The Complete Guide to Submitting Your Sitemap to Google Successfully

A sitemap acts as a roadmap for search engines, or a guideline to help them discover and index your website’s content more efficiently. This process directly impacts how well your site gets indexed by search engines and, therefore, its performance in search results.

If you’re wondering how to create and submit a sitemap effectively, this is the right place. Knowing the correct format for your sitemap and the platforms where you can submit it is crucial for getting started.

This guide will cover everything you need to know to create and submit your sitemap correctly. In addition, you’ll learn how to maintain and monitor your sitemap and ensure that it stays healthy for the entire life of your website.

Let’s get into the details.

Understanding Sitemaps

Sitemaps outline how you’ve organized your website. By breaking down pages, posts, and other website elements in the sitemap, search engines can discover and index your content effectively.

Let us look into the purpose, types, and structure of sitemaps.

1. The Purpose of a Sitemap

A sitemap serves several essential functions for your website. Let’s break it down:

a. For Search Engines: They provide a comprehensive list of your site’s URLs, helping search engines discover content that might not be easily found through regular crawling. This is especially important for new websites, large sites with deep navigation, or pages with limited internal linking.

b. For Website Owners: Sitemaps give you control over which pages you want search engines to prioritize and provide metadata about update frequency and page importance.

c. For SEO: Proper sitemap submission can lead to faster indexing of new content, improved search visibility, and better SEO performance.

While sitemaps were once also used for user navigation, most websites today rely on intuitive or mega menus. As a result, sitemaps now primarily serve search engines and other bots, not human visitors.

2. Types of Sitemaps

There are two basic types of sitemaps: XML and HTML sitemaps. Let us dive deeper into each below:

a. XML Sitemaps 

These are specifically for search engines. They contain structured data that outlines the pages, their relationships, and other metadata such as page priority and last modified dates. This format is not intended for users but is crucial for search engine optimization.

XML sitemaps help search engines find content that might not be easily accessible through regular crawling, especially if a site has limited internal links.

b. HTML Sitemaps 

These are designed for users. They present a list of your site’s structure in a format that is easy for visitors to navigate.

This type of sitemap enhances usability and helps users locate content quickly, contributing to a positive user experience. Notably, their relevance has declined as modern navigation menus have improved.

3. The Structure of a Sitemap

The structure of a sitemap is essential for clarity and function.

a. XML Sitemaps Structure

The structure of an XML sitemap is standardized under the Sitemap Protocol 0.9. A valid sitemap must:

• Be UTF-8 encoded
• Use proper XML formatting enclosed in <urlset> tags

Each <url> entry can include:

• loc– The address of the webpage.
• lastmod– Optional- The last updated date and time for the page.
• changefreq– Optional- How frequently the page is likely to change.
• priority– Optional- Importance of the page relative to others on your site (value between 0.0 to 1.0)

Size limitations:
Google allows a maximum of 50,000 URLs or a 50MB uncompressed file size per sitemap. If your site exceeds this, split the sitemap into multiple files and reference them in a sitemap index file.

b. HTML Sitemap Structure

An HTML sitemap, on the other hand, typically presents links to each page in a simple list format. This list may include categories and subcategories, offering a clear hierarchy of your site’s structure. Usually, the link’s anchor text will be the page’s heading or title.

By maintaining a well-structured sitemap, you enhance both search engine indexing and user navigation.

The Role of Sitemaps in SEO

While we have already said that sitemaps provide search engines with a roadmap or breakdown of your site’s structure, helping them crawl and index content more efficiently, let us discuss briefly why this is beneficial.

Benefits of Sitemaps

• Improved Crawling: Sitemaps guide search engines to your most important pages, ensuring they are discovered quickly.
• Faster Indexing: When you submit your sitemap, it often leads to faster indexing of new and updated content.
• Priority Setting: You can indicate the priority of pages in your sitemap, helping search engines understand which pages matter most so that those pages are indexed faster.

Using sitemaps effectively enhances your chances of ranking higher in search results. You can ensure search engines fully understand your content and automatically sync regular content updates.

Creating a Sitemap The Correct Way

A well-structured sitemap is essential for guiding search engines and improving site navigation. Focus on correctly including the right pages, correctly formatting, and utilizing the best tools to generate your sitemap.

1. Choosing Pages for Inclusion

When selecting pages for your sitemap, prioritize those most important for your audience and search engines.

Include all main categories, high-traffic pages, newly created content, and any other valuable pages.

Consider the following points for inclusion:

• Core Sections: Ensure your homepage, key landing pages, and blog categories are in the sitemap.
• Update Frequency: Include pages that are updated frequently to inform search engines of new content.
• Remove Low-Value Pages: Exclude pages with little traffic potential, such as duplicate content or those under construction. Archives like tags can present duplicated pages that aren’t very valuable. These should be excluded, especially if you use both categories and tags; include only one type in the sitemap.

This strategy optimizes indexing and helps users navigate effectively. For websites with many pages or frequent updates, an XML sitemap is particularly valuable compared to an HTML sitemap.

This XML sitemap can include various types of content, including blog articles, videos, images, GIFs, and downloadable resources.

2. The Main Sitemap Formatting Options

You can create sitemaps in various formats, with XML being the most common for search engines. Other formats include HTML and TXT.

Here’s a brief look at each:

• XML Sitemaps: Designed for search engines, they allow for detailed metadata, such as last modified dates and priority levels. This is the preferred format for SEO.
• HTML Sitemaps: A user-friendly format that helps visitors find pages within your site. It can be beneficial for SEO as well.
• TXT Sitemaps: A simple format that works well for small websites. It lists URLs without additional metadata.

As SEO experts, we recommend choosing one format and sticking with it. If it aligns with your goals and the needs of your users, then you should be good to go.

The Best Sitemap Tools To Use for Compliance

Several tools can automate the sitemap creation, submission, and monitoring processes, saving time and effort.

Some popular options include:

• Yoast SEO: This WordPress plugin generates a dynamic XML sitemap for your site.
• Rank Math: This is another WordPress plugin (available in free and paid versions) that generates a dynamic XML sitemap to submit your sitemap to search engines.
• Webflow auto-generated sitemap feature: If you use Webflow, the auto-generated sitemap feature will generate a dynamic XML sitemap for you, and all you have to do is submit that sitemap to the search engines.
• Screaming Frog: This is a desktop application that can crawl your website and generate XML sitemaps, which you can submit to search engines for crawling.
• XML Sitemap Generator for Google: This is a WordPress plugin that helps you to generate either XML sitemaps or HTML sitemaps for your website.
• Google Search Console: The best tool that Google provides for submitting sitemaps. It reads your sitemap within minutes and displays any errors or success messages.

Using these tools, your sitemaps should be properly formatted and ready for submission. If you install the plugins mentioned above, keep them active so they can update your sitemaps automatically and notify search engines of updates.

Submitting a Sitemap to Search Engines

It is essential to know how to submit your sitemap to both Google and Bing, as they are the most widely used search engines.

1. Submitting your Sitemap to Google via Search Console

To submit your sitemap to Google, open the Google Search Console. Make sure you have your website verified. Once verified, navigate to the “Sitemaps” section from the available menu.

• Enter the URL of your sitemap in the provided field.
• Click the “Submit” button.

Once the submission is successful, you’ll receive confirmation. Google will then crawl your sitemap, and you can see when Googlebot accessed the sitemap and any potential processing errors. Regularly check back to ensure there are no errors in the submitted sitemap.

2. Submitting Your Sitemap to Bing and Other Search Engines

Bing offers a similar process for sitemap submission. Access the Bing Webmaster Tools and verify your site if you haven’t done so. Navigate to the “Sitemaps” section.

• Input your sitemap URL in the designated area.
• Click on “Submit”.

Bing will process your request and notify you of any issues.

Ensure to submit sitemaps to other search engines you wish to target.

3. Using a Dedicated Submit Sitemap Tool

Once you are on Click Raven’s Submit Sitemap tool page:

Step 1: Enter Your URL

In the input area, type your sitemap URL or paste it. Luckily, with Click Raven’s Submit Sitemap tool, you don’t need to include the full URL starting with https://. You can just type “clickraven.com” and our tool will handle the rest.

Step 2: Click Submit

Hit the “Submit” button and let our tool work its magic. It will analyze your sitemap for compliance, formatting, and accessibility issues.

Step 3: Review Your Results

Within seconds, you’ll see a comprehensive validation report with detailed insights into your sitemap’s health and any issues that need fixing.

For example, click the submit part, and your sitemap will be submitted to Google. That’s it.

Sitemap Updates and Management

• To keep your sitemap relevant, update it regularly whenever you add, remove, or change site content.
• Automated tools like plugins or integrations can significantly streamline this process so you don’t have to keep doing it manually.
• Create a scheduled plan for updates, such as weekly or monthly checks. Check for the addition of new pages, blog posts, or product listings that need indexing.

How to Handle Errors in Your Sitemap

Errors in your sitemap can hinder your site’s visibility.

• Regularly validate your sitemap using tools like Google Search Console or online sitemap validators.
• Common issues can include broken links, incorrect URLs, and formatting problems.
• Fix broken links promptly to maintain user experience and site crawlability.
• Ensure your URLs are structured properly and point to the correct resources.

When you encounter errors, address them promptly. After corrections, update your sitemap and resubmit it to search engines so your changes are captured in the next crawl.

Tracking Sitemap Performance in Google Search Console

Google Search Console provides insights into how your sitemap performs. Monitor the “Sitemaps” section for any crawl errors or issues reported by Google.

Review metrics such as submission status and number of indexed pages to gauge effectiveness. This data helps you understand how search engines interact with your site content.

Adjust your sitemap based on performance metrics. Focus on optimizing frequently crawled pages and revising underperforming URLs to enhance visibility.

Sitemap Best Practices

Creating an effective sitemap requires attention to specific details. Here are some best practices to keep in mind:

• Keep It Simple: Ensure your sitemap is easy to navigate with a clear structure that reflects your site hierarchy.
• Limit URL Count: Aim to keep each sitemap file under 50,000 URLs. If you exceed this limit, divide your content across multiple sitemap files.
• Prioritize Content: Feature the most important pages first. Assign priority values to help search engines understand which pages matter most.
• Use the Right Format: XML sitemaps are the standard for search engines. HTML sitemaps can enhance user experience, but keep their purpose distinct.
• Update Regularly: Always update your sitemap as your content changes. This keeps search engines informed about the latest site updates. If you use sitemap tools or plugins, they should do this automatically.
• Include All Types of Content: Don’t just list web pages. Include images, videos, and other significant content types in search engine results.
• Submit to Search Engines: After creating your sitemap, submit it directly through tools like Google Search Console for better indexing.

Incorporating these best practices will enhance your site’s visibility and crawling efficiency.

Advanced Sitemap Topics

When managing sitemaps, especially for larger websites, it’s essential to utilize advanced techniques to maintain organization and optimize performance.

You will benefit from strategies focused on scalability, enhancement through extensions, and SEO improvements.

Handling Large Websites and Multiple Sitemaps

For large websites with thousands of pages, it’s pivotal to create multiple sitemaps to avoid exceeding limits. Google recommends that a single sitemap should contain no more than 50,000 URLs and be no larger than 50MB.

If you have more than 50,000 URLs on your website, you’ll have to create multiple XML sitemaps and combine them in an index file you can submit to Google.

You multiple sitemaps can be structured like this:

• Sitemap 1: https://example.com/sitemap1.xml
• Sitemap 2: https://example.com/sitemap2.xml

Regular updates to your sitemaps ensure that search engines are always working with the latest information.

Automate the process where possible, especially if you run your website on any popular CMS, like Webflow or WordPress.

Tools like Yoast or Rank Math on WordPress will automatically make the XML sitemap and even break it down into multiple sitemaps if your website is huge.

Webflow’s auto-generated sitemaps also follow Google’s guidelines.

All you have to do is submit the sitemaps to the search engines, check for any errors, fix them, and you’re good to go.

Using Sitemap Extensions

Sitemap extensions enable you to provide additional information about your URLs and the type of content you’re hosting. These might include:

• News Sitemap: For news articles, it helps Google to index new content quickly.
• Image Sitemap: Ensures images are indexed effectively, enhancing visibility in image search results.
• Video Sitemap: You can include videos, providing details such as duration and view counts.
• Jobs sitemap: Allows you to include all the jobs on your website for which you accept applications. This will tell Google to list the jobs in the Jobs search results.

Implementing these extensions can lead to better indexing and visibility of your media assets, optimizing your website’s reach.

Optimizing Your Sitemap for Better SEO

Ensure your sitemap is structured logically, prioritizing the most important pages. Use the <priority> Tag to indicate the significance of specific pages. Consider the following:

• Frequently updated content should appear to be a higher priority.
• Deprecated or less crucial pages should have lower priority.

Troubleshooting Common Issues

Sitemap submission can sometimes lead to errors that affect your website’s visibility. Identifying and resolving these issues efficiently is essential for maintaining proper indexing by search engines.

Common Errors When Submitting Sitemaps

Several common errors might occur during sitemap submission. These may include:

• 404 Errors: This indicates that the sitemap URL cannot be found. Ensure the URL is correct and accessible.
• XML Syntax Errors: If the sitemap file has incorrect XML formatting, it will be rejected. Validate your sitemap using online XML validators.
• Too Many URLs: Some search engines enforce limits on the number of URLs in a sitemap. If your sitemap exceeds the limit, consider breaking it into smaller sitemaps.
• Blocked by Robots.txt: If your robots.txt file prohibits access to the sitemap, it won’t be indexed. Check for any disallow rules that might affect this.

How to Fix Sitemap Submission Errors

Fixing errors after submission requires specific actions. Here’s how you can address some common issues:

1. Check the URL: Ensure the sitemap URL is correct and it loads to completion properly.
2. Validate the XML: Use an XML validator to check for formatting issues. Correct any discrepancies found.
3. Split Large Sitemaps: If your sitemap exceeds the URL limit, create multiple sitemaps and use a sitemap index file to reference them.
4. Update Robots.txt: Review your robots.txt file. Ensure it allows search engines to access the sitemap. Modify or remove any restrictive rules.
5. Resubmit: Once corrections are made, resubmit the sitemap through your preferred search engine tool.

Re-submitting a Sitemap

Re-submitting a sitemap is often necessary after addressing errors. Follow these steps:

1. Use Search Engine Tools: Use the webmaster tools of your chosen search engine. Locate the sitemap submission section.
2. Enter the Valid URL: Input the corrected sitemap URL into the submission field.
3. Monitor Status: After submission, monitor the status. Look for indications of indexing or errors for prompt resolution.
4. Set Up Automatic Resubmission: Consider automating your sitemap updates and submissions using CMS features or plugins. This keeps your sitemap current with website changes.

Conclusion

By following the steps we have discussed above, you can maintain an effective sitemap submission process.

It is important to mention that while it’s essential to resubmit the sitemaps, monitor URLs from time to time, and ensure nothing is broken, most of the time, an automated process using either installed plugins or CMS features should help you stay compliant.

The only times you should be super worried about the status of your sitemaps are after a huge website upgrade or redesign.

Therefore, I hope this in-depth guide has helped you create a sitemap, check it for errors, and successfully submit it for indexing in various search engines.