Add your 'sitemap' to Google Search Console
If your website does not appear on Google yet, or pages from your old website are still appearing in searches, submitting a sitemap to Google can speed things up. To do this you will need to register an account with Google Search Console.
What is Google Search Console
Google Search Console is a free service offered by Google that helps you monitor, maintain, and troubleshoot your site's presence in Google Search results. You don't have to sign up for Search Console to be included in Google Search results, but Search Console helps you understand and improve how Google sees your site.
See Google's support page for more information: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/9128668?hl=en
Find your 'sitemap'
What is a sitemap?
A sitemap is a way of organising a website, identifying the URLs and the data under each section (URL). Your sitemap will be accessible in your CMS as a XML file. Google’s XML format was designed for search engines, allowing them to find the data faster and more efficiently.
Steps
- Go to your live website (this should have a security certificate and have the prefix 'https', eg https://artlogic.net/) and copy the URL.
- Go to your Artlogic CMS > SEO Tools > XML Sitemap
- Your sitemap will be accessible through an .xml link.
Your sitemap updates automatically every 24 hours adding all the new changes made to your website, so you will not need to manually update this in the future.
Two ways to add your 'sitemap' to Google Search Console
You can choose one of these verification methods to add your sitemap to Google Search Console.
Adding a HTML Tag
- Go to https://search.google.com/search-console/welcome?utm_source=about-page.
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Login to your Google account. This needs to be the same account that has access to your Google Analytics, otherwise you may have trouble verifying the site. If you need guidelines on how to create your own Google Analytics account and add the ID into your CMS, please see in our guide here: How to create a Google Analytics data stream
Then you can proceed to login to Google Search Console. - Add the site live URL to URL prefix.
- Click continue to get the website verification options.
- Copy the HTML Tag that Google provides and send this to Artlogic support. We will be able to add this to your site's back end in order to complete verification.
- When we have confirmed that your HTML Tag has been added, click Verify
- Click Go to Property.
- Go to Sitemaps on the left-hand side.
- In the window ‘Add new sitemap’ the website’s URL will appear.
- Type ‘sitemap.xml’ at the end of the URL.
- Click Submit.
Verifying via Google Analytics
- Go to https://search.google.com/search-console/welcome?utm_source=about-page.
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Login to your Google account. This needs to be the same account that has access to your Google Analytics, otherwise you may have trouble verifying the site. If you need guidelines on how to create your own Google Analytics account and add the ID into your CMS, please see in our guide here: How to create a Google Analytics data stream
Then you can proceed to login to Google Search Console. - Add the site live URL to URL prefix.
- Click continue to get the website verification options.
- Choose to verify via Google Analytics (you can only verify via Google Analytics once you have submitted your Google ID)
- When you have submitted your Google Analytics ID, click Verify.
- Click Go to Property
- Go to Sitemaps on the left-hand side.
- In the window ‘Add new sitemap’ the website’s URL will appear.
- Type ‘sitemap.xml’ at the end of the URL.
- Click Submit.