Set up and submit your sitemaps.

What an XML sitemap does

An XML sitemap is a list of the pages on your site that you want search engines to know about, along with when each was last changed. Search engines find most pages by following links, but a sitemap makes sure nothing important is missed: new posts that don’t have links yet, pages deep in your site structure, and content on large sites where crawlers may not reach every corner quickly.

A sitemap doesn’t guarantee a page will be indexed or ranked. It’s a strong hint about what exists and what has changed. Search engines still decide what to index based on quality, duplication and their own crawling budget. That’s why a good sitemap contains only the pages you actually want in search results, and nothing else.

How Rilea SEO builds your sitemaps

Rilea SEO creates a sitemap index at /sitemap_index.xml. The index doesn’t list pages itself; it lists the individual sitemaps, one for each content type you include:

• Post type sitemaps, such as post-sitemap.xml, page-sitemap.xml and product-sitemap.xml
• Taxonomy sitemaps, such as category-sitemap.xml and post_tag-sitemap.xml
• Author sitemap, when author archives are indexed
• Locations sitemap, when you’ve set up Local SEO
• News sitemap, at news-sitemap.xml, when you turn it on
• Video sitemap, at video-sitemap.xml, when you turn it on

When Rilea SEO’s sitemaps are enabled, WordPress’s own basic sitemap at wp-sitemap.xml is turned off, so search engines see one consistent set rather than two competing ones.

What’s included and what’s left out

Rilea SEO is strict about what goes into a sitemap. A post appears only if all of these are true:

• It’s published. Drafts, scheduled posts and private posts are left out.
• It isn’t password-protected.
• It isn’t set to noindex, either individually or because its whole post type is set to noindex.
• You haven’t excluded it from the sitemap.

The same logic applies to taxonomies: a category or tag sitemap appears only when that taxonomy is included and isn’t set to noindex. This keeps your sitemap and your robots settings in agreement. A sitemap that lists noindexed pages sends mixed signals, and Search Console reports them as errors.

Splitting large sitemaps

Each sitemap holds up to 1,000 URLs by default. When a post type has more, Rilea SEO splits it into numbered files, such as post-sitemap.xml, post-sitemap2.xml and post-sitemap3.xml, and lists them all in the index. You can change the number of URLs per sitemap in the settings, anywhere from 50 to 50,000, which is the limit search engines accept. Smaller files load faster and are easier to debug; larger files mean fewer requests. The default suits most sites.

Images in sitemaps

With image sitemaps turned on, each entry also lists the images in that post, including the featured image. Images hosted on your own domain are included, so search engines can find them for image search. The sitemap viewer shows the image count for each URL.

Last modified dates

Each URL carries a last-modified date taken from when the post was last updated. Search engines use this to decide what to recrawl. That’s another reason to update a post only when you’ve genuinely changed it: if every post looks freshly modified, the signal loses its value.

Caching

Building a sitemap for a large site takes some database work, so Rilea SEO caches the generated sitemaps and rebuilds them when you save content. You don’t need to do anything to refresh them; publishing or updating a post clears the cache automatically.

A readable view

Open /sitemap_index.xml in a browser and you’ll see a clean table rather than raw XML. Rilea SEO adds a stylesheet that lists each sitemap or URL, with its image count and last-modified date. The styled page itself is marked noindex, so it never appears in search results. Search engines read the XML underneath, not the styling.

Configuring sitemaps

All sitemap options are in Rilea SEO, then Settings, then Sitemaps.

1. Enable sitemaps. Make sure XML sitemaps are switched on.
2. Choose post types. Include the post types you want in search results, usually posts, pages and products. Leave out any that exist only for internal use, such as form entries or template parts.
3. Choose taxonomies. Include categories and product categories in most cases. Tags are worth including only if your tag archives have real, useful content.
4. Images. Leave image sitemaps on unless you have a reason not to.
5. URLs per sitemap. Leave it at 1,000 unless you have a reason to change it.
6. Excluded IDs. Enter the IDs of any posts or pages to leave out, separated by commas. This is useful for thank-you pages, landing pages for paid ads and other pages you don’t want found through search.
7. Save Changes.

You can also exclude a single post from its own editing screen, in the Rilea SEO panel’s advanced settings.

The Google News sitemap

If you publish news, and especially if you want to appear in Google News, turn on the news sitemap.

• Where. Rilea SEO, then Settings, then Sitemaps, in the news section.
• Publication name. Enter the name your publication is known by. It defaults to your site name.
• Post types. Choose which post types count as news. It defaults to posts.
• How it works. The news sitemap lists only articles published in the last 48 hours, which is what Google’s news guidelines expect. Older articles stay in your normal post sitemap.
• Excluding a post. You can leave an individual post out of the news sitemap from its editing screen, for example an evergreen guide that isn’t news.

The video sitemap

The video sitemap helps search engines find pages where a video is the main content.

• What’s detected. Rilea SEO finds posts that embed YouTube or Vimeo videos, or use the video block, and posts where you’ve entered a video URL in the Rilea SEO panel.
• Thumbnails and descriptions. For YouTube embeds, the thumbnail is picked up automatically. You can write a video description in the Rilea SEO panel; otherwise the post’s description is used.
• Turn it on. In Rilea SEO, then Settings, then Sitemaps.

Only turn the video sitemap on if video is genuinely central to your content. A page with a short clip at the bottom isn’t a video page.

The locations sitemap

If you’ve added business locations in Rilea SEO’s Local SEO settings, a locations sitemap lists them, helping search engines connect your location pages with your business details. See the local SEO page for setting up locations.

Your sitemap in robots.txt

Rilea SEO adds a line to your robots.txt file pointing to your sitemap index, so any search engine that reads robots.txt can find it, even if you never submit it. Open yoursite.com/robots.txt to check. If you’ve written a custom robots.txt in Rilea SEO’s settings, the sitemap line is still added unless your custom version already includes it.

Submitting to search engines

Google Search Console

1. Sign in to Google Search Console and choose your property. If you haven’t added your site yet, add it and verify it. The easiest verification method is the HTML tag: copy the code into Rilea SEO, then Settings, then General.
2. Choose Sitemaps in the left menu.
3. Enter sitemap_index.xml in the box and click Submit.

Google reads the index and every sitemap it lists. In the first hours or days, the status may say “Couldn’t fetch” while Google queues the request. That’s normal for a new submission and usually clears without you doing anything. If it persists for more than a few days, check that the sitemap opens in a private browser window.

Bing Webmaster Tools

Sign in to Bing Webmaster Tools, add your site if needed, choose Sitemaps, and submit the full URL of your sitemap index. If your site is already verified in Google Search Console, Bing can import it.

You only submit once. After that, search engines check your sitemap regularly on their own.

IndexNow: instant notifications

Sitemaps work on the search engine’s schedule; they come back to check when they choose. IndexNow is the opposite. It’s an open protocol that lets your site tell participating search engines, including Bing and Yandex, the moment a page is published, updated or deleted.

Rilea SEO’s IndexNow support works automatically once it’s turned on:

• The key. Rilea SEO generates a private key for your site and serves it from a small text file at your site’s root, which proves to search engines that the notifications come from you.
• What’s sent. When you publish, update or trash a post in the post types you choose, Rilea SEO sends its URL to IndexNow. By default, that’s posts, pages and products.
• Turn it on. Go to Rilea SEO, then Settings, then IndexNow, switch it on and choose your post types.

Google doesn’t currently use IndexNow, so keep your sitemap submitted to Google Search Console too. The two work well together: IndexNow for speed on participating engines, the sitemap for completeness everywhere.

Troubleshooting

The sitemap shows a 404 error

Go to Settings, then Permalinks, and click Save Changes. This refreshes WordPress’s URL rules. If it still fails, check that sitemaps are switched on in Rilea SEO, and that no other plugin is creating its own sitemap at the same address.

A post is missing from the sitemap

Check that it’s published, not password-protected and not set to noindex, that its post type is included, and that its ID isn’t in the excluded list.

Search Console reports “Submitted URL marked noindex”

This usually means another plugin or your theme is adding noindex. Rilea SEO already leaves noindexed pages out of its sitemaps. View the page source and look for a robots meta tag.

The sitemap shows old content

Caching plugins and CDNs can store sitemaps. Exclude sitemap URLs from your cache, or clear the cache after big changes.

Two sitemaps exist

If another SEO plugin is still active, it may be producing its own sitemap. Deactivate it, and submit only Rilea SEO’s sitemap index.

A checklist for healthy sitemaps

• Your sitemap index opens at /sitemap_index.xml and lists the sitemaps you expect.
• Only post types and taxonomies you want in search are included.
• Thank-you pages, test pages and other private pages are excluded.
• The sitemap is submitted in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.
• IndexNow is turned on for the post types you publish.
• Search Console’s sitemap report shows a successful status and a sensible number of discovered pages.
• You check the Pages report in Search Console every month or so for pages that are discovered but not indexed.