Understand XML Sitemap
Sitemap is a list or collection of all your posts and pages in your
blog/website. Just like every book has a content page which lists the
chapters or headlines in the book, every website as well as blog has got
a sitemap. Sitemap is like say a single URL containing all the URL's of
your website/blog. By default all the blogger accounts has a sitemap,
but they will let the search engine robots index only the 26 recent
posts and not all !
Therefore including additional XML sitemap will help the search engine
robots easily and quickly identify your site as well as crawl and index
all your posts. Overall XML sitemaps are just meant for search engine
robots (for indexing) and of course they are in no way helpful to the
users of your blog. However HTML sitemaps are meant for the users - Learn about HTML sitemap and how they boost traffic.
Standard XML Sitemap for Blogger
All you need to do is just include the following line after your blog homepage URL
code : atom.xml?redirect=false&start-index=1&max-results=500
If say your bog URL is
http://blogname.blogspot.com/
Then your sitemap will be
http://yourblogname.blogspot.com/atom.xml?redirect=false&start-index=1&max-results=500
The code allows the robots to index 500 posts of your blog. I also discussed about " what to do if your have more than 500 posts" at the end of this page.
Add your sitemap in Blogger account
For now, you need to login to your blogspot account and then goto Settings > Search preference.
Scroll down to the bottom of the page to find 'Custom robots.txt' option under Crawlers and indexing as shown in picture. Click 'edit'
Paste the following code format in the dialogue box, but make sure that you type your blogs name in the sitemap. Click 'Save changes' (check the below picture)
User-agent: *
Disallow: /search
Allow: /
Sitemap: http://yourblogname.blogspot.com/atom.xml?redirect=false&start-index=1&max-results=500
Add your sitemap in Google Webmaster
Google webmaster is a very good tool to track your blog stats as well as
let you know more about your users. Google Analytics is in conjunction
with webmaster (learn more about Google analytics here).
Once you submit your code to 'Custom robot.txt', login to your webmaster account and click 'Site Dashboard'. You will see a page, then click 'Sitemap' tab in the right, as shown below.
Then you will see ADD/TEST SITEMAP button, click that to see your
blog URL followed by a space to fill the sitemap extension. Just paste
the below code in that space and click 'Submit Sitemap'. After submitting, you will see the status of your submission like number of URL submitted as well as indexed.
atom.xml?redirect=false&start-index=1&max-results=500
Remember indexing takes time, usually between 1 to 3 days. So wait
patiently and check the webmaster frequently to know the status of
indexing. Done, your site will get indexed soon.
What to do if your site has more than 500 posts ?
OK, if you have less posts between 500 to 100, you just need to add one
more sitemap in your google webmaster as well as custom robots.txt
section, advising the robots to also index your posts from 500
to 1000.
Sitemap: http://yourblogname.blogspot.com/atom.xml?redirect=false&start-index=501&max-results=500
Your new code in custom robot.txt will appear as
User-agent: *
Disallow: /search
Allow: /
Sitemap: http://yourblogname.blogspot.com/atom.xml?redirect=false&start-index=1&max-results=500
Sitemap: http://yourblogname.blogspot.com/atom.xml?redirect=false&start-index=501&max-results=500
Remember for webmaster; instead of total URL, you just need to include the part in the space provided.
atom.xml?redirect=false&start-index=501&max-results=500
And if your blog contains posts between 1000 to 1500 posts, include the
below additional code just like you did above in both webmaster as well
atom.xml?redirect=false&start-index=1001&max-results=500
That's it, you are done.
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