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How to Add a Custom URL in WordPress XML Sitemap?

An XML Sitemap helps Search Engine Bots better discover your website’s content (including URLs) that may not be discoverable by their Normal Crawling Process.

Do you know that you can add additional URLs, which aren’t part of your blog, in the XML Sitemap of WordPress? For example, if your domain is abc.com and your blog is located at abc.com/blog/, then you can easily add abc.com in the sitemap of your Blog i.e. abc.com/blog/sitemap.xml



How to do so?

1. Get XML Sitemap Generator Plugin and install it for your self hosted blog.

2. Now go to Settings >> XML-Sitemap and look for Additional Pages Option:

add url wordpress xml sitemap

3. Here you are required to enter following details:

  • URL to the page, which isn’t a part of your Blog. Don’t forget to include http:// and www with the URL. In case there’s NO www, then enter only http://. The inserted URL will become a part of <loc></loc> tags.
  • Priority: Set Priority value for the URL you want to manually insert in the sitemap. The value ranges from 0.0 to 1.0 and will be inserted in between <priority></priority> tags.
  • Change Frequency: Select the Change Frequency from: Always, Hourly, Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Yearly and Never, depending on when the content of your page changes? Whatever you choose here, will be inserted in between <changefreq></changefreq> tags.
  • Last Changed Date: Either you can leave this field blank OR simply enter your page’s last change date (in YYYY-MM-DD format). The entered date will be inserted in between <lastmod></lastmod> tags.

4. Once you have entered above information precisely, click on Update Option Button present at the bottom of the settings page and Rebuild the Sitemap Manually. The custom URL(s) will be added at the very bottom of the sitemap.