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What Does Submitting my Sitemap to Google Do?

Written by Shelby Stone
October 17, 2022

Google Search Console is a Google service (free to use) that enables you to submit your website to Google, discover issues on your website, and measure important data like clicks and impressions. There are two primary reasons to submit a sitemap to Google.

  • When you are taking your website live.
  • When you make substantial changes to a website or page,

Increases in distance work and social distance have increased the importance of SEO. You require Google to discover your website quickly. Continue reading to get the answers to further important sitemap aspects.

sitemap to google

What Exactly Is A Sitemap?

When you and your developer plan your site, you will undoubtedly compile a list of its pages. Then, you will generate a document that demonstrates how well these pages will be linked. Thus, you should ensure that your website is easily navigable.

The developers convert these planning papers into a format that Google can understand. Most sitemaps are.xml files that employ a particular abbreviation to express information. Googlebot collects this data, a computer continuously monitoring the web for new sites and page modifications. When Googlebot discovers your site, it “crawls” it follows every link it discovers. If your website has a sitemap, the Internet giant will also have the necessary information to understand your website correctly. This aspect is crucial if you want to maintain your visibility in the online space.

A faulty sitemap may do more harm than good, so your sitemap must be properly planned and configured.

Why Is Sitemap Structure Significant?

Your site map facilitates Google’s access to the information it requires. When done properly, it will also indicate which pages were changed most recently. This allows Google to prioritize its attention accordingly. If you have a WordPress site, you might also have many URLs automatically generated for photos, attachments, tags, and other page components. A sitemap assists in organizing these components in a way that makes it more logical for Google.

Do You Need A Sitemap?

If the pages of your site are correctly connected, Google can often locate most of your site. Proper linking necessitates that all sites you deem essential be accessible via some type of

navigation, be it the site’s menu or hyperlinks put on pages. Nevertheless, a site map can enhance the crawling of larger, more complicated, specialized websites or files.

A site map supports search engines in discovering URLs on your website, but it does not guarantee that each sitemap’s elements will be scanned and indexed. In the majority of instances, though, a sitemap is advantageous.

You May Require A Sitemap If:

  • Your website is vast. As a result, Google site crawlers are more likely to ignore several of your newer or recently upgraded pages.
  • Your website contains a significant number of isolated or poorly interconnected pages. If your web pages do not organically link to one another, you can include them in the sitemap to prevent Google from missing any of them.
  • Your website is quite young and contains few external links. Googlebot and other crawlers navigate the Internet by following the links from page to page. Therefore, Google may not see your webpages if no other websites link to them.
  • Your website has rich material (video, photos) or is featured in Google News. If given, Google can consider extra details from sitemaps when doing searches.

You May Not Require A Sitemap If:

  • Your website is modest (less than 500 pages). You should include only pages you believe should appear in search results toward this total.
  • Your site’s internal links are extensive. This means Google can locate your site’s key pages by following hyperlinks from the homepage.
  • You wish to display a limited number of media assets such as news pages, videos and images in search results. Sitemaps help Google locate and comprehend video and picture assets and news items on your website. If these results do not need to display in picture, video, or news searches, you may not require a sitemap.
sitemap to google

Submitting Your Sitemap To Google

To submit a sitemap to Google, you must first generate one if you have not already. Content management systems (CMS) like Drupal, WordPress and HubSpot build these automatically or provide plugins or modules to do so quickly and simply.

You could determine whether you have a sitemap by entering your URL led by /sitemap.xml. NOTE: Certain WordPress plugins generate numerous sitemaps. To view the default sitemaps, add /wp-sitemap.xml after our domain name.

Submit in Four Easy Steps

Submitting a sitemap is easy. Once you are ready to start with the URL:

  1. Sign in to Google Search Console.
  2. Under Index in the left-hand menu, select Sitemaps.
  3. Enter the URL (if your URL is pre-loaded, only enter the portion following the slash, i.e. sitemap.xml).
  4. Click submit and await notification that your sitemap submission was successful.

Check back regularly to see whether the data is accessible. This step is essential to ensure that the steps you have followed work. Since submitting sitemap to Google is a crucial step in website launches, you should work with experts who know how to handle this task.

We are a well-established company that offers various digital services to clients across all industries. Our team can help you with site map submission and SEO requirements. For additional information regarding our services, please contact us.

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What Does Submitting my Sitemap to Google Do?