No valid sitemap parsed for crawler

Hello,

We apologize for the issues you are facing with your sitemap and the drop in your rankings. Thank you for raising this concern.

The error "No valid sitemap parsed for crawler" typically indicates that there is a problem with your sitemap configuration. Here are some steps you can take to troubleshoot this issue:

1. Validate Your Sitemap: Use the Validate XML Sitemap tool to check if your sitemap is correctly configured. If there are any issues, the tool will provide details on what needs to be fixed.
   

2. Ensure the Sitemap is Located in the Root Folder: Make sure your sitemap is accessible at https://yourdomainname.com/sitemap_index.xml. If you manually created the sitemap, it should be in the root folder of your WordPress installation.

3. Flush Permalinks: Sometimes, simply saving changes on the Permalinks page in your WordPress dashboard can resolve issues with sitemap accessibility. Go to Settings → Permalinks and click Save Changes without making any modifications.

4. Check Robots.txt File: Ensure that your robots.txt file is not blocking access to your sitemap. You can check this by going to Rank Math SEO → General Settings → robots.txt.

5. Check for Plugin Conflicts: If you have other plugins installed, they might conflict with Rank Math. You can use the Health Check plugin to identify any conflicts.

6. Ensure Posts Are Set to Index: If all your posts are set to noindex, your sitemap will appear empty. Go to Rank Math SEO → Titles & Meta and ensure that the Index checkbox is enabled for your posts.
   

If you continue to experience issues after trying these steps, please reply to this ticket with your site URL so that a human agent from our support team can assist you further.

Regarding the drop in rankings, it’s important to note that changes in SEO settings can take time to reflect in search engine rankings. Additionally, various factors such as algorithm updates or competition can also impact your rankings. We recommend reviewing your SEO settings and ensuring they align with best practices.

Feel free to reach out if you have more questions or need further assistance!

Sources:
Troubleshooting the “Couldn’t Fetch” Error in Google Search Console » Rank Math

Hello,

Thank you for contacting us and sorry for any inconvenience that might have been caused due to that.

Can you please share your sitemap URL with us so that we can check the issue further for you? Meanwhile, if you’re using LiteSpeed cache, you can follow the steps mentioned here: https://docs.litespeedtech.com/lscache/lscwp/ts-crawler/#crawler-cant-load-sitemap

Regarding the ranking issue, we will try our level best to help you get to the bottom of this.

There are a few things you have to keep in mind when using any SEO plugin, not just Rank Math.

1. An SEO plugin alone cannot bring down or bring up the traffic in a day (or even a few days) unless incorrect Meta Tags are used by setting up the plugin improperly. That’s why we have a detailed tutorial on that:
https://rankmath.com/kb/how-to-setup/

2. All the SEO plugins add Meta tags for the search engines which can be checked by viewing the source of a page. For instance, here:
view-source:https://rankmath.com/

Other popular plugins generate similar tags:
https://i.rankmath.com/n94KyH

And with the Rank Math plugin, additional tags are added to a page so search engines can understand the content on a website better.

3. Google brings a new algorithmic update several times a month and the chances are great that your website got hit by that.

We have a full guide on that: https://rankmath.com/blog/google-algorithm-update-recovery/

In the PRO version of the plugin, you can even see if the drop in traffic correlates to an algorithm update. Here’s how:

https://rankmath.com/kb/google-algorithm-updates/

So, to start we would recommend a complete SEO audit by following the steps here: https://rankmath.com/blog/seo-audit/

Let us know how it goes. Looking forward to helping you.