You need a Sitemap if you are taking search engine optimization seriously, period.
Why?
Having a Sitemap gets your content indexed faster.
The best part?
You only need to do the work once and reap the benefits of it forever.
By the end of this short tutorial, you’ll learn:
- What a Sitemap is
- How to generate your very own XML Sitemap, for free
- How to submit your Sitemap to Google
Read related post: SEO Tips For Newbies: Ranking Your Blog Content
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What is a Sitemap?
A Sitemap is a file that contains all the pages of your website, allowing Google to navigate your website more effectively. This allows search engines to index your website pages faster.
How do you generate a Sitemap?
Generating a Sitemap is extremely easy. There are a couple of quick ways you can create your Sitemap:
Free Sitemap Generator #1: Yoast SEO Plugin
If you have the Yoast SEO Plugin, there is a section for “XML Sitemaps”. Click on it, then enable it. Bam! You have your Sitemap ready. 🙂
Should you decide to use Yoast to generate your Sitemap, you can access your Sitemap at yourdomain.com/sitemap_index.xml
As far as I know, most bloggers create their Sitemaps using Yoast because you want to minimize the number of WordPress blogging plugins you have, and the Yoast plugin is useful for SEO as well.
Free Sitemap Generator Option #2: Any other dedicated Sitemap Plugin
Just search plugins and you’ll find many, such as Google XML Sitemaps, which has been installed by more than 1 million users.
Submitting your Sitemap to Google
There are many sites that claim to help you submit your content to Google for a small fee. Please don’t fall for such schemes – you can easily do so on your own.
A great way to do this is to submit your Sitemap, and the rest of this tutorial will be dedicated to helping you with just that.
Submitting your Sitemap is important as it tells Google, “Hey, this is my Sitemap, come check it out!”
The result? Google knows that THIS Sitemap is YOUR Sitemap, and when a new post pops up in there, they will index it faster.
Sign up for Google Webmaster Tools
Google Webmaster Tools is the platform that Google has created to communicate with us webmasters.
What is Google Webmaster Tools for?
- If there’s something wrong with your site, Google will notify you there
- Submit your Sitemap
- Look at selected keywords you’re ranking for
- Track how your posts are doing on Google
You can submit your Sitemap to Google by signing up for Google webmaster tools.
If it’s your first time, click on “Add a property” and add your website.
Verify your website
Verify your websiteNext, you need to verify your website. There are a couple of ways to do this – Google recommends that you download a HTML verification file and upload it to your website.
In your cpanel (which usually can be found at yourdomain.com/cpanel), go to your file manager and upload the downloaded HTML file there. You can contact your host for help, although it is pretty easy to figure out.
Submit your Sitemap
Now that you’re done verifying your website, it’s time to submit your Sitemap!
Head over to Crawl > Sitemaps and submit your Sitemap URL.
In a few days, check back in and see if it has been processed! 🙂
And there you have it – you now know what a Sitemap is, why you need it, how to generate one and how to submit your Sitemap to Google.
Here are some of my other posts that are SEO-related for your perusal:
- SEO Tips for Newbies: Ranking Your Blog Content
- How to Submit Your Website to Search Engines
- The 12 Best SEO Tools To Use (2017 Edition)
- What is a Sitemap | The Simple Sitemap Guide For Your Website
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I think you’ll love both the related articles and the free course. I hope you’ve learnt something from this article!
xx Raelyn
Thank you for this post about sitemaps. I’ve been wanting to create one for my website but haven’t got around to doing it.
You’re welcome, Lily! 🙂
Thanks so much Raelyn! I saved this post when you shared it the other day. I just launched last night, so perfect timing! Will this help my images come up when I share posts? That is what I’m having an issue with today…the only image coming up is one from the coming soon page I had pre-launch. I deleted the image, and it’s still coming up! I this is too specific of a question, feel free to ignore. Love your blog & group!
Hey Krista, thank you for your kind words! This has nothing to do with what comes up when you share posts… it’s just a “map” for Google to figure out what pages are on your site. To tweak what images come up it’s a completely different thing! xx Raelyn
Great post and tutorial. I’ll be doing this, it seems so easy!
Thanks Atim! Yes do it!
Thank you so much for this useful post….one of your Tweet’s was at the top of my Twitter feed this morning and I’m so glad it was. I’m learning a lot as I drink my morning coffee. I’ll share your posts of course 🙂
Thanks for stopping by, Rachel! I hope to keep seeing you around 🙂
Hi Raelyn.. thats really a great blog, gained lots of knowledge on SEO.. thank you very much.. ?
you’re welcome!
Hey Raeyln,
Great post and thanks for sharing the step by step process for setting up a sitemap. Do you need to use the paid version of Yoast SEO to enable the sitemap? Mine is on “enabled” but the sitemap doesn’t seem to work on Google after setting it up. It’s been a few weeks already.
No, you can get it on the free version! Try resubmitting it on Google.