Yoast WP SEO vs Google XML sitemaps

Yoast WP-SEO’s placement of xml sitemaps:

My site at http://pediatric-house-calls.djmed.net is reached just fine with this url hosted on Bluehost (even though it is a subdomain of djmed.net) and can also be reached at http://djmed.net/pediatric-house-calls/ , and even http://www.djmed.net/pediatric-house-calls/).

I registered with Google just fine with the first URL above, it accepted the .html verification file that I had to load and told me that it DID find it and was ready to crawl.

Then when I went to tell it about the site map – which Yoast SEO produces via the WP plugin – it threw a “network unreachable” error. The Yoast SEO plugin seems to only think that the site should be at: http://www.djmed.net/pediatric-house-calls/ and designs all the xml with that address and puts the sitemap_index.xml there as well. I find no option to self-enter a location.

PROBLEM: When telling Google where to locate the sitemap, it expects the sitemap to be at http://pediatric-house-calls.djmed.net (the url that I wanted it to have, does work just fine AND the one I want people to remember and use). AND further, it prepopulates it’s form with that URL and only allows entry of the file name. I can find no way around it.

So, when I enter the sitemap_index.xml file name – it throws the error. The only way I could eventually get around it was to go back to Google and completely delete the website registration – then add it back again with the URL that the Yoast plug-in seems to want to use. That isn’t the one that I want people to use, nor the one that I give out on all my promotion, so I’m afraid that all the Google SEO juice is going to get diluted etc.

SOLUTION: Seems to me that the Yoast plug-in should at least give the option for us to enter the URL address that we want the XML file to be saved to. Or, I guess it might be handled via an entry in the htaccess file; but, that’s beyond what most of us can do.

If there’s anything I’m missing I’d be pleased to learn, otherwise perhaps this could be added to the list of “bugs,” or whatever, for future upgrades?