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Submitting your sitemap to Google Search Console
Sitemaps are assets that are essential in helping your site gain the recognition it deserves. It is a key tool for helping your site get discovered by search engines. It is useful in getting your important pages indexed, evaluating which pages are valuable, and is necessary for indexing them regularly to ensure only the latest and up-to-date content appears in the search results. In this guide, we’ll walk you through the process of submitting a sitemap in the Google search console, ensuring that your website gets the visibility it deserves.
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What is a sitemap?
A sitemap is similar to a map that provides search engines like Google with a structured blueprint of your site, helping them navigate and index your pages efficiently. Think of it as a table of contents for your website, guiding search engine crawlers to understand the structure of your website, and improving your chances of appearing in search results.
Why Should You Submit a Sitemap to GSC?
Submitting a Google sitemap is effective in enhancing your website’s visibility in search results, ensuring that your content reaches the right audience. It offers several other benefits like:
Faster Indexing: A sitemap ensures that your new content is promptly indexed, which can be crucial for time-sensitive updates.
Complete Coverage: It helps search engines find all the pages on your site, especially if you have a large or complex website.
Error Identification: Google Search Console provides insights into any crawling or indexing errors, allowing you to fix issues proactively.
Preparing your Sitemap
Creating a sitemap might seem daunting, but it’s a straightforward process. It includes:
- Choosing Sitemap Generator: There are many tools and plugins available to generate sitemaps. Popular and free sitemap creators include Yoast SEO for WordPress or online tools like Screaming Frog SEO Spider.
2. Generating Sitemap: Follow the instructions for your chosen tool to create your sitemap. It should be in XML format, which is the preferred format for search engines.
3. Regular Update: It is necessary to update your sitemap whenever you add or remove pages from your website.
Submitting Your Sitemap
Once you’ve successfully set up your Google Search Console, it’s time to submit your sitemap. This can be done in no time through the following steps:
- Access Your Property: From the Google Search Console dashboard, select your website property.
- Sitemaps Section: In the left-hand menu, click on “Sitemaps” under the “Index” category.
- Submit Your Sitemap: Click on the “Add/Test Sitemap” button and enter the URL of your sitemap (usually something like https://example.com/sitemap.xml).
- Submit: Hit the aforesaid button to submit a page to Google, and it will start processing your sitemap.
How to Submit a Sitemap Using a Command Line or Programmatically?
For tech-savvy users or those with a large number of websites to manage, submitting a sitemap via the command line or programmatically offers a streamlined approach. Through specific commands or scripts using Google’s Search Console API, you can automate the process of submitting sitemaps for multiple websites efficiently and ensure that it is always up to date without manual intervention. However, it requires technical expertise.
How to Submit a Sitemap Using Robots.txt File?
Another method involves indicating the location of your sitemap in the robots.txt file. By adding the following line of code to this file, search engine crawlers are directed to your sitemap, expediting the indexing process.
https://example.com/sitemap.xml
Conclusion
Submitting a sitemap to Google Search Console is a fundamental step in maximizing your website’s visibility in the search engine results. It helps them understand your site’s structure, ensuring that all your important pages are crawled and indexed.
