Submit Your Sitemap to Search Engines for Better Website Visibility
Submit Your Sitemap to Search Engines for Better Website Visibility
Having a well-structured website is crucial for search engine optimization (SEO) and improving your website's visibility. One essential aspect of website optimization is submitting your sitemap to search engines. A sitemap is a file that contains a list of all the pages on your website, helping search engines understand your site's structure and index your content more efficiently. In this blog post, we will guide you through the process of submitting your sitemap to various search engines.
Yoast SEO Plugin: Simplifying Sitemap Creation
If you're using the Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress, you're in luck! This powerful plugin can automatically generate sitemaps for different sections of your website. This feature makes it easier for search engines to navigate and comprehend your site's content structure. Yoast SEO combines all individual sitemaps into a sitemap index, which means you only need to submit the sitemap index link. Furthermore, the sitemap index is automatically updated as you add, remove, or modify your content. This index is also utilized by add-ons such as Yoast SEO: News and Yoast SEO: Local, streamlining the process even further.
Enhance Your Website's Structure with Yoast SEO Premium
While submitting your sitemap to search engines is crucial, Yoast SEO Premium offers additional tools to optimize your website's structure. This premium version includes an internal linking tool that helps you create a cohesive site structure, allowing search engines to navigate your website effortlessly. Yoast SEO Premium also provides SEO workouts, guiding you to make your content more accessible and discoverable. Utilizing these tools not only yields better results but also ensures long-term sustainability, surpassing the benefits of relying solely on XML sitemaps.
Getting Started with Sitemap Submission
Before submitting your sitemap, make sure you have enabled the Yoast SEO sitemap functionality. If you haven't done so already, follow these steps to enable and customize your sitemap index according to your website's needs:
Google Search Console:
Google is the preferred search engine, so let's start with submitting your sitemap to Google Search Console. If you haven't added your website to Google Search Console, do that first.
Submitting sitemap under the new Google Search Console:
1. Sign in to Google Search Console.
2. In the sidebar, select your website.
3. Click on 'Sitemaps' (under the 'Index' section). If you don't see 'Sitemaps', click on 'Index' to expand the section.
4. Remove any outdated or invalid sitemaps, such as 'sitemap.xml'.
5. Enter 'sitemap_index.xml' in the 'Add a new sitemap' field, ensuring to use the full sitemap URL.
6. Click 'Submit'.
Removing your sitemap from Google Search Console:
1. Sign in to Google Search Console.
2. In the sidebar, select your website.
3. Click on 'Sitemaps' (under the 'Index' section). If you don't see 'Sitemaps', click on 'Index' to expand the section.
4. Under 'Submitted sitemaps', select the sitemap you want to remove.
5. Click on the three vertical dots in the top-right corner, then select 'Remove Sitemap'. If needed, you can re-add the sitemap later.
Submitting sitemap under the old Google Search Console:
Google Webmaster Tools no longer accepts sitemap submissions. Please use the new Google Search Console for this purpose.
Bing Webmaster Tools:
Bing is another significant search engine. Follow these steps to submit your sitemap to Bing Webmaster Tools:
1. Sign in to Bing Webmaster Tools.
2. On the "My Sites" page, select your website.
3. In the left sidebar, click on "Configure My Site" and then "Sitemaps".
4. Remove any outdated or invalid sitemaps, such as "http://example.com/sitemap.xml".
5. Enter your sitemap URL into the text box at the top (e.g., "http://example.com/sitemap_index.xml").
6. Click "Submit".
Yandex Webmaster:
If you're targeting a Russian-speaking audience, it's essential to submit your sitemap to Yandex. Follow these steps:
1. Sign in to Yandex Webmaster.
2. On the homepage, select your website.
3. In the left sidebar, click on "Indexing Options" and then "Sitemap files".
4. Remove any outdated or invalid sitemaps, such as "http://example.com/sitemap.xml".
5. Enter your sitemap URL into the text box at the top (e.g., "http://example.com/sitemap_index.xml").
6. Click "Add".
Other Search Engines:
Yahoo Site Explorer has been replaced by Bing Webmaster Tools, so there's no need to submit your sitemap separately to Yahoo. As for Ask.com, it no longer accepts sitemap submissions.
Pinging Search Engines for Automatic Crawling
After manually connecting your sitemaps to Bing and Google, Yoast SEO automatically pings search engines each time you update a post, prompting them to crawl your sitemap. However, if you wish to disable pinging for all search engines, you can use a filter added to the functions.php file. If you're unsure how or where to add this code, consult your host provider or theme developer for assistance.
Submitting your sitemap to search engines is a vital step in improving your website's visibility and ensuring that your content gets indexed efficiently. With the help of the Yoast SEO plugin and the steps outlined above, you can easily submit your sitemap to Google, Bing, Yandex, and other search engines. By doing so, you enhance your chances of ranking higher in search engine results and driving more organic traffic to your website.
Follow Us
