It’s critical to make sure that search engine crawlers can detect your website if you want people to find it. But as things are constantly changing, how will you submit your website to Google in 2021? Read on to learn more about how to find and submit your sitemap to Google for indexing and verification.
Finding Your Sitemap
Your sitemap URL is required for both submission methods. Your website platform will determine how you discover or generate this. Follow the steps below to ensure you do it correctly.
1) Install a free SEO plugin like Yoast, Rank Math, or The SEO Framework if you’re using WordPress. All three of these plugins create sitemaps for you. It will be found here: yourwebsiteurl.com/sitemap_index.xml
2) If you use Wix, Squarespace, Shopify, or another web platform, your sitemap may or may not be found here: yourwebsiteurl.com/sitemap.xml
3) If you’re using a different platform or a custom CMS, your sitemap will likely be generated for you. The most probable spots where this will appear are in the following areas:
- yourwebsiteurl.com/sitemap.xml
- yourwebsiteurl.com/sitemap_index.xml
- yourwebsiteurl.com/sitemap1.xml
If the file isn’t there, check if it’s listed at yourwebsite.com/robots.txt. You’ll need to build a sitemap manually if you don’t use a platform or CMS. However, it’s worth checking the URLs above first since you could already have one.
How To Submit Your Sitemap To Google?
Learning how to submit your sitemap to Google is an easy process. You have two options available:
1) Submit your sitemap in Google Search Console.
- Log in to Google Search Console
- Go to the right property
- Click “Sitemaps” on the left menu
- Paste in your sitemap URL
- Click “Submit”
This is the ideal approach if you want to submit your sitemap to Google since Google Search Console informs you of sitemap problems in the future. It also offers insight into your site’s health, including why certain pages aren’t indexed (ranked) on the Google SERP (search engine result platform)
2) Submit your sitemap by pinging Google.
Google maintains a “ping” function, which allows you to request a new crawl of your sitemap. Replace the end part with your sitemap URL:
http://www.google.com/ping?sitemap=<complete_url_of_sitemap>
For example, if your sitemap is at website.com/sitemap.xml, you’d go to:
http://www.google.com/ping?sitemap=https://yourwebsite.com/sitemap.xml
After you’ve enabled Google Search Console, it will show a notification telling you the sitemap has been created. You should then observe the “sitemap notification received” page after that. This service is only meant for use with new or updated sitemaps, according to Google. Please do not submit or ping outdated sitemaps more than once.
How To Submit Your URL To Google
In general, there’s no need to submit each new page to Google. As long as the new URLs are included in a sitemap that you previously submitted to Google, they’ll eventually be discovered. However, there are two methods you may use to submit your URL to Google.
1) PING Google.
Ensure that the new pages are included in your sitemap. Then use the techniques outlined above to ping Google and request them to re-check your sitemap. This isn’t required if you’re using WordPress with Yoast, Rank Math, or The SEO Framework since these plugins all do this automatically.
2) Use Google’s URL Inspection Tool.
You may add URLs to Google even if they aren’t included in your sitemap (but they should be). The URL Inspection Tool in Google Search Console may be used to do so.
- Log in to Google Search Console
- Go to the right property
- Click “URL Inspection” on the left menu
- Paste in the URL of your new page
- Hit return
- Click “Request indexing.”
There’s no need to be concerned if you only have a few new pages. Some individuals think that it helps Google index things more quickly. Don’t utilize this method if you have many new pages to submit to Google. It’s time-consuming and will require much more time. Instead, use the first choice.
Why Is It Important To Submit To Google?
You can expedite the initial stage of the search engine optimization process: ‘Discovery’ The sooner you begin your mission, the faster you’ll reach your goal. However, there are a few more benefits to submitting a sitemap.
1) It indicates which pages are vital to Google.
Sitemaps seldom include every page on your website. They just list significant pages and ignore unimportant or duplicate ones. This helps prevent incorrect indexing of the wrong version of a page due to duplicate content issues.
2) It informs Google about new sites.
Many CMS’s add new pages to your sitemap, and some ping Google automatically. This saves time by not requiring you to submit each new page manually.
3) It informs Google about orphan pages.
Orphan pages are those that do not have any internal connections to other pages on your website. Unless they have backlinks from known sites, Google will be unable to discover these pages through crawling. As long as sitemaps contain orphan pages, this issue may be somewhat alleviated.
4) It provides a means for SEOs to experiment with indexation data.
If you’d like to know which pages Google has indexed, submitting a sitemap provides the information faster than pinging Google over and over again. It can likewise be used to keep tabs on URLs that have been submitted but not yet indexed.
Do You Want to Submit Your Website To Google?
With all of the continued changes and updates in Google’s algorithm and SEO, it can be challenging to keep up. Thankfully, we have a team of experts that are ready and waiting to help you strategize your way through everything from web design to advertising so that you can get ahead of the curve. If you want to learn more about the benefits of submitting your sitemap properly to be crawled by Google or if you are in need of assistance with anything else marketing-related, let us know—we would love to talk about how Beanstalk! Growth Marketing can help!
