Imagine your website as a vast library. The role of the search engine is to index every book (web page) in your library to understand its contents. However, calling Google to your library doesn’t guarantee that it will index every book.
Sitemaps function like the index of the library, guiding Google crawlers (automated web page indexing robots) to the correct shelves, pointing out important sections, and indicating parts to ignore.
Why Submit Your Sitemap to Google
Submitting your sitemap to Google is a best practice for search engine optimization (SEO). Sitemaps tell the search engine where to find all the SEO-relevant pages on your site, helping it focus on the pages that matter and ignore those that aren’t critical.
Submitting a sitemap has numerous SEO benefits, including:
Faster Indexing
Google reviews web pages in two steps: crawling and indexing.
Crawling, the first step, is the process by which search engines systematically browse the content of the internet. When Google crawls a page on your site, it means it has discovered it. It knows it exists but hasn’t yet determined whether it’s the type of page it wants to show in search results. For example, it hasn’t been determined if the page is empty, duplicates another page, or contains potentially harmful content.
This process happens in the second step, indexing. Once Google confirms through an algorithm that your page is relevant to searchers, it gets indexed and added to its vast list of pages eligible for search results.
Indexing takes a lot of bandwidth, so it can take some time for Google to reach new pages. Google doesn’t know which pages on your site should be prioritized. Submitting a sitemap to Google tells the search engine which pages you consider relevant so it can focus its crawling budget on the most important pages for you.
Increased Comprehensive Crawling
Google typically identifies new pages to crawl through links. When it discovers a link to a new page on an already existing page, it follows the link to crawl the new page. However, not all pages have prominent links from other pages, especially new pages. Submitting sitemaps ensures that Google doesn’t miss any of your pages, including those with few links. This makes it easier for potential users to find your site when searching on Google.
Improved Reporting and Analytics
The Google Search Console – previously known as Google Webmaster Tools – has a set of tools under the indexing tab to analyze how Google sees your pages.
However, the standard page report includes every page Google has discovered on your website, whether the page is relevant or not. This includes both the pages designated for indexing and those that are not. This can make it hard to pinpoint an issue, such as non-indexed pages that should be indexed.
For example, the site below has more “non-indexed” pages than “indexed” pages:
However, these “non-indexed” entries include 167 many pages that are not being indexed properly – mainly non-canonical URLs, which are alternative versions of pages (like RSS feed versions or automatically generated pages).
On
For example, the page listed in the image below is included in the “unindexed” report, due to the reason “Forbidden due to access denied (403)”. This is true because the URL is an uploaded image unrelated to the researchers.
When submitting your sitemap to Google, you can use the toggle at the top of the pages report to filter the data to be only the sitemap for a more activated view of your data. You can also access this data under the Sitemaps tab.
In the image below, we can now see two pages in the sitemap that have not been indexed, indicating there is an error and an opportunity to investigate these pages further.
What to Include in Your Sitemap
The purpose of a sitemap is to show browsers where they can find the information they need – not to tell browsers about the site. Therefore, a typical sitemap file is a simple file with a .xml extension. It can also be in HTML format, but HTML sitemaps do not provide SEO value.
The only mandatory elements in a sitemap are the URLs of the web pages. In principle, a sitemap is just a list of URLs on the website. In a standard sitemap in XML format, each URL in the list is placed in a URL element and a loc element: <url> <loc>https://website.com/page-1/</loc> </url>
Sitemaps can also include optional elements for additional context. Here are common examples:
Sub-Sitemaps
Some websites and Content Management Systems (CMS) organize their sitemap with multiple sub-sitemaps – sections of the overall sitemap structure of the site. For example, in Shopify stores, sitemaps are automatically created with sub-sitemaps for products, pages, collections, and blogs, and look like this:
<sitemapindex xmlns=”http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9″>
<!– This links the main sitemap to additional sub-sitemaps for products, collections, and pages as shown below. The sitemap cannot be edited manually but is updated in real-time. –>
<sitemap>
<loc>https://duer.ca/sitemap_products_1.xml?from=9036854092&to=7191923490868</loc>
</sitemap>
<sitemap>
<loc>https://duer.ca/sitemap_pages_1.xml</loc>
</sitemap>
<sitemap>
<loc>https://duer.ca/sitemap_collections_1.xml</loc>
</sitemap>
<sitemap>
<loc>https://duer.ca/sitemap_blogs_1.xml</loc>
</sitemap>
</sitemapindex>
Change Frequency
Change frequency gives search engines a timeframe to expect the page to change, so they know how often to crawl it. Shopify sitemaps assume daily change by default.
Last Modified Date
The last modified date helps search engines understand whether the page needs to be crawled again by comparing the last crawl date with the last modified date. Shopify sitemaps include this and update it automatically.
Image/Video Context
Image/video context helps search engines understand the main image on the page – meaning the image that represents the page as a whole. This is often the same as the open graph image for the page (the main image for link previews on social media). Image/video context becomes more useful as search engines move towards including image previews for web pages in search results.
Here is an example of a single product page in the sitemap for Chubby products that includes change frequency (<changefreq>), last modified date (<lastmod>), and image details (<image:image>):
<url>
<loc>https://duer.ca/products/mens-performance-stretch-belt</loc>
<lastmod>2023-12-10T17:56:01-08:00</lastmod>
<changefreq>daily</changefreq>
<image:image>
<image:loc>https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1623/9935/products/MAYX8506_Black_Belt_0120_f0995fb6-23c9-443c-b829-2ca079bdb728.jpg?v=1660868722</image:loc>
<image:title>Performance Stretch Belt</image:title>
<image:caption>Men\’s Black Performance Stretch Belt Side</image:caption>
</image:image>
How to Submit Your Sitemap to Google
Submitting your sitemap to Google Search does not take long, as long as you have full access to your content management system and your site. Here’s how to do it:
1. Create Your Sitemap
Your content management system may create a sitemap for you, or you can use a sitemap generator tool. Although you can technically create a sitemap manually, it will not be updated regularly enough to remain valid.
Your
Shopify creates sitemaps automatically for all Shopify stores at your-site.com/sitemap.xml. For content management systems that do not automatically generate a sitemap, such as WordPress, you can add free plugins like Yoast to create a sitemap automatically.
2. Register and verify your site in Google Search
Google Search is a free tool from Google for site performance and search analytics, but it requires verifiable proof that you have the right to view the data and make changes to your site. Therefore, the login requirements for it demand more effort than a regular tool.
When you first register with Google Search, you will be prompted to complete one of the following tasks to verify ownership of your site:
- Upload a .txt file to your server. (This is the preferred verification method as it grants you full access to the domain, while the other options only provide partial access.)
- Integrate Google Search with another tool owned by Google, such as Google Analytics or Google Tag Manager.
- Upload an HTML file or tag to your site.
Once the verification is complete, it may take up to 48 hours for Google Search to populate with data, but you can upload your sitemap immediately.
3. Go to Indexing > Sitemaps and submit
In your Google Search account, find Sitemaps under the Indexing section in the left sidebar and submit your sitemap URL in the form. Then click Submit.
Wait for the status to show “Success.” This can take up to 48 hours. Once successful, you can view the entire date history of your sitemap submission in this view.
If your site has sub-sitemaps, there is no need to submit each one separately. You only need to submit the top sitemap index.
Submitting a sitemap to Google – FAQ
Do I need to submit my sitemap to Google?
No. Submitting your sitemap to Google is a best practice for search engine optimization (SEO), but if you do not wish to improve your site’s indexing in Google, you do not have to submit it.
How to remove your sitemap from Google?
Go to the Sitemaps section in Google Search and select the individual sitemap. Then click the three dots in the upper right corner, which opens a new menu containing the option to “Remove Sitemap.”
Can multiple sitemaps be submitted?
Yes, you can submit multiple sitemaps to Google, and it can read multiple sitemaps. However, the general best practice for large sites is to submit one sitemap index that contains multiple smaller sitemaps as needed.
Source: https://www.shopify.com/blog/submit-sitemap-to-google
“`
Leave a Reply