Adding an XML sitemap to your blog will increase the speed at which your new content is indexed by search engines, sitemaps make it easier for search engine crawlers to find your new content and it gives them a rough idea of when to come look for new content. If you are not using a XML sitemap on your blog I suggest you download the plugin ‘ Google XML Sitemap’ you can do this by searching for the plugin name in quotes in the plugin search form in the ‘Add New’ tab of your wordpress blog once you have added and activated the plugin you can look for it under the ’settings’ tab in the menu, where you can go on to configure the options and also to build your sites very first XML sitemap NOTE: Make sure your root directory has the sufficient permissions so that the plugin can write to the directoy and create the actual sitemap.

There are a number of features you can do in the back end that make this plugin very handy.

  • Writing of a normal XML sitemap
  • Writing of a gzipped version of your site map
  • Automatic sitemap rebuilding when your blog is updated
  • Notify Google, Bing, And Ask of updates on your blog without you having to register for their webmaster tools
  • There are also a number of features that you can also configure like category exclusion and update frequency

This plugin is a must have for those bloggers that are serious about their SEO efforts on their blog.

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