Sitemap is the file that provides information about the website pages to the search engine. It allows search engines like Google, Bing and Yandex to crawl your website pages more quickly and intelligently. In this guide you will learn how to create and submit XML sitemap easily.
It is very important to create a sitemap for every single blog and submit to search engine like Google to rank your blog better and drive more traffic. There are upto six sitemaps but two types of sitemap are commonly used HTML-format and XML sitemap.
For SEO benefits XML sitemap are most recommended, when your blog pages end up without internal links, it will be hard to find by Google crawler. XML sitemap ensure that Google crawler can find all of the pages and index better in search result.
How to Create and Submit XML Sitemap
- Create XML sitemap for all types of website.
- Create WordPress sitemap.
- How to submit sitemap to Google search engine?
- How to submit sitemap to Yandex search engine?
Create XML sitemap for all types of website
Screaming Frog SEO Spider tool is the simplest way to generates XML sitemap of all types of website. It is software that crawl your website like Google, Bing and Yandex and discover the issue on your website to optimize better in search results. This tutorial will explain you, how to generate XML sitemaps using Screaming Frog SEO Spider software.
Step-1: Download and Install
You can download free license of Screaming Frog SEO Spider software which crawl limit is upto 500 URL’s and install into your computer.
Step-2: Launch Screaming Frog SEO Spider
Open Screaming Frog SEO software from your computer. On the top of the screen type your website name and click on Start button. It will take few minutes to complete scanning your website. After completion you will see crawl percentage 100 at the top.
Now, click on Sitemaps menu from menu bar and click on XML sitemap.
In the pages tab, you can include the section of your blog in the sitemap. It is not recommended to include unless you are aware of these options.
Noindex pages : It contains HTML code in the header that tells search engines to exclude from the search result.
Cononicalised : It will tell search engine crawler to include URL variation, If your website contains more than two URL pointing to the same page contains.
Paginated URLs: The URL generates while clicking next or previous button of the website is Paginated URLs e.g. yourwebsite.com/page1, /page2 etc.
PDFs: If your website contains PDFs, you can include in the sitemap selecting this option.
Now, your website may contain images and would like to include in sitemap to index in search result. Click on Images tab and Select Include Images. Click on Next button.
Now, you will see Save As dialog box in the screen. Type the Filename e.g. Sitemap and click on Save button.
You have created your website sitemap. Now, you need to upload to web server using FTP client.
Create WordPress Sitemap
Yoast SEO plugin has made easy to create sitemap in WordPress. WordPress use sitemap in XML format also called XML sitemap. You can easily include or exclude pages, post or categories in sitemap using Yoast SEO plugins.
Login in to your WordPress dashboard. Install Yoast SEO plugin clicking Add New under Plugins and activate it.
After activation you will see SEO option at the left side of WordPress panel. Click on Search Appearance under SEO to configure the sitemap.
Configure Sitemap
In the next screen, click on Content Types tab. You have options to include or exclude pages and posts from the sitemap as well as search engine.
Click on Posts to expand and Set Show posts in search result to Yes which will tell search engine to index the posts and include in sitemap. You can find more information clicking the Question mark sign next to Show Post in search results?
Again, click on Pages to expand and set Show pages in search result to Yes to include in XML sitemap. Click on Question mark sign next to Show pages in search results? to find more information.
You can also include or exclude media, taxonomies, archives from the top bar. Click on the tabs at the top bar and set the options to Yes or No to include or exclude.
Now, visit Yoast SEO generated sitemap. In the WordPress dashboard, click on General under SEO.
In the next screen, click on Features tab. Set XML sitemaps to On and click on Question Mark sign to expand more details. You will see the link to see the XML sitemap. Click on See the XML sitemap.
It will take you to your website’s sitemap in another tab of the web browser.
Now, you know how to create sitemap for all types of website as well as WordPress website. You are not done yet, you need to submit your website sitemap to search engines to get SEO benefits.
This guide will explain, how to submit sitemap in top 2 search engines Google and Yandex. Before you submit the sitemap, you need to add your website to the webmaster tools.
See this guide on how to add websites to google webmasters tools and how to add websites to yandex webmaster tools if you have not already added.
How to Submit Sitemap to Google Search Engine?
Submitting sitemap is very easy once created. Open your sitemap in the browser e.g. Google chrome and copy last part of the URL e.g. sitemap_index.xml
Now, Login to Google webmaster tools and click on Sitemaps from the left side. Paste last part of URL in Add a new sitemap field and click on Submit button.
If you are using old version of Google search console. Select preferred version www or non-www of your website.
From the left side, click on Sitemaps under Crawl. Now, click on Add/Test sitemap tab from the right and paste the URL of sitemap. Click on Submit button.
Congratulation! You have submitted your sitemap to the Google search engine, It will take few minutes to show the result in the screen.
How to Submit Sitemap to Yandex Search Engine?
As Google, Yandex is another search engine mostly used in Russia. You can also drive traffic optimizing your website in Yandex search engine.
Login to Yandex webmaster tools and click on “indexing” from left panel then click on “Sitemap files“. Copy the URL of your website sitemap and paste in “Add Sitemap file” field. Click on “Add” button.
That’s all, you have submitted the sitemap to Yandex search engine, you will see the status as pending and will change to OK after few days.
We hope this guide on how to create and submit XML sitemap is helpful. You may also like to see WordPress tutorial to fix your blog issue. If you find this guide helpful, please share and follow us on facebook and twitter.
