The XML Sitemap file is like a directory 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.
The
Problem with Blogger Sitemap Files
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. They recommend use both
XML sitemaps and RSS/Atom feeds for optimal crawling.
The default atom RSS feed of any
Blogger blog will have only the most recent blog posts – see example.
That’s a limitation because some of your older blog pages, that are missing in
the default XML sitemap file, may never get indexed in search engines. There’s
however a simple solution to fix this problem.
Generate
XML Sitemap for your Blogger Blog
This section is valid for both
regular Blogger blogs (that have a blogspot.com address) and also the
self-hosted Blogger blogs that use a custom domain (like postsecret.com).
Here’s what you need to do to expose
your blog’s complete site structure to search engines with the help of an XML
sitemap.
- Open the 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 entire
text to your clipboard.
- Next, go to your Blogger.com dashboard, navigate to Settings –> Search Preferences, enable Custom robots.txt option (available in the Crawling and Indexing section). Paste the XML sitemap here and save your changes. And we are done. Search engines will automatically discover your XML sitemap files via the robots.txt file and you don’t have to ping them manually.
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