Wordpress plugin

General

Publishing Your XML Sitemap and Notifying Search Engines

It is assumed that you have generated your sitemap and uploaded to a suitable location on your website or blog (usually the root folder).

The next step is to ensure it is accessible and known to search engines.

Robots.txt

It is important to include your sitemap in your robots.txt file as this will ensure it is organically doscoverable however it should be noted that this alone does not ensure your website and sitemap ges discovered. Furthermore it does not serve as a notification mechanism for when you update your website and sitemap.

Pinging Your Sitemap

Pinging your sitemap is one way to notify search engines about updates or changes to your sitemap. Our wordpress plugin will do this automatically for you and we have tools on our website to help you ping your RSS and XML Sitemaps to Search engines and content aggregators.

Webmaster Tools and Search Engines

In addition to pinging your sitemap, you can also use webmaster tools provided by major search engines to manage your website’s visibility and sitemap submission.

While not essential, it is highly recommended as not only does it gaurnatee your sitemap submission, it provies useful feedback and insights.

Google, Bing and others offer such services. The typical process is as follows :

  • Sign Up : Create an account on the respective search engine’s webmaster tools platform. The main search engines that offer these services include Google, Bing, and Yahoo.
  • Add Your Website : After signing up, add your website to the platform. You may need to verify ownership through methods like uploading an HTML file or adding a DNS record.
  • Submit Your Sitemap : Once your site is verified, navigate to the sitemap submission section within the tool. There, you can submit the URL of your sitemap.
  • Monitor Your Site : Use webmaster tools to monitor your website’s performance, crawl errors, and other valuable data that can help you optimize your site for search engines.

Some of the more common seach engines and their tools include :