Creating a sitemap for your site is really important because doing this you’re telling Google what’s on your site. Then Google crawlers could scrape all pages in an easier and faster way. A sitemap is a simple file, in .xml or .html format (or even .gz.xml in the case of compressed sitemaps for large sites).

Not many people are familiar with editing this kind of files. Anyway, when you run a site with WordPress, there are plugins that can make the job for you, generating a sitemap for your site automatically, without any manual processing by your part.

What kind of sitemap to choose for your site

Before choosing which WordPress plugin you are going to add, you need to ask yourself what kind of sitemap your site needs. If it’s a site with a very low number of pages (<1000) you can opt for Google Sitemap BestWebSoft, a simple plugin that generates a single sitemap in .xml format (www.sitename.com/ sitemap.xml).

In the case of a site with a higher number of pages, it is advisable to install plugin that creates a sitemap with a tree structure (a single parent xml file that links to other sitemaps). A valid example is Google XML Sitemaps plugin.

A sitemap should not contain more than 50,000 pages. This is why sites with a large number of pages use compressed xml files (.gz.xml format). Best choise for doing this is All in One SEO Pack plugin, a well known SEO management tool for your site. (toghether with Yoast SEO). After All in One SEO Pack is installed, it is necessary to activate the Sitemap section and select “Create compressed sitemap”.