All in One SEO is one of the most widely used optimisation plugins for WordPress, and its sitemap module is enabled by default in most installations. Still, plenty of site owners find that their sitemap is missing, empty, or full of pages that should never have been included. Activating the feature is the easy part; configuring it so that it reflects your actual site architecture is where the value is.

How AAMAX.CO Handles Technical SEO Setup for You

Sitemaps are one small piece of a much larger technical picture that includes indexation control, canonicalisation, crawl budget and site speed. AAMAX.CO is a full service digital marketing company providing web development, digital marketing and SEO services worldwide, and we configure these systems as a coherent whole rather than as isolated plugin toggles. If your WordPress site is not being crawled or indexed the way it should be, our SEO services at AAMAX.CO cover the full technical audit and implementation.

Step One: Enable the Sitemap Feature

Log into your WordPress dashboard and open the All in One SEO menu in the left sidebar. Select Sitemaps. You will land on the General Sitemap tab. At the top you will see an Enable Sitemap toggle. Switch it on if it is not already active, then save changes at the bottom of the screen.

Immediately below the toggle there is a button to open the sitemap. Click it to confirm the file is generating. Your sitemap index will normally live at your domain followed by sitemap.xml, and it will list child sitemaps for posts, pages, categories and any custom post types.

Step Two: Configure Sitemap Settings

Decide whether to enable sitemap indexes. For sites with more than a few hundred URLs, keep indexes enabled and set links per sitemap to a manageable number such as one thousand. Splitting large sitemaps into smaller files makes errors easier to diagnose in Search Console and helps crawlers process them reliably.

Next, review Post Types. Include posts, pages and any custom post types that hold genuine public content. Exclude attachments, because media attachment pages are almost always thin duplicate content that dilutes crawl efficiency. Then review Taxonomies. Categories are usually worth including if they have descriptions and genuine landing value. Tags frequently are not, particularly on sites with hundreds of loosely used tags.

Under Advanced Settings you can exclude specific posts, pages or entire terms. Use this for thank-you pages, internal landing pages, duplicate campaign pages and anything gated. You can also add additional pages manually, which is useful for non-WordPress files such as standalone HTML landers hosted in a subdirectory.

Step Three: Handle Priority and Frequency

All in One SEO lets you set priority scores and change frequency values. In practice, major search engines ignore both. Do not spend time tuning them, and do not treat them as a ranking lever. Crawl scheduling is determined by observed update patterns and internal linking, not by declared values in an XML file.

Step Four: Submit to Search Console and Bing

Copy your sitemap index URL and open Google Search Console. Go to Indexing, then Sitemaps, paste the URL and submit. Repeat the process in Bing Webmaster Tools. Within a day or two you will see discovered and indexed counts. The gap between submitted URLs and indexed URLs is the number worth watching, because a large discrepancy signals quality, duplication or crawl issues rather than a sitemap problem.

Also confirm that your robots.txt references the sitemap. All in One SEO can write this automatically through its Tools section, and it helps crawlers that arrive without prior submission.

Step Five: Enable Supplementary Sitemaps Where Relevant

The plugin also offers video, news and RSS sitemaps. Enable the video sitemap only if you host or embed video that you want surfaced with thumbnails. Enable the news sitemap only if you are a genuine news publisher approved for news surfaces, since misusing it provides no benefit. The RSS sitemap helps crawlers spot very recent content quickly and is worth enabling on frequently updated sites.

Troubleshooting Common Problems

If your sitemap returns a 404, first flush permalinks by opening Settings then Permalinks and saving without changes. If a conflicting plugin such as another SEO suite is active, disable its sitemap module to avoid two systems generating competing files. If your sitemap is empty, check that the relevant post types are included and that your content is not set to noindex, because noindexed URLs are correctly excluded. If caching plugins serve a stale file, purge the cache and exclude sitemap URLs from caching rules.

If Search Console reports that a submitted URL is marked noindex, resolve the contradiction at the source. A page should either be in the sitemap and indexable, or excluded from both. Sending mixed signals wastes crawl budget and undermines trust in your sitemap generally.

Why Sitemaps Matter Less Than People Think, and More Than They Realise

A sitemap does not make pages rank. Its role is discovery and diagnosis. On a well-linked small site, crawlers would find everything anyway. On a large site, or one with deep archives, orphaned content or newly launched sections, a clean sitemap materially speeds up indexation. Just as importantly, the coverage reports built on your sitemap are the single best diagnostic tool for indexation problems, which is why keeping it accurate pays off. Treating it as part of your broader digital marketing infrastructure, alongside analytics and tag management, keeps everything measurable.

A Final Note on AI Crawlers

Answer engines and AI assistants rely on the same discovery mechanisms as traditional crawlers, so an accurate sitemap improves the odds that your newest and most authoritative content is found and cited. Combined with clean structured data, it forms part of the technical baseline behind GEO services.

Summary

Enable the sitemap in the All in One SEO Sitemaps panel, include only genuinely valuable post types and taxonomies, exclude attachments and thin pages, submit the index to Search Console and Bing, and monitor coverage monthly. If you would rather have your entire WordPress technical setup audited and configured properly, our team at AAMAX.CO can take care of it.