Orange background and chains on the window. Think of the website as a huge library. The job of the search engine is to catalog all the books (web pages) in this library and understand their contents. However, inviting Google to the library does not guarantee that Google will index all the books.

A sitemap acts like an index for a library. It helps Google's crawlers (automated web page indexing bots) find the right shelves, point to important books, and tell them which books to ignore.

Here's a step-by-step guide to submitting a sitemap to Google so search engines can crawl your website as easily as they would a well-organized library.

Why you should submit a sitemap to Google

• Faster indexing
• More comprehensive crawling
• Enhanced reporting and analytics

Submitting a sitemap to Google is a search engine optimization (SEO) best practice. A sitemap tells search engines where to find all of your website’s SEO-relevant pages, helping them focus on the pages that matter and ignore the less important ones.

Submitting a sitemap has several SEO benefits, including:

Faster indexing

Google is a web page We review in two steps: crawling and indexing:

The first step, crawling, is the process by which search engines systematically explore the content of the Internet. When Google crawls a page on your site, it means that it has discovered the page. That is, it knows that the page exists, but it has not yet determined whether or not it should appear in search results. For example, it has not yet determined whether the page is empty, duplicates other pages, or contains potentially harmful content.

This decision is made in the second stage, indexing. If Google algorithms determine that a page is useful to searchers, they index it and add it to the list of pages that can appear in search results.

Indexing requires significant bandwidth, so it can take time for Google to index new pages. Google doesn't know which pages on your site should be indexed first. By submitting a sitemap to Google, you are telling the search engine which pages are important, so it can focus its indexing bandwidth on the pages that are most important to you.

More comprehensive crawling

Google typically identifies new pages to crawl through links. When it finds a link from an existing page to a new page, it follows the link and crawls the new page. However, not all pages have prominent links from other pages, especially new pages. A submitted sitemap ensures that Google doesn't miss any of your pages, even those that don't have many links. This makes it easier for potential users to find your site when they search on Google.

Enhanced reporting and analytics

Google Search Console (formerly Google Webmaster Tools) has tools under the Indexing tab that help you analyze how Google sees your pages.

However, the Canonical Pages report includes all pages that Google has detected on your website, regardless of whether they are actually relevant or not. This includes both pages that should be indexed and pages that should not be indexed, which can make it difficult to identify issues.

For example, the site below has more unindexed pages than indexed pages:

However, these 167 “unindexed” URLs mostly contain non-canonical URLs, i.e., alternate versions of pages (such as RSS feed versions or auto-generated pages) that should not be indexed.

For example, the page in the image below is listed in the “Not Indexed” report with the reason “Blocked due to Access Denied (403).” This is correct because the URL is an uploaded image that is not relevant to the searcher.

Once you submit your sitemap to Google, you can filter by sitemaps only using the toggle at the top of your Pages report, giving you a more actionable view of your data. You can also view this data in the Sitemaps tab.

In the image below, you can now see two pages that are in your sitemap but not indexed, indicating errors and opportunities for further investigation.

What to include in your sitemap

The goal of a sitemap is to guide crawlers to find the information they need, not to describe your site. Therefore, a typical sitemap file is a simple .xml file. You can also create one in HTML, but HTML sitemaps have no SEO value.

The essential element of a sitemap is the webpage URL. A sitemap is basically just a list of URLs on a website. In a typical XML sitemap, each URL in the list is surrounded by URL and loc elements:

Subsitemap

Some websites and content management systems (CMS) structure their overall sitemap structure as multiple subsitemaps. For example, Shopify stores automatically generate subsitemaps for products, pages, collections, and blogs, which look like this:

<sitemapindex xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">

<!-- This parent sitemap links to additional sitemaps for products, collections, and pages, as shown below. The sitemap cannot be manually edited 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 frame of reference for how often a page can be expected to change. Shopify sitemaps default to Daily.

Last modified date

The last modified date helps search engines understand if a page needs to be recrawled by comparing the last crawl date to the last modified date. Shopify sitemaps include and update this information by default.

Image/video context

Image/video context helps search engines understand the main image of a page, i.e. the image that best represents the entire page. This is often the same as the OpenGraph image of the page (the main image for link previews on social media). Image/video context is becoming increasingly useful as search engines move toward including image previews of web pages in their search results.

Here's an example of a single product page within a Shopify product sitemap, including the 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>

</url>

How to submit a sitemap to Google

1. Create a sitemap
2. Register and verify your site with Google Search Console
3. Go to Indexing > Sitemaps and submit

Submitting your sitemap to Google doesn't take long if you have full access to your site's CMS and website. Here's how to do it:

1. Create a sitemap

Your CMS (content management system) can automatically generate a sitemap for you, or you can use a sitemap generation tool. Of course, you can also create a sitemap manually, but it is difficult to maintain validity because it is not updated regularly.

Shopify automatically generates a sitemap for every Shopify store, which you can find at your-site.com/sitemap.xml. For CMSs that don’t automatically generate sitemaps, like WordPress, you can add a free plugin like Yoast to automatically generate a sitemap for you.

2. Register and verify your site with Google Search Console

Google Search Console is a free Google tool that provides website performance and search insights. However, it requires verification that you have the authority to access and change site data, so the login requirements are more complex than those of a typical tool.

When you first sign up for Search Console, you will need to complete one of the following to verify your site ownership :

• Upload a .txt file to your server (this is the preferred verification method. It gives you full domain access, whereas other options only give you partial access.)
• Integrate Search Console with other Google tools, such as Google Analytics or Google Tag Manager.
• Upload HTML files or tags to your site.

Once verification is complete, Search Console can take up to 48 hours to populate your data, but you can upload your sitemap immediately.

3. Go to Indexing > Sitemaps and submit

In your Google Search Console account, find Sitemaps under the Indexing section in the left sidebar navigation, and submit your sitemap URL in the form. Then click the 'Submit' button.

Wait until the status is marked as "Success". This process can take up to 48 hours. Once successfully submitted, you can see your entire sitemap submission history in this view.

If your site has sub-sitemaps, you don't need to submit them individually. Just submit the top-level sitemap index.

Submitting a Sitemap to Google FAQs