Having a Sitemap residing on your server is an essential part of the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) process for any website. It’s easy to create one on a static site, but for an ever changing and dynamic site like your WordPress blog, it can be a nightmare. Luckily, there is an excellent plugin out there called XML Sitemap Generator.

This plugin will not only generate a sitemap based on your site’s content, but also notify popular search engines such as Google, Bing, and Ask.com of updates made to your blog.  But the awesomeness doesn’t stop there.  In addition, it will also let you specify any additional pages of your blog to include/exclude, where you want to save the sitemap, change frequencies of each post and the priorities of each post.

If you aren’t already signed up for Google Webmaster Tools, do so immediately.  After you have verified your site, click on Site Configuration and then Sitemaps.  Click “Submit A Sitemap” and type in the path to where you saved it.  If you used the default settings, it should look something like this:

The process is similar for other search engines.

So if you want to make search engines aware of your blog and get noticed, this is definitely one of the first places to start.