How to Index Your Site to Google Via Sitemap | Blogger/Blogspot Example

March 06, 2018

How to Index Your Site to Google Via Sitemap | Blogger/Blogspot Example | Last Step to Google Index

Google Index is an index that determine Internet user search results worldwide. Art, illustration, matrix, technology, microsoft paint.

We previously discussed how to add a web/blog to Google Search Console (GSC) as a property, now we will learn how to ask Google to index it using a sitemap.

Adding Property to Google Search Console | First Step to Google Index

First things first, we have to understand the definition of the sitemap. A sitemap is a file where webmaster organizes site's posts and pages as a list to be discovered/crawled by search engine bot, or also the human reader. Commonly in the form of ".xml" file that can also be built in Atom format. Per the answer of support.google.com, here's some basis why you need a sitemap:

Your site is big enough for the bot might handle. The bot is quite sophisticated but still, it might slip through and did not crawl some pages.

Young is the age of your site and little external links are pointing at it. Crawler bot do their job by following links, so, less link means less discoverability.

You want to use rich media or meta tags. These elements can be put in a sitemap, i.e. hreflang, webmaster verification, etc.

Some of your pages are solitary. As we already know, pages need links to be found by bot; putting them in the sitemap will help bot to intelligently crawl along with your preference.

A sitemap will give webmaster benefits, however, none can guarantee anything along the complex algorithm of the search engine.

Let's try submitting a sitemap from the Blogger platform to GSC, considering I already add the site to property.

1. Login to Your Google Account

2. Open GSC

This is the homepage of your GSC, all of your web property are enlisted here. Screenshot, howto, turorial.

3. Choose Your Site in the Property List

This is the homepage of your GSC, all of your web property are enlisted here. Screenshot, howto, tutorial.

You'll be prompted to GSC dashboard of your chosen site

It is featured with the message, status, and tool to help to improve your registered site in GSC. Atom, Screenshot, graph, report.

4. Choose Crawl > Sitemap

There's crawl menu under the dashboard tab, it shows you status and tools related to crawling your site. Bot, webmaster, screenshot, step, SEO, picture, image.

Tap the sitemap menu under the crawl tab, we're about to submit on for the Blog. Report, data, image, file, step-by-step.

There will appear a red button on the top right saying "ADD/TEST SITEMAP".

5. Click the "ADD/TEST SITEMAP" Button

Now click the red button. Next, tutorial, technology, yudhafpress, yudha-f.

And then a box will emerge with your web/blog URL on the left of the box.

Let's submit the sitemap commonly in the format of sitemap.xml. File, maintenance, search engine optimization, techno, nerd, geek.

6. Enter Your Sitemap File Location to the Box

For Blogger platform, there is a default sitemap of all your posts located in "yoursitename.blogspot.com/sitemap.xml", meanwhile for your static pages is in "yoursitename.blogspot.com/sitemap-pages.xml".

Note:
Do you know the difference between post and page in the Blogger/Blogspot? "Post" is where you want to write content; having the attribute of a time stamp, label, search description, and location. Meanwhile, "Page" is where you make "About", "Contact", "Privacy Policy", etc. elements for your blog that doesn't count as a post.

7. Tap Submit

It will take awhile for Googlebot to confirm your sitemap, can be days or weeks. In my experience, I tried to submit a custom Atom sitemap, it was acknowledged by crawler but none of my posts were indexed. The default Blogger sitemap just works fine. Finish.

If there's an issue/error, GSC should give you notice in "Message" or in your Gmail inbox.

Verifying Site Ownership in Bing Webmaster | Initial Move to Bing and Yahoo Index

Submitting Blogger/Blogspot Sitemap to Bing Webmaster | to Infinity and Beyond

If you are a webmaster that want to do Search Engine Optimization (SEO) that adhere to the rules of Google, this step of submitting sitemap is a benefit for your site. It should be easier for Google user to search your site, might even appear in the "First Page" of some queries.