The Webmaster Tool Guide - Guide to WordPress SEO

For WordPress SEO series, how to use the XML-Sitemaps plug in so you could generate a sitemap for your WordPress site. First thing you’re going to need is a Google account (a Gmail account should suffice). Once you have arrived at the Google Webmaster Tools page and have signed in, the first things you’ll want to do is adding a site and input the URL for your site and click “Add Site”. For the next page will ask you to verify the site and you shouldn’t be able to claim you own a site when you don’t. So, Google uses one of two methods of verification — you can either upload an html file to the root of your website’s domain, or you can insert a META tag in the <head> section of your website. After you have verified your site, click the “Sitemaps” link on the left menu. This is where you are going to tell Google the location of the sitemap you generated then click the “Add Sitemap” button on the left menu and choose “Add General Web Sitemap”. Finally, you’ll want to tell Google the location of your sitemap. Depending on whether you chose to “gzip” your sitemap, the location of your sitemap, so be sure to input the correct location here. If you chose to do both (XML and gzip) then you could enter either of these and be fine. For example, Yahoo and MSN Search have similar programs to which you can submit your sitemap as well. The most of your search engine traffic will probably come from Google, no matter what you do.