What should and should not be included in a WordPress site's sitemaps?

• I have a WordPress site that specializes in dessert recipes and am wondering what should be included in the sitemaps? I'm thinking that I've included too many things. Could you take a look and offer some advice please?

Answer:

Looking at your site we'd advise you to include Pages, Posts and Images. In the majority of cases we use Yoast SEO and turn off sitemaps for Categories, Tags, Author and "special" categories, like perhaps a theme's portfolio.

Of course, this advice will vary depending on the site. The goal should be to avoid submitting duplicate content. Whenever elements such as categories and tags are just listings of your posts it's best to scratch them from your sitemaps. However, if any of them actually have unique content then they should definitely be listed.

You can find more details and guidance on your Sitemaps within this SEN resource, A href="https://www.searchenginenews.com/sample/content/your-ultimate-guide-to-xml-sitemaps" target="_blank">Your Ultimate Guide to XML Sitemaps.

...