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.
In the previous tutorial I have already discussed about the blogger HTML sitemap static page which helps both search engine as well as live visitors of your blog. But, XML file is a standard way to build a sitemap for any website. This is because xml sitemap contain URLs of all pages on your site whereas RSS/Atom feeds deliver recent updates of your site.
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.
Create XML sitemap for Google Search console
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:
https://www.BlogHomePageURL/sitemap.xml?page=1
https://www.BlogHomePageURL/sitemap.xml?page=2
https://www.BlogHomePageURL/sitemap.xml?page=3
https://www.BlogHomePageURL/sitemap.xml?page=4
https://www.BlogHomePageURL/sitemap.xml?page=5Note 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.aubsp.com then the standard xml sitemaps will be http://www.aubsp.com/sitemap.xml and http://www.aubsp.com/sitemap-pages.xml
How to submit XML sitemap to Search Console
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 Search Console and click on your particular blog name for which you want to manage sitemaps.
However, if you have not yet added your blog to webmaster tool then press the button ADD A SITE from the right top corner as shown in this screenshot. Once your blog is verified and listed in webmaster tools click on it.
Step-2:
Click on sitemap from the dashboard itself as shown in this picture or navigate sitemaps menu from the left sidebar under Crawl menu list.
However, you may directly visit https://search.google.com/search-console/ and select any verified blog to see the list of sitemaps submitted manually by you or use this URL address by replacing SuperWebTricks with your own YourBlogURL.
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/sitemap-list?siteUrl=https://www.SuperWebTricks.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.
FAQs related to Blogger blogs Sitemaps
Question: When will my blog pages be crawled by Google?
Answer: After successfully adding the XML sitemap to webmaster tool Google may take maximum 24 hours to process it. After your sitemap has been processed, it can take some more time before Google can crawl and index the URLs included in your xml sitemap index file.
Question: Whether RSS/Atom feed should be deleted after adding XML sitemap? Which one is best for search engine?
Answer: There is no need to delete the RSS/Atom feed from webmaster tools sitemap lists. Did you know? XML sitemaps are downloaded less frequently than RSS/Atom feeds. So, I strongly recommend to use both XML sitemaps and RSS/Atom feeds. The reason behind is XML sitemaps will provide the relevant information associated with all of the pages on your blog. On the other hand, RSS/Atom feeds will give information about the recently updated and published webpages on your site.
Question: How to view Sitemap Details page?
Answer: Go to the sitemap list page, select specific blog and click the sitemap you want to examine to open the Sitemaps Details page. You will see the more details and investigate any current errors, indexing statistics and more.
Question: Should I submit individual xml sitemap file if my blog have more than 500 blog posts?
Answer: No. There is no need to submit individual sitemap like sitemap.xml?page=1 and sitemap.xml?page=2 etc. All individual xml sitemap files are included in a single sitemap.xml index file.
Question: Can I use blogger XML sitemaps to Bing webmasters?
Answer: Yes, definitely! You can use blogger auto generated standard xml sitemap index file to any webmaster tools including Bing.