manual submission. If you have not reviewed your robots.txt recently, see the WordPress robots.txt guide for how it should be structured.

How to submit your sitemap to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools

Submitting a sitemap tells a search engine exactly where to look, rather than waiting for it to discover the file on its own through robots.txt or a lucky crawl. It is a one-time setup step per sitemap URL, not something you need to redo for every new post.

Submitting in Google Search Console

1. 1Sign in to Google Search Console and select the property for your site. If you have not verified ownership of the site yet, do that first.
2. 2In the left sidebar, click Sitemaps.
3. 3Under Add a new sitemap, enter the path to your sitemap, for example sitemap_index.xml, then click Submit.
4. 4Google will fetch the file and, after a short processing period, show its status. A successful submission shows a Success status along with the number of discovered URLs.
5. 5If the status shows an error, click into it for details, fix the underlying issue, and the sitemap will be reprocessed automatically on Google's normal schedule.

Submitting in Bing Webmaster Tools

1. 1Sign in to Bing Webmaster Tools and select your site, or add and verify it if this is your first time.
2. 2Go to Sitemaps in the left navigation.
3. 3Click Submit sitemap and enter the full sitemap URL, including https:// and the full path.
4. 4Submit and check back after processing to confirm Bing successfully read the file and how many URLs it found.

Bing Webmaster Tools also shares data with Yahoo and other Bing-powered search surfaces, so this single submission covers more than just Bing's own results. Both tools let you resubmit manually at any time, which is useful right after a major site restructure, but neither requires resubmission for routine content updates. Crawlers revisit submitted sitemaps on their own schedule based on how often your site changes.

Video and news sitemaps: when you actually need each one

Beyond the standard sitemap, there are two specialized formats worth knowing about: video sitemaps and news sitemaps. Both use additional XML tags to give search engines context that a standard sitemap entry cannot provide, and both are optional for most sites.

A video sitemap adds metadata about video content embedded or hosted on a page, including the video's title, description, thumbnail, duration, and player location. This helps search engines understand and surface video content in video-specific search results, separate from standard web results. You need a video sitemap if video is a meaningful part of your content strategy, such as a site with regularly published hosted video, product demo pages, or tutorial content where the video itself is the primary asset. If you occasionally embed a YouTube video inside a blog post as supporting material, a video sitemap adds little value, because YouTube's own indexing already handles discovery for that content.

A news sitemap uses a different, more restrictive format designed specifically for Google News eligibility. It only includes articles published within the last 48 hours, and it requires the site to already be part of Google News, which has its own separate application and content policy requirements around timeliness, editorial standards, and publication frequency. A news sitemap is relevant only if you are running a genuine news publication or a high-frequency editorial operation that publishes original, timely articles and either has been accepted into Google News or is actively pursuing that. For a typical business blog, marketing site, or evergreen content operation, a news sitemap does not apply and will not help your rankings, since it is scoped entirely to Google News surfaces rather than general search.

For most WordPress sites, a well-configured standard sitemap covering posts, pages, and relevant taxonomies, submitted to both Google and Bing, is all that discovery and indexing require. Specialized sitemaps are an addition for a specific content type, not a default requirement. If you are building out a broader SEO setup and want sitemap generation, exclusions, and monitoring handled without manual XML editing, see Rankwyn's pricing for plans that include automated sitemap management.