Publish an XML sitemap on WordPress
Why it matters
A sitemap lists the pages you want search engines to find, which helps new and deep pages get discovered. Without one, crawlers rely on following links alone.
The fix
- WordPress 5.5 and later publishes a core sitemap at /wp-sitemap.xml and lists it in its robots.txt. If it returns 404, open Settings, Reading and clear Discourage search engines from indexing this site, because ticking it turns the core sitemap off. Then save Settings, Permalinks once, and check that no plugin or filter has disabled it.
- If an SEO plugin provides its own sitemap, use only one, and submit that address in Google Search Console.
Related
- Reported by the robots.txt and sitemap check
- Add a robots.txt file
- Fix the server error on robots.txt
- Fix the syntax of robots.txt
- Shrink the robots.txt file
- Allow search engines in robots.txt
- List the sitemap in robots.txt
- Make the sitemap reachable
- Fix the sitemap format
- Put URLs into the sitemap
- Split the sitemap into several files
- Remove URLs from other domains in the sitemap
Scan your domain to see whether this applies to you.