How To Submit Blogger Sitemap To Google Webmaster Tools

What is a sitemap?

A Sitemap is a XML file that lists the URLs for a site. It allows webmasters to include more information about each URL: when it was last updated, how often it changes, and how important it is in relation to other URLs in the site. This allows search engines to crawl the site more intelligently.
(Source: Wikipedia – The Free Encyclopedia)

Why it is important to submit sitemap to search engines?

Sitemap allows you to tell search engines about pages on your blog that are available for crawling. This is particularly more beneficial for blogs where some pages are not available through the browsable interface. So, if some of your posts are not indexed by Google means they don’t show up in Google search, submitting a proper sitemap might resolve this issue.

How do you make a blogger sitemap for your blog?

Don’t worry it is already there. In Blogger, your blog feed is your sitemap. You can get it from below two URLs.

http://your-blog.blogspot.com/atom.xml

http://your-blog.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

Howdo you submit a sitemap?

1. Just go to Google Webmasters Tools homepage and sign in with same Google account which you are using for your blogger blog.
2. Click on your blog name to go to the blog’s Dashboard.
3. Navigate to Crawl > Sitemaps and click on ADD/TEST SITEMAP button.
4. One input box will appear, enter atom.xml, appending the necessary parameters and then click Submit Sitemap button.

Parameter Details

redirect=false : if you are using FeedBurner to manage your blog feed, you might had set redirection of feed to FeedBurner. You need to stop redirection to work sitemap properly.

max-results : The default feed ULR fetched only 25 latest post. Add this parameter to allow more than 25 posts.

start-index : Start indexing from

start-index=1&max-results=500 : allows you to index maximum 500 posts per feed.

start-index=500&max-results=1000 : If you have more than 500 posts then add one more sitemap.

So your sitemap URL are

atom.xml?redirect=false&start-index=1&max-results=500 (If you have up to 500 posts)

atom.xml?redirect=false&start-index=500&max-results=1000 (If you have more than 500 and less than 1000 posts)

Step2 :

1. Open the Sitemap Generator and type the full address of your blogspot blog (or your self-hosted Blogger blog).
2. Click the Create Sitemap button and this tool will instantly generate the necessary text for your sitemap. Copy the entire generated text to your clipboard (see screenshot below).
3. Next go to your Blogger dashboard and under Settings – > Search Preferences, the enable Custom robots.txt option (available in the Crawling and Indexing section). Paste the clipboard text here and save your changes.

And we are done. Search engines will automatically discover your XML sitemap files via the robots.txt file and you don’t have to ping them manually.

Your work is done. Google will take few hours to approve your submission. This was the step by step guide on how to add blogger sitemap in Google Webmaster Tools. I hope you have enjoyed this post and I would like to thank you for reading this post. Now its your turn to share your views, suggestion or place any query, I will try my best to sort it out. Also don’t forget to share it. You may also like us on Facebook, Twitter and Google+.