Why Yoast SEO Plugin Does Not Generate XML Sitemap

2016-02-25


Yoast SEO plugin is a popular SEO plugin with multiple features such as XML Sitemap for WordPress websites. Just because its amazon functions and  features compared to other SEO plugins, it could become a top SEO plugin. It provides multiple features such as better content writing, page analysis, XML sitemaps, RSS optimization, Social integration, multiple websites settings import and export etc..

The XML Sitemap is the one of Yoast SEO plugin features. It is an important feature which better is provided by a website to all popular search engine services. Yoast SEO plugin also provides the XML sitemap generate function. However, sometimes we can not use Yoast SEO to generate XML sitemap successfully.

Seems the issue of XML sitemap from Yoast SEO plugin is common, we had at least 3 WordPress websites could not get XML sitemap using Yoast SEO plugin recently, even we updated the WordPress to the newest system.

Yoast SEO Plugin Does Not Generate XML Sitemap

Actually what we met was the same problem: Yoast SEO plugin did not generate XML sitemap for websites at all. But all other functions seems work well. When we click the XML Sitemap button, we could only see the following error message in a new window which indicated the XML sitemap could not be found.

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We even had to disable Yoast SEO’s XML sitemap function and installed another XML sitemap plugin to generate sitemap specially for us.

Why Yoast SEO Plugin Does Not Generate XML Sitemap and How to Fix ?

We eventually found the solution was so simple. We realized the reason was also wired: Our WordPress websites’ permalinks settings were not properly saved due to general reported.

All we had to do was that just went to Settings –> Permalinks and just clicked the Save Changes button without any changes actually.

The following is the XML sitemap generated right away after we clicked the Permalinks settings save button:

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We also found Yoast SEO plugin official website had listed all common XML sitemap issues and solutions. You can go there to check for your case if you can not get help from our case.