In this post I’m going to show you some really basic steps that I use on my sites, and can help you improve a lot the search engine optimization for your WordPress website. As for that, you will set up two sitemaps: One for robots and one for visitors… both for indexation but in different ways. You may be wondering, “But why two sitemaps”? Well… One is a XML sitemap, for automatic indexation by search engine robots and the other one is a WordPress page, so that visitors can get to know and check the various parts of your site, and it also allows to improve the inner links on your site. This doesn’t hurt your indexation at all, as it only refers to organized pages, without duplicating your content.

Setting up the XML Sitemap:

For this purpose, I use the XML Sitemap Generator for WordPress plugin. This plugin generates a XML-Sitemap of your WordPress blog, and allows automatic notification to Ask.com, Google, YAHOO and MSN Search, upon content modification. It is translated in many languages, has a configurations page where you check whether of not you want some of its automated features to work, customize parameters and features and in case you are not used to work with the webmaster resources supplied by the search engines, it also has some help files and links to allow you to become familiar to Google Webmaster tools, Yahoo Site Explorer and the most recent Bing Webmaster Tools. I really recommend this plugin as it does what it’s supposed to do, and does it very well. You just need to download it, unpack it, upload the folder to your wp-content/plugins/ folder, and activate it in the plugins tab, upon the WordPress Admin Panel. After that, you can access the configurations page on the Settings tab. Further instructions can be obtained with the plugin itself.

Setting up the WordPress Page Sitemap:

For this one, I use Dagon Design Sitemap Generator plugin. This plugin allows some customization from its options page, on the admin panel, and has some features like support for multi-level categories and pages, category/page exclusion, multiple-page generation with navigation, permalink support, choose what to display, what order to list items in, show comment counts and/or post dates, and much more. To take advantage of this plugin, download it, unpack it, upload the folder to your wp-content/plugins/ folder, and activate it in the plugins tab, upon the WordPress Admin Panel. Then, go to the Settings tab, and configure the plugin to your taste. Almost in the end of the options page, you get to fill  the path to the XML Sitemap that you configured in the last plug-in, making the XML file accessible to real people, as well as crawlable trough your site and not only by submitting it directly to the webmaster tools given by the major search engines.

Making the good even better (optimization!):

As a final touch, I recommend you to have a few things in mind. The Dagon Design Sitemap Generator plugin needs to be inserted in a page for it to work. Personally, I do not see any advantage to have a Sitemap page in your main menu! It’s ok to have it in a visible and accessible place of your website, but not in the main menu. So, you can make a small text link on the footer or header, and to remove the page from the navigation I use Simon Wheatley’s Exclude Pages Plugin. It is a plugin that adds a checkbox to every page of your site. If you uncheck it, the page will be excluded from any listing of pages, which is usually limited to your page navigation menus. Simple as that.

I hope this helps you to get your WordPress site a little bit more Search Engine Friendly and Optimized, and it just simplifies your life. Also, don’t hesitate to support the people behind this brilliant plugins!

Daniel Pereira is an E-Marketer, Web Developer, Blogger and Web Artist, taking a Degree in Marketing, Advertising and Public Relationships and specializing in CRM and SEO. If you liked the article, you can follow the updates by RSS, E-Mail or Twitter and share it in your favorite places.