XML sitemap in WordPress without a plugin: where it is and how to submit it

🗺️ What an XML sitemap is

An XML sitemap is a list of site addresses that helps search engines find and index your pages. It does not raise rankings by itself, but it speeds up discovery of new pages, which is especially useful for new sites and sites with a lot of content.

✅ WordPress has one built in

Since version 5.5 WordPress automatically creates a sitemap at:

https://yourdomain.com/wp-sitemap.xml

It is a main index leading to separate sitemaps for pages, posts, categories and authors. Open the address in a browser and check that it works.

📤 How to submit it to Google

1. Open Google Search Console and select your site.
2. Go to Sitemaps.
3. Enter wp-sitemap.xml and submit.
4. Check that the status is "Success" and how many addresses were discovered.

WordPress also adds a sitemap line to the virtual robots.txt, so search engines can find it on their own.

🔧 What you can adjust without a plugin

• Hide a page or content type from the sitemap with built-in filters in the theme's functions.php or a small custom plugin.
• Turn off the author sitemap if you do not want author pages indexed.
• Block indexing of unneeded pages with the right robots tag, because a sitemap should contain only pages you want on Google.

⚠️ Limits of the built-in sitemap

It does not support priorities or update frequency, has no image or news sitemap and offers no detailed per-page settings. For most business sites that is entirely enough. If you need advanced options, use an SEO plugin or a sitemap generated by the site itself.

🧪 Typical mistakes

• The site is still set to "Discourage search engines from indexing this site".
• Pages marked noindex appear in the sitemap.
• The sitemap was submitted with an http address while the site runs on https.
• Two sitemaps (built-in and from a plugin) conflict.

📈 What after submitting

Watch the "Page indexing" report in Search Console. If pages stay as "Discovered, currently not indexed", the problem is usually content quality or internal linking. More in the article on the technical SEO audit for WordPress and on the SEO optimisation page.