Sitemaps, Sitemaps and More Sitemaps
It must be the law of attraction working to bring this problem out as a cluster. In the last couple of days I'm seeing a lot of questions and private messages about sitemaps not working properly. And it's not just one person, it's a whole crowd of people.
Or maybe it's just Google passing along the message that "your sitemap is not working properly".
Whatever, let's look at why this problem is occurring.
Your sitemap is generated by a plugin so you don't have to do anything to create it except to install and activate the plugin.
But this is where it gets messy
You've installed and activated Google XML Sitemaps. That's fine on its own. It generates a sitemap file called "sitemap.xml" which is what the search engines are looking for.
But someone suggested that a different sitemap plugin is the way to go so you install and activate another plugin. Now Google XML Sitemaps has already created your sitemap and the other plugin gets all snotty because it wants to create a file called "sitemap.xml" too.
Then you discover that your SEO plugin can be used to generate a sitemap. And that's got to be a good thing right? Now you've got three plugins that all want to create a file called "sitemap.xml".
Can you see where I'm going with this?
Now SEO is really important in this game so let's add another SEO plugin to make sure we're getting all the help we need.
Now we've got 4 plugins all vying to create that "sitemap.xml" file and tripping over each other's feet in the process.
OK, so maybe you didn't go all out and use 4 plugins but it only takes 2 plugins trying to do the same job for things to get messy.
Solution
Decide which SEO plugin you're going to use to help with your search engine optimization and, yes, to generate your sitemap. Deactivate and delete all other plugins that have the potential to create a sitemap.
If your plugin of choice suggests to delete the conflicting file then allow that to happen so you can start again with a clean slate.
And don't, please don't, have more than one plugin for each job.
You can view your sitemap by typing example.com/sitemap.xml into your browser (using your own domain name of course).
Submit Sitemap to Google Search Console
Please tell us about your experiences with sitemaps in the comments section below.
Recent Comments
79
I am one of these people who sent a PM to Marion. She was such a great help! Hope to pay this forward down the line. Thanks again Marion.
Nicely put I know I have seen a lot of people addressing this issue as well as for me I have had to site maps but my first one something was wrong and site help helped me install the one I have now.
Wise counsel!!! Maybe that is why my analytics is acting funny all of the sudden.
Tried and true
Elaine
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Surely a rational approach to fix this puzzle is needed