How To Create Blogger Sitemap For Blog And Submit To Google Search Console

If you have just started your blog on blogger.com and might be wondering how to submit your blog sitemap to Google Search Console because it is not as straightforward as in the case of a WordPress blog.

So, here I’m going to show you step-by-step methods about how to create a Blogger Sitemap and submit your blog site map to Google Search Console.

In WordPress blogs, we generate Sitemap using SEO plugins like Yoast or RankMath and submit the URL to the Google Search Console directly, however for blogger.com we do it differently.

So, let’s get started.

But, before that we need to understand what actually a sitemap is, and why is it important for your blog to submit to Google Search Console?

What is Sitemap?

The Sitemap is like a directory or list of all web pages that exist on your website or blog. Google, Bing and other search engines can use these sitemap files to discover pages on your site that their search bots may have otherwise missed during regular crawling.

A sitemap is either an XML or HTML file that contains all the URLs of the pages and posts inside your blog.

An XML sitemap helps the search engine crawl your blog URLs to index on the search engine, while an HTML sitemap helps your visitors navigate through your blog.

There are various parts of a sitemap that affect the crawling rate of your blog, such as the size of your sitemap, the number of URLs in your sitemap, indexing priority of pages on your blog, updating frequency, etc.

Why It Is Important To Submit Sitemap For Blog?

As a blogger, you must create a sitemap and submit it to search engines. so whenever you make a new post search engines can crawl and index them easily.

This basically means that a good Sitemap serves as a roadmap of your website, which leads search engines to all your important pages.

The sitemap is very useful for search engine optimization (SEO).

Why? Because they allow Google and other search engines to easily find important pages on your website, even if your internal linking is bad.

This is important because Google and other search engines index and rank specific web pages, not whole websites.

So even if your homepage URL has already been crawled and indexed by the search engines, there’s still the need to provide them with a properly defined sitemap to help in exposing other pages that would otherwise be hidden from the spider bots.

The Problem With Default Blogger Sitemap Files

By default, your blogger blog will have a sitemap, but the issue with that sitemap is it only shows your recent blog posts. That’s a limitation because some of your older blog pages, which are missing in the default XML sitemap file, may never get indexed in search engines.

However, a complete XML sitemap file should mention all pages of a site, but that’s not the case if your blog is hosted on the Blogger or Blogspot platform.

Google accepts sitemaps in XML, RSS, or Atom formats. The best practice is to use both XML sitemaps and RSS/Atom feeds for optimal crawling. (See RSS Feed example and Atom Feed example).

How To Generate Sitemap For Blogger?

Creating a blog sitemap is very simple and this sitemap works for both regular Blogger blogs (like blbaliyase.blogspot.com) and also the self-hosted Blogger blogs that use a custom domain (like tech.bishnubaliyase.com).

You can just add this (atom.xml?redirect=false&start-index=1&max-results=500) to your blogs URL to get the sitemap.

See the example below:

https://blbaliyase.blogspot.com/atom.xml?redirect=false&start-index=1&max-results=500

Alternatively, you can generate Blogger XML Sitemap using blogger sitemap generator:

Open XML Sitemap generator and type the full address of your Blogger blog.

Click the Generate Sitemap button and this tool will instantly create the XML file with your sitemap. Copy the below text.

Now you have created a sitemap for your Blogger blog, but you need to tell search engines about your sitemap so that bots can know your site structure.

There are two ways to tell search engines about your sitemap:

♦ Adding your sitemap in robots.txt file and

♦ Submitting your sitemaps in Google Search Console

Adding Your Blogger Sitemap In “robots.txt” File

Let me show you, how to add a sitemap in blogger once you have generated an XML sitemap for your blogger blog.

Log in to your Blogger blog and go to Dashboard >> Settings >> Crowlers and indexing and edit the custom robots.txt. Enable and paste the text you copied from the XML sitemap generator and click save changes. Make sure to change your blog name in the Blogger XML sitemap below.

Note: The above sitemap will work for 500 posts only. If you have more than 500 posts published on your blog, then you have to add one more line in the robot.txt file.

Sitemap: https://blbaliyase.blogspot.com/atom.xml?redirect=false&start-index=501&max-results=500

You are done. So whenever search engines crawl your site they will access your Blogger sitemap from the robots.txt file.

Also Read: How to Choose Best Blogging Platform For You

Submitting Your Blogger Sitemap In Google Search Console (GSC)

Make sure you have a GSC account and have already added and verified your website, then only you will be able to submit your blog sitemap.

If you have not yet created an account or added property to GSC, please follow the below steps. If you have already verified your domain, then follow step 3 directly.

1. Create a Google Search Console account. In the dashboard, click add property >> Type Domain name and click continue.

2. It will verify the ownership of your domain automatically (if you use the same mail ID for blogger and GSC)

3. In your site dashboard, click the sitemaps >> paste the sitemap URL and submit it. (Add the URLs as per the number of posts)

https://blbaliyase.blogspot.com/atom.xml?redirect=false&start-index=1&max-results=500

https://blbaliyase.blogspot.com/atom.xml?redirect=false&start-index=501&max-results=500

https://blbaliyase.blogspot.com/atom.xml?redirect=false&start-index=1001&max-results=500

That’s it you have successfully submitted your sitemap in Google Search Console. Now it’s ready for crawling and indexing. You can find the number of pages crawled and indexed in Google Search Console.

Now Your Turn

This is how you can generate a XML sitemap for a blogger blog and submit it to Google Search Console.

The same steps can be used to submit your blog site map to Bing Webmaster Tool as well.

Now, it’s your turn to try this tutorial and let us know if it is helpful for you.

Also, let us know how submitting a sitemap to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tool affected your blog.

Also Read: