How to Submit a Sitemap to Google Search Console

So you are done setting up your new blog?

You’ve done on-page and off-page SEO optimization for all the pages of your blog and still wondering why your blog is not getting displayed in the Google search results.

Getting a good rank on Google is difficult for sure, but getting your web pages indexed or ranked on Google results is one simple job if you do it the right way.

But many new bloggers find it difficult to get their blog posts indexed on Google.

You may certainly not know how the search engine works and how to display your blog site in the Google search results.

It’s possible for you to get ranked in Google search results for Free, only thing is you have to help Google to locate your blog.

Google bots are crawling every possible site to make it index on search results. But Google bots also need indications or paths to locate a newly created web pages. So that they can start crawling those pages to index them.

If you are facing this common issue don’t worry your indexing issue will be solved after following this guide.

A long ago I was in a conversation with a person on one social media network who is not so familiar with how search engines work.

I asked him a simple question “According to you how a page get ranked on the top search results on Google?”

He replied, “they must have to pay Google to get ranked on top”.

Well if I think about it, my answer could have been the same if I won’t end up into blogging a few years ago.

But this is the wrong assumption, obviously.

You can get your site ranked on Google’s top search results for 100% Free.

YES, YOU CAN!

But you may need to help your website to be found by Google bots first. There are many ways to do that.

Now let’s continue with our main topic. Google search console is one ultimate free tool available by Google for every site owners. It can help your website in many ways you can’t even possibly think of.

For faster indexing of your site, you need to submit your sitemap to Google Webmaster Tool.

But before submitting a sitemap you need to create one for your site. If you haven't created a sitemap yet.

Now let’s get on with the nitty-gritty of how search engine functions and how to submit a sitemap to Google Search Console.

But before that blogger needs to understand what truly a sitemap is, and why is it so important to submit a sitemap to Google search console.

All you need to do are several things that are easy.

Firstly, you have to confirm in Google Search Console that you are the person who owns the site. And, the second and most critical job is to submit your website or blog to Google Search Console.

Here, in this article, I am going to show you step-by-step procedures about how precisely to submit a sitemap to Google search console.

What is a Sitemap?

A sitemap is an XML file which has the URLs within your website. This file helps crawlers to locate all the URLs of your blog.

It is kind of an index page of a textbook which has the guide to all the table of content.

In a nutshell, a sitemap is an entire index of your site that you need search engine bots to crawl through.

A sitemap file is important because it contains all the information about your site including all posts, pages and categories which you want to be crawled by search engine bots for obvious reason.

It is a structural map of your site for search engine bots, submitting a sitemap will let the bots to easily crawl through all the posts, pages and categories inside our site and index them ASAP.

You need only one sitemap file for all different search engine bots. They all crawl through that same sitemap file. So you can understand how important it could be for your website indexing.

There is one proven practice regarding sitemap you can also implement it on your site. Many webmasters place their sitemap link in the footer section of their blog.

You know why?

Because placing a sitemap in the footer of your site ensure search engine bots to find out your sitemap more quickly and crawl through every newly published post or page for better and faster indexing.

I hope now it’s clear to you what exactly a sitemap is, let us move to the next level.

How to confirm if your site has a sitemap already?

You can simply confirm it by visiting www.Yoursitename/sitemap.xml. If you find a sitemap there you can simply add it in your Google webmaster tool.

Or if you don’t have any already created sitemap you can follow my previously written guides to create a sitemap or you can simply generate a sitemap with the help of this online tool to create a sitemap.

Now that you are done creating a sitemap for your blog.

To submit your sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools, please follow the steps below.

Step 1 - Create an account in Google Webmaster Tools

In case you don’t already have a Google Webmaster Tools account set up for your blog site, create a free GWT account here.

Step 2 - Add a Site in Google Search Console

Once your GWT account has been created, you will need to add a Site in Google Search Console.

You could do that by simply clicking on the “Add a property” button. It will ask you to select the type of property you want to add website or Android with a full path to your website.

Confirm your site verification to prove your site ownership to Google. You can use any available options to verify your site ownership.

There are plenty of options you can choose from HTML file upload, Domain name provider, HTML tag, Google Analytics tracking code, Google Tag Manager container snippet and Blogger.

Step 3 - Site Selection

In your Google search console dashboard select a site for which you want to submit a sitemap.

Step 4 - Access Sitemaps

Under the search console dashboard on the left side menu, click on Crawl >> Sitemaps.

Step 5 - Submit A Sitemap

Now you’ve reached the Google Webmaster Tools sitemap screen, click the red “Add/Test Sitemap” button on the top right side of your sitemap page.

The final step, enter your sitemap URL into the sitemap box, your sitemap URL is yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml, and this means you need to only enter sitemap.xml into the box.

When finished, click the “Submit” button to submit the sitemap.

Just in case, if you’re submitting a sitemap for a new blog site, it may take some time for you to see the indexing status of your site.

After your sitemap status is live you will be able to see how many web pages are submitted and how many of them got indexed by Google. The same goes for your site Images indexing you can easily check the number of submitted and indexed images.

And by getting the information of your sitemap indexing you can make some changes accordingly for the better performance of your sitemap indexing.

Step 6 – Refresh the page

Well done! Now you have completed the process of submitting your blog sitemap to Google Search Console.

Wrapping Up

Submitting a sitemap to Google search console is one important key factor of SEO. You should never skip this process on your website SEO.

As you have submitted a sitemap to Google search console. You need to submit a sitemap to Bing webmaster tool also for the better indexing in Bing search engine results.

Please let me know if this article was helpful in submitting a sitemap to Google search console.

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