How to Submit a Sitemap to the Google Search Console

Are you ready to get your website indexed by Google? If so, submitting a sitemap to the Google Search Console is a great way to get started.

Making a sitemap and uploading it to Google is one of those tasks. For Google’s crawlers to index your website, comprehend its significance, and establish your site’s rating, you must submit a sitemap.

In this blog post, we’ll take you through submitting a sitemap and explain why it’s important for your website. Let’s dive in!

Check your sitemap for errors before you submit

Making sure your sitemap is free of errors is an important step in submitting your sitemap to Google. It’s important to check the file for any typos, incorrect URLs, or other issues that could prevent Google from understanding and indexing the content on your website and optimize your crawl budget.

One way to identify errors in your sitemap is by using a tool like XML Sitemap Validator, which will validate the XML and list any errors it finds.

Alternatively, you can use a text editor such as Notepad to open up and inspect the contents of the sitemap file directly.

It’s also important to ensure that all of the URLs listed in your sitemap exist on your website and are accessible by Googlebot. If there are any broken links or pages that have been moved or deleted, this can cause problems with crawling and indexing.

To check for broken links within your sitemap, you can use broken link checkers, which will quickly scan through the list of URLs and identify those that are no longer working. Or check if Google Search Console detected any broken links.

How to submit your sitemap to Google

Submitting your sitemap URL to Google Search Console is an important first step in optimizing your website’s SEO and visibility. Submitting a sitemap will ensure that Googlebot can find and crawl all of the pages on your site, indexing them for search engine users.

It also allows you to monitor any errors or warnings related to your site’s technical performance and analyze the links from other websites pointing to yours. 

1. Sign in or create a Google search console Account

2. Select your website:

4. Select Sitemaps and remove any invalid or outdated Sitemaps:

5. Add a new sitemap and click Submit:

What is a Sitemap?

An XML file called a sitemap contains the URLs for your blog posts and pages. This file aids search engines in indexing all of your website’s URLs that are listed in sitemaps.

When you submit a sitemap to Google for your website through Search Console, Google Crawler visits your site and scans your sitemap first.

The meaningful URLs that should be indexed in order of importance will be made clear to Google bots and crawlers by doing this.

There are two types of sitemaps: XML sitemaps and HTML sitemaps.

XML Sitemap

The XML sitemap ensures that Google Bots and other crawlers effectively index your website. This indexes the post on your website in the search results.

HTML Sitemap

The HTML Sitemap is intended for users or site visitors. In essence, an HTML sitemap informs users of your website about all the articles and pages that are accessible there.

Visitors to your website will find it easy to navigate, thanks to an HTML sitemap. It is a text version of the site pages and posts with bulleted lists as headings.

To construct a sitemap for a typical website, you must utilize an online sitemap generator. For this, you can use the XML Sitemap Generator.

There are plugins for WordPress blogs that will automatically create the sitemap for your website whenever you add a new page or article to your website.

These plugins will assist in the automatic updating of your sitemap. Once a new post or page has been submitted, you don’t need to update it manually.

Frequently asked questions

How many Sitemaps can I submit to Google?

A sitemap file’s maximum number of URLs is 50,000, and its full uncompressed size is 50MB. Divide your sitemap into multiple smaller ones if it is more significant than this.

Do you need to submit a sitemap to Google Search Console?

You could submit a sitemap to Google, but you are not required to. The Google bots will eventually crawl your website; uploading a sitemap only expedites the procedure.

Make sure your sitemap accurately matches the content of your website before submitting.

You shouldn’t submit a sitemap with broken links, missing graphics, or orphaned pages. You can locate and correct these issues to submit your sitemap to Google by conducting a site audit.