<b>The Benefits of Using the Google Sitemap WordPress Plugin</b>

Adding a sitemap to your WordPress website is vital to your search engine optimization success. There are a number of plugins that will do this for you including the Google Sitemap plugin.

Once installed, this plugin will create and add a sitemap file to your WordPress website. It will also connect you with your Google Webmaster Tools, which gives you even more power.

<b>What is a Sitemap?</b>

A sitemap is a list of all the pages and posts on your website. This can be a very large page full of pages and posts. It updates every single time you add or change content on your website and notifies the top search engines at the same time.

The sitemap provides SEO benefits and makes it easier to get indexed in the top search engines. Without a sitemap, it could take months for top search engines to rank a new post or page. When you add a sitemap with the Google Sitemap plugin, the major search engines will index your content faster.

<b>What Happens if You Don't Have a Sitemap?</b>

If you don't provide a sitemap, you are missing out on a very easy way to gain SEO benefits. Sitemaps make notifying Google, Yahoo, Bing and other search engines of new content very easy. Anybody planning on using SEO as a marketing strategy should add a sitemap to their website

<b>Which Plugin is the Right one For You?</b>

There are a number of choices when it comes to creating a sitemap. Google Sitemaps is only one of the many choices and you don't need two plugins for this task.

The Google Sitemaps WordPress plugin has been downloaded over 400,000 and has a star rating of 4.9 stars out of five stars. It's one of the highest rated plugins and provides a great way to create and share your sitemap.

The plugin works with any version of WordPress from 3.0 and up. Of course, it's always recommended that you upgrade to the latest version of WordPress before adding a new plugin.

<b>Installation and Set up</b>

Simply search for "Google Sitemap" in the plugin section of your WordPress Dashboard and click to install the plugin. The other option is to download the .zip folder and upload it in the plugin section. After installing it, make sure to activate the plugin. You will find the settings in the "BWS Plugins" section in your dashboard.

Within the settings section, you can adjust the type of posts and pages you want to be displayed in your sitemap. You can also decide to create a new sitemap or add your sitemap to the robots.txt file. The extra settings will let you go into even further depth with setting up your sitemap.

<b>How does the Free Version Compare to the Pro Upgrade?</b>

The Google Sitemap plugin comes in a free version and a pro version. Both provide the ability to create and add a sitemap to your Google Webmaster Tools and the ability to add a path to your sitemap file in robots.txt. However, the Pro version gives you three additional benefits including:
<ul>
	<li>Ability to change the XML Sitemap "Change Frequency"</li>
	<li>Ability to exclude pages or posts from your sitemap</li>
	<li>Top-priority support requests answered within 24 hours</li>
</ul>
The Pro upgrade is only $10.49, which is very cheap to gain access to these benefits. Getting the most out of the plugin requires the Pro version, but you can still gain benefits with the free version.

If you choose this top WordPress plugin for your sitemap creation and sharing, you may want to consider the upgrade. This will give you the full version of the plugin and for less than $11, its well worth it.

<b>Adding the Google Sitemap Plugin to Your Website</b>

You need a sitemap for your WordPress website and the Google Sitemap plugin is one of the easiest ways to create and share your sitemap with the major search engines. If you're not already using a plugin to create your sitemap, this plugin will take care of just what you need.

Take advantage of all the SEO benefits that come along with a sitemap for your WordPress website by downloading and installing the Google Sitemap plugin.