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Friday, September 24, 2010

Submitting a Blogger website to Google

 I have struggled with this topic for some time, as I’m sure many of you have.  What originally prompted me to look into this was the fact that my website was not showing up on Google Page Rank (http://www.prchecker.info/check_page_rank.php).   There appears to be many reasons why a page might not rank, including not being indexed, being too new, or being banned.  Needless to say I got used to seeing this response from Google Page Rank all the time.

Well after another day of fruitless searches on the subject, it turned out that I might not have had a site map submitted for my website, and a number of search engines require a sitemap be submitted.   It was suggested that I go to my Google Accounts Settings and check out Webmaster tools.  Under the Webmaster Tools, it listed an option to add sites, and it goes through the process step by step.




By clicking on the added site, the dashboard drills down to further details and information that Google has been able to retrieve from your site.  At this point in time, none of the fields listed in the image above were filled out.  The Sitemap list was blank, indicating that I had not submitted a sitemap. 
Well, I researched the subject more, and discovered that there were specific formats and protocols you need to complete in order to submit a Sitemap to either Google or Yahoo.  I have to admit, the Google Webmaster Tools page does have a lot of good documentation when it comes to information about Sitemaps, what they are, the general formats, and why they are needed.
So, what is a sitemap you ask?  Simply put, sitemaps are a way to tell Google about pages on your site that they might not otherwise discover. In its simplest terms, a XML Sitemap—usually called Sitemap, with a capital S—is a list of the pages on your website. By creating and submitting a Sitemap, it helps make sure that Google knows about all the pages on your site, including URLs that may not be discoverable by Google's normal crawling process.  This is instrumental in gaining additional links to you site, and greatly improves the exposure of you site in searches.  Sitemaps can provide Google with metadata about specific types of content on your site, including video, images, mobile, News, software source code, and geographical (KML) information.
Generally put, a site map can be based on either Sitemap protocol, or you can submit a text file or RSS/Atom feed as a Sitemap.  Now I did see both versions out there, and wasn’t sure which could be used most effectively with Blogger.  I did find a free XLM - Sitemap Generator online and was able to generate a file, but was unsuccessful in submitting per the instructions listed below.  I could not find the “Public_Html/” folder discussed, nor could a number of other people that I discovered online.

1.       XML – File Submission Process:
There are 2 steps left
  • Download the sitemap file here and upload it into the "public_html/" folder of your site (http://freshworks-mediamarketing.blogspot.com/).
  • After that, go to your Google Webmaster account and add your sitemap URL.

2.       Text or RSS/Atom Feed as a Sitemap:
a.       Verify your Site:
Once the site has been added, the site needs to be verified.  I had already done this step in relation to some other modifications to my site to reflect that I was the site’s owner.  Now you just choose verification by meta tags.  By Choosing “Add a Meta Tag”, the Google Web tools site will create the proper coding for insertion into your website.  Go back and log into your Blogger account, and navigate to “Design” and “edit HTML” tabs.  Insert the coding just below the <head> section.  Once this has been done, then go back to the Google Webmaster Page and click on “Verify”. 
Now click on add Sitemap. Then click on add general Sitemap. Now, add your Blog-Feed url as shown below.




The format for the Sitemap URL is:
http://yourblogname.blogspot.com/rss.xml

The simply click on add sitemap, and Google should begin to detect you page and start crawling it.
Hopefully this will help you as much as it has helped me.  I’m still not ranking on Google, but at least it’s able to see my pages.  If you have any ideas or suggestions for getting my site to rank, please send a reply or comment.

I wish you best of luck in all your endeavors and continued success.

Regards,
Mark

3 comments:

  1. thank U for sharing it here. Keep up the good work :-)

    ReplyDelete
  2. What about wordpress blogs? Is there anything different to make sure the sitemaps are registered by Yahoo, Google and Bing?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Gillean,
    When researching this topic I was focusing specifically on Blogger sites, because that is what I'm using. I have really only had a problem getting my site to show on Google, but will definitly look into it further.

    Thanks for the great question!

    Regards,
    Mark

    ReplyDelete