Sitemaps – The short answer
How do you update your sitemap after updating your website? Well, hopefully, you don’t need to; most systems do it automatically. If you do have to do it manually, then sure, do it, but look into a system that does it automatically. If you’re on WordPress just use Yoast or All-in-One SEO or RankMath. Easy!
Updating your sitemap – the longer answer
Setting up a sitemap for your website is mostly a ‘fit and forget’ activity, but it’s worth considering why it’s important to have a sitemap on your website.
First of all, by connecting your sitemap to Google Search Console, you can theoretically make your content more accessible for Google to index. I’m sharing this as a general good practice thing. Although personally, I’m a little sceptical because Google discovers content using crawlers and other methods.
With functions like sitemaps and connecting them to Google Search Console, I see it in some ways as playing Google’s game. They ask for this information, so why not give it to them? It doesn’t take a lot of time, and it isn’t a lot of hard work.
You might be wondering why it’s important to update your sitemap automatically rather than manually updating it. Another question easily answers this. Why would you want to add the work of manually updating a sitemap if a simple plug-in can do it automatically?
There are so many factors to consider in a good SEO strategy that automating some simple mechanical tasks like sitemap updating will save you time to concentrate on more labour and brain power-intensive tasks like writing content.
If you are a WordPress user, you might wonder which of the best plug-ins is to keep your sitemap up to date. The honest answer is it doesn’t matter as long as the SEO plug-in you are using updates the sitemap without you even thinking about it; then that job is one less thing to think about if I had to.
WordPress users can’t go far wrong with either Yoast or Rank Math, but there are plenty of others that will do the job just as well.
One quite minor consideration, if you are a WordPress user, is that using the smallest number of plug-ins is generally good practice. Every plug-in does have a resource drag on your website, and too many plug-ins result in a very slow website.
Keeping your sitemap up to date is so important that I would think carefully about removing whichever plug-in it is you’re using to keep your sitemap up to date.
On a side note, if you are looking for a plug-in to kill, get rid of your social feed plug-in. I don’t see a business case for sending people from your website to a social network. You’ve worked hard to get people to your website in the first place, so why hand them over to a social network so they can sell advertising to them?
In summary, the time it’s taking you to read this article is probably longer than it will take you to keep your sitemap up to date, and that includes the time taken to install a plug-in like Yoast or Rank Math.
Last Updated on December 13, 2023
