When we create a new website, first thing which comes into mid whether our blog is indexed by Google or not. But Google will know about our blog on its own. We make our blog discoverable to search engines by submitting sitemap to Search Engines. By submitting sitemap, we ensure that our site is visible to Google or any similar search engine. Specially, when newbies create new blog they have to do several things to make their blog working. Of course, Google is most popular search engine on the internet which shares almost 80 percent of total search engines including Bing and Yahoo.
Why we need to submit sitemap to search engines?
If we want to index our site in the search engines we need to inform Google about the existence of our site. If you have not submitted and verified your blog to Google Webmaster tool, you can read my previous article on how to submit and verify your site to Google Webmaster Tool. We can submit sitemaps directly to the Google using any plugin if we are running self-hosted blog on WordPress. We can use Google sitemap Generator or WordPress SEO by Yoast to generate a sitemap and submit it to Google.
What is Sitemap?
Basically, sitemap is an xml file which contains link of all the posts, pages, tags and categories etc. It contains all related links to all posts of a blog.
Whenever, user types a query on Google, It searches available sitemaps for most relevant and accurate results which can fulfill the need of user. Hence, sitemaps make it easy for Google to search for available articles on the internet quickly.
How to generate sitemap of blog?
It is a common question aroused by newbies that how to generate sitemap of blog. If you are running self-hosted blog on WordPress then you can download and install plugins from WordPress Dashboard and generate sitemap without any cost. Two most popular plugins among bloggers are WordPress SEO by Yoast plugin and Google sitemap Generator. One difference between these two is that WordPress SEO by Yoast generate sitemap on the basis of posts, pages, tags, categories etc. while Google sitemap Generator generates sitemap of posts and pages mixed together. You can submit any of the sitemap to Google. In similar way, you can generate and submit sitemaps to Bing, Yahoo and Yandex. All you need is to submit.
- See a quick guide to submit sitemap to Bing and Yahoo WebMaster Tools.
When we come to submit sitemap, before this we need to submit and verify our blog to Google. If you still not submitted then click here.
Inside your Webmaster tool dashboard, you can see what sitemaps are already submitted for your blog by clicking the sitemap tab.
On the same page, you see an ADD/TEST SITEMAP button which allows you to submit sitemap for your blog if you have not submitted sitemap already.
Here you can submit and test your blog’s sitemap. Click on this and fill the address of sitemap in the empty box.
Note:- Primary domain for your blog is already written there, you don’t need to write it again. Just enter the address of sitemap to be tested or submitted.
Now click on Submit sitemap. It will take some time based on the size of your sitemap. If Google finds no error in your sitemap, it will be added to your account and now you can find the submitted and indexed pages of your sitemap.
You don’t need to submit sitemaps whenever you post an article on your blog. Whenever you will update your blog with new post or page, Google will automatically be notified about changes on the blog. Keep using plugin with which you generated sitemap. Plugin will automatically notify Google about changes.
That’s all.
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