Simple Way on How To Submit Blogger XML sitemaps to Google Webmaster Tools

What is Google Search Console/Webmaster Tool

Google Search Console (previously Google Webmaster Tools) is a no-charge web service by Google for webmasters. It allows webmasters to check indexing status and optimize visibility of their websites. As of May 20, 2015, Google re-branded Google Webmaster Tools as Google Search Console.

There are misconception among various webmasters and site owners that without sitemap search engine will not show any pages of their site in SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) in response to a keyword query related to their sites. Actually, if your site’s pages are properly linked to each other, all Search engine web crawlers including Googlebot can generally discover most of your site.

However, you should always use sitemaps to tell search engine like Google and Bing about all posts and webpages of your blog/site to improve the crawling rank of your website. There are mainly two types of sitemaps one is XML and another is known as HTML site map.

Search engine uses the last modification time of your blog/site pages that are provided differently by XML sitemap and RSS/Atom feed.

XML sitemap uses <lastmod>
RSS uses <pubDate>
Atom uses <updated>

XML Sitemaps contains very important metadata associated with the pages and mainly used by web crawlers. Metadata provides information viz. your blog posts/pages specific/canonical URLs within <loc> tag and published/updated/modified date of any post under <lastmod> tags and under </urlset> tags it encloses all the above information about the set of URLs included in the sitemap.
How to create XML sitemap for Google webmaster tools and Search engines

As we are talking about the BlogSpot blogs, you may submit XML sitemap of your blog to Google webmaster tools for crawling blog posts and pages in a single click. The best part is that you neither need to create XML sitemap for your blog and nor required to upload it in the root directory of your blogger blogs.

This is because Google has released an XML Sitemap for BlogSpot blogs even if you are using custom domain for your blogger blogs. That means Blogger have now a new feature that it generates XML sitemaps index files automatically for blog posts and blog static webpages.

For Blog Posts: http://www.YourBlogURL.com/sitemap.xml
For Blog static pages: http://www.YourBlogURL.com/sitemap-pages.xml

In your blog sitemap.xml file, you will see the list of your blog posts URLs. However, if your blog have more than 500 posts then it displays the index of all individual sitemaps page-wise as shown below:

http://www.BlogHomePageURL/sitemap.xml?page=1
http://www.BlogHomePageURL/sitemap.xml?page=2
http://www.BlogHomePageURL/sitemap.xml?page=3
http://www.BlogHomePageURL/sitemap.xml?page=4
http://www.BlogHomePageURL/sitemap.xml?page=5

Note that blogger currently supports only maximum 2,500 items/entries (i.e. five pages of 500 entries) in XML sitemap. I think it is enough for any blog before getting indexed by any search engine bots.

In other words, if you type sitemap.xml/sitemap-pages.xml at the end of your blog homepage URL you will get your own blog XML sitemaps. For example my blogger blog is www.allbloggingmag.blogspot.com then the standard xml sitemaps will be www.allbloggingmag.blogspot.com/sitemap.xml and http://www.allbloggingmag.blogspot.com/sitemap-pages.xml
 

How to submit XML sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools

If you are new blogger or have not yet submitted any site map to Google then this action may boost your organic traffics dynamically. Previously, bloggers have no option to get XML sitemap and therefore, they usually submit another format of sitemaps e.g. RSS, mRSS, and Atom feed URLs which are also acceptable by Google and other search engines.

Submitting sitemaps can be an important part of optimizing websites and therefore follow these simple steps to submit it to Google with the Sitemaps page:

Step-1:

• Login to Google webmaster Tools 
• Click on your particular blog name for which you want to manage sitemaps.
• If you have not yet added your blog to webmaster tool then press the button ADD A SITE from the right top corner. Once your blog is verified and listed in webmaster tools click on it.

Step-2:

• Click on sitemap from the dashboard itself or navigate sitemaps menu from the left sidebar under Crawl menu list.
• However, you may directly visit https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/sitemap-list
• Select any verified blog to see the list of sitemaps submitted manually by you or use this URL address by replacing AllBloggingMag with your own YourBlogURL.

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/sitemap-list?siteUrl=http://www.allbloggingmag.com/

 Step-3:

• Now, click on ADD/TEST SITEMAP text button. 
• Finally, enter sitemap.xml in the text field and 
• Click on Submit Sitemap and you are done. 

Just refresh your browser to see your new sitemap in the sitemaps list.

Once you submit your blog’s xml sitemap index file to the webmaster tool you will see on the same page the status of all webpages submitted and indexed.

 

Have any questions? Feel free to ask me via the comments section! Remember to share this tutorial with others on Facebook, Twitter & Google Plus.