SEO Forge generates a complete XML sitemap architecture for your WordPress site — an index sitemap at /sitemap_index.xml, per-post-type sub-sitemaps, an image sitemap with full <image:image> annotations, and a taxonomy sitemap. Everything is cached, updated automatically on publish, and pinged to Google when changed.
The main entry point at /sitemap_index.xml. Lists all sub-sitemaps:
<sitemapindex xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
<sitemap>
<loc>https://example.com/post-sitemap.xml</loc>
<lastmod>2026-04-11</lastmod>
</sitemap>
<sitemap>
<loc>https://example.com/page-sitemap.xml</loc>
<lastmod>2026-04-10</lastmod>
</sitemap>
<sitemap>
<loc>https://example.com/product-sitemap.xml</loc>
<lastmod>2026-04-11</lastmod>
</sitemap>
<sitemap>
<loc>https://example.com/image-sitemap.xml</loc>
<lastmod>2026-04-11</lastmod>
</sitemap>
</sitemapindex>Submit this one URL to Google Search Console and Google discovers everything else automatically.
SEO Forge generates a dedicated sub-sitemap for each registered post type — posts, pages, products, custom post types. If a single post type has more than 1,000 entries, SEO Forge splits it into paginated sub-sitemaps (/post-sitemap-1.xml, /post-sitemap-2.xml, etc.).
Every image used in published content gets included in the image sitemap with full annotations:
<url>
<loc>https://example.com/blog/wordpress-seo-guide/</loc>
<image:image>
<image:loc>https://example.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/seo-analysis.jpg</image:loc>
<image:title>WordPress SEO Analysis Dashboard</image:title>
<image:caption>The SEO Forge analysis dashboard showing content scoring</image:caption>
</image:image>
</url>Image sitemaps help Google discover images for Image Search, contributing to a measurable chunk of organic traffic.
Category, tag, and custom taxonomy pages get their own sub-sitemap, with lastmod reflecting the latest post update in each term.
lastmod precisionSEO Forge uses real post modification dates — not sitemap generation dates — for the <lastmod> element. This matters because Google uses lastmod to decide which pages to re-crawl first.
lastmod = publish datelastmod = last edit datelastmod updateslastmod updateslastmod (by default; configurable)Accurate lastmod means Google’s crawl budget focuses on pages that actually changed.
Pages marked as noindex in SEO Forge (via the per-post checkbox or the global archive settings) are automatically excluded from the sitemap. Google doesn’t waste crawl budget on pages you don’t want indexed.
Generating an XML sitemap on every request would be expensive on large sites. SEO Forge caches each sub-sitemap as a transient with a 24-hour TTL. Cache is auto-invalidated when:
Sitemaps are always fresh when Google requests them, but never generated unnecessarily.
When a new sub-sitemap is generated (because of a new post or a major update), SEO Forge pings Google at google.com/ping?sitemap=... to notify Google to re-crawl. This happens in the background via WP Cron — no UI impact.
Google’s documentation no longer emphasizes sitemap pings (they now prefer GSC’s sitemap submission), but pings still work and cost nothing.
In SEO Forge settings, toggle which post types appear in the sitemap:
Exclude entire categories from the sitemap. Useful for staging categories, internal categories, or low-value tag pages.
Default is 1,000 URLs per sub-sitemap (well under Google’s 50,000 limit). Adjustable in settings.
For sites with video content, SEO Forge’s Video SEO feature generates a separate video sitemap at /video-sitemap.xml with <video:video> annotations including duration, thumbnail, upload date, and category.
After activating SEO Forge, submit /sitemap_index.xml to Google Search Console → Sitemaps. Google will discover all sub-sitemaps and start crawling them. The Search Console “Indexing” report shows how many URLs were submitted and how many are indexed.
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The XML Sitemap feature is included in every version of SEO Forge, including the free one — and so are the image sitemap and video sitemap.