How to Create & Submit Your Sitemap
September 18, 2012 in Blogging Tips, SEO Tips
How to create and submit a sitemap for your blog. A very simple SEO tip for you today.
What makes it so simple? You don’t have to create your own sitemap for Blogger. Blogger automatically creates it for you. All you have to do it submit it.
Going back to the 15 Minute SEO Checklist, a sitemap is on the list! And they say that spiders love an up-to-date one. So let’s do what we can to make sure that happens! Just follow these step by steps. Really, its pretty easy!
How to find your sitemap?
Easy.
On Blogger, it is in the form of: http://YOURBLOGURL/robots.txt
So, the sitemap of our test blog at Blogger is: http://bloggingwithkidsblog.blogspot.com/robots.txt
And this is what it looks like:
User-agent: Mediapartners-Google Disallow: User-agent: * Disallow: /search Disallow: / User-Agent: googlebot Disallow: /search Allow: /
Take that URL that you just found and go to Google Webmaster Tools. If you haven’t added your site here yet, please do so. (Click the “Add a Site” button and follow the prompts, read more on adding your site.)
How to add your sitemap:
- Navigate to: “Optimization” > “Sitemaps”
- Click the “Add/Test Sitemap”
- Enter the ending part of the URL you found above: “robots.txt”
- “Test Sitemap”
- “View Test Results”
- Confirm that it successfully found the Sitemap and then repeat #2 above
- “Submit Sitemap” this time.
- Done!
Now Google will find you. Congratulations on submitting your sitemap!
For more information in regards to sitemaps and Google Webmaster Tools see the following links:
Are you on a self-hosted WordPress blog?
Submitting your sitemap is even easier. Download and activate the Google XML Sitemap Plugin.
Jamie is a baker’s wife and a stay at home mom. She’s the creator and author of hands on : as we grow, which is all about the activities that she does at home with the kids [Henry, 4, and George, almost 2]. Lots of practical, easy activities are shared, and learning opportunities are snuck in whenever possible.
If I had known it was that simple, I would have done it ages ago! Thanks guys for all the tips. You rock!
Oh wow, I love how simple you ladies make things! I am learning so much each time I check in.
i’ve got to get this done! i didn’t know it was so easy, either.
And once it’s done… it’s done right? YEAH for simple productivity!
Do it once and that is it
Can I just say I love you two for starting this site??? I don’t comment often enough but I greatly appreciate all these tips!!! (Especially when you say all you have to do it download the plugin!)
Jamie.. thankyoU! Finally, lol. I have actually done this just now following your instructions. I should have done it long ago but thanks for this easy info
When I run the test, I get 3 errors, stating: This is not a valid URL. Please correct it and resubmit.
I followed the directions above, so I’m not sure what I need to do to fix this. Any suggestions?
Thanks for your help!
Ok… I think I have figured it out. Perhaps I was just misunderstanding the instructions. There was a sitemap URL shown below then I went to http://YOURBLOGURL/robots.txt… and that is the one I needed to input, right? That one worked.
Thanks for this post!!!! Much appreciated!
This site was… how do I say it? Relevant!! Finally I have found something
that helped me. Thank you!