Blog SEO Tips: XML Sitemaps and the Google Webmaster Tools
Back in 2005, the folks at Google took on an “experiment” that later proved to be a very popular tool for webmasters and SEO people: the Google Sitemaps. Their exact words on the official Google blog were:
We’re undertaking an experiment called Google Sitemaps that will either fail miserably, or succeed beyond our wildest dreams, in making the web better for webmasters and users alike.
Ever since sitemaps where added, the Google Webmaster Tools became more and more used and useful, many new features being added over the time.
How do sitemaps help you?
Based on the main reasons that lead to this successful “experiment”, sitemaps are meant to improve the way your website is indexed and crawled by the GoogleBot.
Furthermore, through the Webmaster Tools interface and using sitemaps, you have access to vital information such as pages that could not be crawled, broken links, search queries that returned your website’s content, queries that drove traffic to your website and many more features worth discovering and using.
How do I build a XML sitemap?
As a blogger, you should not worry about that. Arne Brachhold developed a wonderful WordPress plugin that is very easy to manage and automatically generates a standards-compliant XML sitemap based on your blog’s structure. This is one plugin that I include in every WordPress blog I create or administrate, so, from my point of view, it’s one that I “could not live without”, so I highly recommend it.
Download Google XML Sitemaps Generator Plugin here.
Once you have the sitemap ready, it’s time to upload it to your Google Webmaster Tools account. In order to access these tools, all you need is a Google account. You can use your Gmail login info to access them.
Google Webmaster Tools
As soon as you log in to your account you’ll be taken to your dashboard. Here you can select through already existing website profiles, add new ones, add sitemaps and confirm your administrative rights (verify) for those websites.
Once you’ve added a new profile using the form on the top of the table – as indicated in the above screenshot – it’s time to verify your site. In the table, you’ll see your new website with two links beside it. One to add a sitemap and one to verify it. Click on the verify link and you’ll be taken to a new screen:
Here, you’ll be provided with 2 verification methods:
- By adding a specific, unique META tag to your website’s header;
- By uploading a HTML file into the root FTP folder of your website.
It’s up to you to decide which method will you use, the results are the same.
Now that your site has been verified, you can add the previously generated sitemap to its profile, either by clicking the “Add” link, near the website name on the dashboard, or by navigating the left side menu to Sitemaps -> Add a sitemap. Both methods will take you to this screen:
From the initial drop down menu select “Add General Web Sitemap“. This is the most common selection for text-based-content websites like blogs. In the form below, at point 3, enter the URL of your sitemap. This usually is something like: http://www.youblog.com/sitemap.xml, and click the button to submit it.
Allow some time for Google to process the information of your newly added sitemap. Once the sitemap is approved, your sitemaps dashboard will look like this:
From here, you will gain access to report about your crawling stats, sitemap and website status and many more interesting things that you will be able to access through the options in the left side menu of Google Webmaster Tools.
And that concludes this guide. You should now have your Google Sitemap up and running, nice and easy!
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Having sitemap is good but it’s not a guarantee that Google will scan everything in it.
Still it’s good and easy to use tool.
PS submitting sitemap is really optional, search engines look for for it themselves and plugin mentioned writes sitemap location to robots.txt file for them.
@Rarst: Submitting sitemaps is especially good if you host ur blog at a place other than ur site’s root (and hence ur sitemap as well.) e.g. In my case, one of my blogs is in such condition, i.e. sitemap is at http://www.safercode.com/blog/sitemap.xml and it would have been difficult for the search engine to look for it there without me putting in its location in robots.txt at the root of the site, or submitting it to google webmasters tool
Sitemaps are always good and useful for seo sometimes for navigation. I remember that old sites had a “sitemap” link. I was so frusturated when i’ve put a sitemap on my blog, but afterwords i discovered a really neet plugin.
Cool article.
Alex, you have a unique gift to make me add items on my todo list
Great post, as always.
Rarst, indeed, search engines look for the file themselves… sooner or later. Why not sooner? Why not to give them a boost, and also take advantage of the rest of the tools and reports that the Google Webmaster Tools provide?
Shantanu Goel, good point. Thanks for mentioning it.
Stefan & Alina, thank you both!
Very Very useful information for google bloggers like me. I got clarified some of doubts here. Thanks a lot.I do visit again for more useful information.
@Alex
It’s just that some people are bit obsessive with running around submitting their website to everything and staring at stats afterwards.
I think it’s important to know what is really important (setting sitemap plugin) and what is “extra effort” (manual submitiing to search engines and hypnotizing your webmasters tools) that should be done when you have time for it but not by sacrificing time better spent elsewhere.
Good information.Wordpress has a useful sitemap generator plugin.Here´s the link: http://www.dagondesign.com/art.....wordpress/
i didnt realise sitemaps were that important, looks like i will have to get one.
Great plugin that I just downloaded! My favorite feature is being able to add multiple headers and metadata right from the admin panel when posting.
Another tip that few overlook, is that when posting on a blog, rather than just leaving a link to your front page, add a link to your sitemap! I see this as being great for when other sites are spidered and really helps to get a new site noticed.
Thanks for the outstanding plugin and very well description!
Cheers,
Karl
Sitemaps coupled with robots.txt and google webmaster tools make a great way to identify your site for 404 errors and making your site more search engine friendly.
Regards
Thinkjayant
Great tutorial. I feel that many blog owners neglect to create sitemaps because they think that their feeds are sufficient. And while feeds are great, they typically don’t contain links to all content, but just the newest content. Nor do they tell Google if you’ve update content…
Nice article, I’ll turn-on sitemaps in my blogs.
Good post. For me, the big advantage of submitting your site-map to Google is being able to check your crawling stats etc. This gives the reassurance that everything is working as it should be or flags up issues where they occur.
I actually recently created a sitemap and submitted and saw a positive impact in a very short span of time.
yes, i am agree with this article but when we created the xml sitemap then we have some problem regarding the sitemap pages beacuse tools is not free so can you provide the free tool for site map.
The wordpress plug-in works best for me. Thanks for the post about a much needed topic! Sitemaps are something most new bloggers know nothing about!
Sitemap is a very important thing for any site.. and if its a blog then why not go for the wordpress plugin? hey thanks for explaining everything in detail. Never knew so much about sitemaps
nice article, i never thought that site map was so important for any blog.
Now i am going to use this feature in my blog
Great info for a newbie like me.
I have just signed up to Google webmaster tools and submitted the sitemap for my blog Leeds Photo Daily.
So thanks for this.
Thanks for providing such a rich information about Google webmaster tool. I HAVE ALREDY SUBMITTED MY SITE.
Thanks alex for useful information about sitemap, I am very new in blogs and just created lots of blogs but wondering to create the sitemaps for each bolg as sitemap matters a lot. Now I have got the plugins for it. Thanks so much once again.
thak a lot.. very usefull article for newbie like me
Sitemaps are always good and useful for seo sometimes for navigation. I remember that old sites had a “sitemap” link. I was so frusturated when i’ve put a sitemap on my blog, but afterwords i discovered a really neet plugin
i didnt realise sitemaps were that important, looks like i will have to get one.
This is a well explained awesome post on Xml sitemaps. Saw this blog while searching for sitemap details. Cant go without commenting on your blog. Really an useful piece of information and a helpful post. Thanks.
Sitemaps are a way to tell Google about pages on your site we might not otherwise discover. In its simplest terms, a XML Sitemap—usually called Sitemap. I submit my XML sitemap, however how do I know that it is successfully being indexed? In Google’s webmaster tools I’m able to see the indexing status of my XML sitemap index and sitemaps within (i.e. if there are errors and number of pages indexed in each file)… how can find similar diagnostic info within MSN webmaster tools to ensure my sitemap is successfully being indexed w/out errors
Good basic articls. Any more detailed best practices to help optimize some of the parameters?