Today I built a new website, I was surprised to find that the sitemap created by Yoast SEO for me cannot be submitted to Google Search Console, nor can it be accessed through the link provided by Yoast SEO.
Before I officially start recording possible solutions, I will briefly introduce the Yoast SEO plug-in and what is a sitemap.
What is Yoast SEO plugin?
Yoast SEO is a well-known Search Engine Optimization plugin on WordPress. Generally speaking, if you have just created a website and installed Yoast SEO, it will automatically generate a sitemap for you.
What is a site map?
As the name suggests, it is the map of your site. Usually we can provide it to Google, and then Google can index your website content according to the sitemap, so that search engines can provide your website for others to search.
By the way, the format of sitemap is usually an XML file.
Solution
To reiterate my question: After I created a new website, I was surprised to find that the sitemap created by Yoast SEO for me cannot be submitted to Google Search Console, nor can it be accessed through the link provided by Yoast SEO.
Generally speaking, when you enable the Yoast SEO plugin in the backend console, you should be able to view the sitemap automatically generated by the Yoast SEO plugin through SEO > Features > View XML sitemap.
But if the screen you see is something like the picture below that you cannot find:
So first try to change a URL.
In fact, the sitemap URL (example.com/sitemap_index.xml) is actually:
example.com/?sitemap=1
If you use the real URL, you can see:
There is indeed a generated XML Sitemap, then there are several possibilities at this time.
- Package conflict
- redirection failure
If it is the package conflict, please try to close some packages, and then try to see if the sitemap index can be submitted normally.
But my situation is rather stupid.
It turned out that when I first create the website, I used another plugin. XML Sitemap & Google News to generate the sitemap, but now this package is in conflict.
Finally, I closed the Yoast SEO plugin and chose to submit the original sitemap.
If the redirection fails, you can edit the Yoast SEO code. However, I have not tried this method, it is difficult to explain how to operate it, and even I personally do not recommend the method of editing the code.
If you really want to try, I will put some references below:
- https://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-tutorials/how-to-fix-yoasts-wordpress-seo-sitemap-404-error/
- https://yoast.com/help/my-sitemap-is-giving-a-404-error-what-should-i-do/
- https://www.greengeeks.com/tutorials/how-to-resolve-yoasts-seo-sitemap-404-error-in-wordpress/