Hello,
Thank you for contacting Rank Math and sorry for the inconvenience caused by this.
You can enable it from Rank Math > Sitemap Settings > Category > Enable and Save Changes. https://i.rankmath.com/AlTfAL
If you are not seeing this, please update your plugin to the latest version.
I hope this resolves your issue.
Hello,
I did enable it yesterday but I don’t see my categories as part of the main site map
https://telcocloudbridge.com/sitemap_index.xml
I do see that it generated a separate sitemap at
https://telcocloudbridge.com/category-sitemap.xml
So my question: Shouldn’t categories be part of the main sitemap also?
Hello,
If they are enabled, they should be included in the main sitemap just like any other enabled sitemap.
Can you please follow these steps?
1. Head to Rank math > Titles & Meta > Categories and make sure the robots meta setting are to index.
2. Flush the Sitemap cache by following this video screencast:
https://i.rankmath.com/pipRDp
3. Exclude the Sitemap files of the Rank Math plugin in your caching plugin. The cache could be via a plugin or from the server. For plugins or Cloudflare, please follow this article:
https://rankmath.com/kb/exclude-sitemaps-from-caching/
That should fix the issue. Please check your sitemap in a private/incognito browser and let me know if the issue persists. We are here to assist.
thanks, I am not using cache plugin but my cloud hosting provider namecheap is using cache plugin. They are asking about the exact file names to exclude
Hello,
If you’re using any other caching plugins, it is best to get advice from your hosting provider.
To be safe, you should request them to exclude sitemap_index.xml and every sitemap available in this list:
https://i.rankmath.com/BlAySc
I hope this resolves your issue.
Hi, Thanks, they have included all sitemap files from cache plugin. I have two follow up questions.
1. Upon visiting in incognito window, I still cannot site category and tags sitemap, while I do see them in the screenshot you shared. Do I need to wait for them to come up at my end ?
2. What is the best practice of sitemaps. I mean besides posts, pages, categories and tags, what else should be part of the sitemap of a simple blog site?
Hello,
Thank you for the follow up.
1. The sitemap also seems to show up as expected from my end: https://i.rankmath.com/wNIpnF
2. The sitemap is more like a table of content outlining all URLs on your site that you wish to have indexed. The best practices would be to make sure that the pages whose sitemaps are enabled are the pages you want to index and are good for your SEO. For instance, it is not always recommended to add your categories and tags to your sitemap unless they have actual content.
Here is a guide on configuring and using Rank math sitemaps: https://rankmath.com/kb/configure-sitemaps/
Hope that helps and please do not hesitate to let us know if you need our assistance with anything else.
thanks, just a quick follow up question. Do images inside posts/pages get indexed automatically, or they need to be configured separately to get indexed
Hello,
The images are taken from your sitemaps (page-sitemap.xml, post-sitemap.xml…) so if those sitemaps have content, the images on those pages/posts can be indexed by Google, so any post that is indexed has its images crawled by Google and potentially indexed.
I hope this helps. Looking forward to helping you.
Thank you.
i am closing the ticket and I got a good first experience of how good your support is , thank you.
Hello,
We are super happy that this issue is already resolved and addressed all your concerns. If you have any other questions in the future, know that we are here to help you.
If you don’t mind me asking, could you please leave us a review (if you haven’t already) on https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/seo-by-rank-math/reviews/#new-post about your overall experience with Rank Math? We appreciate your time and patience.
If you have another question in the future, please feel free to create a new forum topic, and it will be our pleasure to assist you again.
Thank you.
