Sitemap consists information about your site’s URL links. The search engine’s web crawlers like Google bot read this file more intelligently to crawl your website, index your content and list properly in the search results. In today’s post, we are going to provide an overview of why sitemap submission really matters and how to submit sitemap to Google, Bing and Yandex Webmaster Tools.
- Why submit sitemap to Google, Bing and Yandex Webmaster Tools?
It is not necessary to add a sitemap in Webmaster Tools as the robots.txt file tells Google, Bing and Yandex Webmaster Tools where to look. However, below are some of the key reasons to submit a sitemap to Google, Bing and Yandex Webmaster Tools: –
- Set a geo-target country for a global TLD (.COM etc.)
- Re-Index your website after major content and SEO changes have been made.
- Set preferred domain to display, either with www. or without at the start.
- View search analytics. What keywords are people searching that results in them seeing your listing and click reports?
- See who links to you, and external link reports.
- Crawl errors. 404 error reports & alerts.
It is quite easy to submit a sitemap and list your website in Search Engines Results Page (SERPs). But, before proceeding to the submission steps, we should let you know that you would require a sitemap.xml file placed into your website file directory.
- How to submit your sitemap to Google Search Console?
Follow these steps to submit your sitemap to Google Search Console: –
Step 1: First of all, you should add your website to Google Webmaster Tools (click here, if you want to know the process to submit your website to Google Search Console)
Step 2: Click on your web property (blog URL), go to crawl option and the select sitemap option. Next, you need to click on Add/Test Sitemap button.
Step 3: A small pop up will appear on the screen. Now you need to place the sitemap URL address and click on the test button to check if your sitemap is error-free (it will show the error if there is any)
Step 4: Now go back to the Add/Test Sitemap button, submit your URL and refresh the page.
You have successfully submitted your sitemap URL to the Google Search Console. It would take some time to get indexed. Once, the sitemap is indexed by Google Search Console, it would show the number of URLs that the Sitemap consists.
- How to submit your sitemap to Bing Webmaster?
It is quite an easy task to submit your sitemap to Bing Webmaster.
Step 1: Go to your Bing Webmaster Tools dashboard.
Step 2: Now click “sitemaps” in the “configure my sitemap” dropdown on the left.
(Click to know, how to submit a website to Bing Webmaster Tools)
- How to submit your sitemap to Yandex Webmaster?
To submit your website’s sitemap to Yandex Webmaster, follow these two steps and then you are done.
Step 1: Login to your Yandex Webmaster and then navigate to the indexing options.
Step 2: Select the sitemap files and then enter the URL of your sitemap file location. Now click on the “Add” button.
(Click to learn, how to submit website to Yandex Webmaster Tools)
Once you are done with sitemap submission, you need to list your sitemap in your robots.txt file to ensure it’s found by all search engines other than Google, Bing, and Yahoo.
Also, don’t forget to check sitemaps to address any indexation issues/errors that may occur after any major site updates.
