XML Sitemaps

Last updated: February 13, 2026

Lean SEO automatically generates XML sitemaps for better search engine crawling and indexing.

What It Does

The Lean_SEO_Sitemap class creates XML sitemaps including:

Index sitemap: Main sitemap listing all sub-sitemaps
Posts sitemap: All published posts with modification dates
Pages sitemap: All published pages
Categories sitemap: All categories
Tags sitemap: All tags

Code Structure

Located in includes/class-lean-seo-sitemap.php:

register_routes() – Sets up rewrite rules for sitemap URLs
handle_request() – Processes sitemap requests and outputs XML
render_index() – Creates the main sitemap index
render_posts() – Generates posts sitemap (paginated for large sites)
render_pages() – Creates pages sitemap
render_categories() – Builds categories sitemap
render_tags() – Creates tags sitemap

Configuration Options

Custom Sitemaps

Add custom sitemaps to the index using the lean_seo_sitemap_index action:

php

add_action('lean_seo_sitemap_index', function() {
    echo '  <sitemap>' . "n";
    echo '    <loc>' . home_url('/sitemap-products.xml') . '</loc>' . "n";
    echo '    <lastmod>' . date('c') . '</lastmod>' . "n";
    echo '  </sitemap>' . "n";
});

Exclude Content from Sitemaps

Filter posts/pages from sitemaps:

php

add_filter('wp_sitemap_posts_query_args', function($args) {
    // Exclude posts from category ID 5
    $args['tax_query'] = array(
        array(
            'taxonomy' => 'category',
            'field'    => 'term_id',
            'terms'    => 5,
            'operator' => 'NOT IN',
        ),
    );
    return $args;
});

Usage

Sitemaps are automatically available at the following URLs:

/sitemap.xml – Main index sitemap
/sitemap-posts.xml – All posts
/sitemap-posts-2.xml – Second page of posts (for sites with >1000 posts)
/sitemap-pages.xml – All pages
/sitemap-categories.xml – All categories
/sitemap-tags.xml – All tags

Automatic Pagination

For sites with many posts, the posts sitemap is automatically paginated:

1000 posts per sitemap page
URLs follow pattern: /sitemap-posts-{page}.xml

robots.txt Integration

The plugin automatically adds the main sitemap URL to robots.txt:

Sitemap: https://example.com/sitemap.xml

Technical Details

Uses WordPress rewrite API for clean URLs
Outputs proper XML headers and content-type
Includes last modification dates for posts/pages
Excludes posts with ‘noindex’ meta robots (if set by other plugins)
Performance optimized with no_found_rows and cache disabling

Sitemap Structure

Index Sitemap Example

xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<sitemapindex xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
  <sitemap>
    <loc>https://example.com/sitemap-posts.xml</loc>
    <lastmod>2024-01-15T10:00:00+00:00</lastmod>
  </sitemap>
  <sitemap>
    <loc>https://example.com/sitemap-pages.xml</loc>
  </sitemap>
  <!-- Additional sitemaps -->
</sitemapindex>

Posts Sitemap Example

xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
  <url>
    <loc>https://example.com/hello-world/</loc>
    <lastmod>2024-01-15T10:00:00+00:00</lastmod>
  </url>
  <!-- Additional URLs -->
</urlset>

Submission to Search Engines

Submit your sitemap to:

Google Search Console
Bing Webmaster Tools
Other search engines that support sitemaps

The sitemap helps search engines discover and index your content more efficiently.

View on GitHub