You don't physically upload an XML sitemap file to WordPress. Modern SEO plugins generate it dynamically at a standard URL path. Yoast SEO creates your main sitemap at yourdomain.com/sitemap_index.xml, while Rank Math and All in One SEO typically use yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml. These are virtual URLs—there's no actual file sitting in your wp-content folder. The plugin queries your database in real-time when Google or any crawler requests the sitemap URL. This means it automatically includes new posts, updates last-modified dates, and excludes content you've marked as noindex. No manual file management required. To verify your sitemap exists, just paste the URL into your browser. You should see XML markup listing your content types. Then submit that URL in Google Search Console under Sitemaps. For client sites at Ottawa SEO, we typically keep the default plugin paths unless there's a specific technical reason to customize. If you're not using an SEO plugin, WordPress 5.5+ includes core sitemap functionality at yourdomain.com/wp-sitemap.xml. It's basic but functional. It splits content into separate sitemaps for posts, pages, and taxonomies. Most agencies replace this with Yoast or Rank Math because the core version lacks priority settings, customizable exclusions, and image sitemap support. Some scenarios where you might manually handle sitemaps: headless WordPress setups where the frontend lives elsewhere, highly custom implementations with 50,000+ URLs that need sitemap splitting, or when you're migrating from static sitemaps and need to maintain legacy URLs during transition. In those cases, you'd generate XML files programmatically and place them in your root directory via FTP, but that's edge-case territory. Bottom line: install Yoast or Rank Math, let it generate the sitemap automatically, submit the URL to Search Console, and forget about it. Check it once after major site changes, but otherwise it maintains itself.