Bytes and Bites - Tech, Internet, How Tos, Reviews, Food and Life

Tech, Food and Life. Where passion comes to life.

How To Create A Sitemap for Blogger To Work With Google Webmaster Tools

Written by Christopher Kia on 8:55 PM

Hello peeps, welcome to my first how-to article :). This article is for those who are using Blogger to blog, Feedburner for their feeds and wish to add their blog to Google Webmaster Tools for better indexing and site visibilty on Google. In simpler terms, by adding your site/blog to Google Webmaster Tools, your site/blog will be more 'visible' in Google search results when user searches are related to items or articles in your blog. Conventionally, a sitemap is a .xml file that you have to create for Google Webmaster Tools so that Google can 'better understand' your articles and track links in your site and hence better index or list them under its search results. By using Blogger to post your articles, you are not hosting your own site and as a result you cannot create a .xml sitemap file to be uploaded to Google Webmaster Tools. However, you can use the feed URL for your blog as a sitemap for your blog. Sounds hard? I thought it was initially, until I got my blog indexed in less than an hour :).

To index your blog under Google to improve site visibilty and traffic to your blog, just follow these steps: (credits to Timothy Broder)

1. Use Feedburner to create feeds for your blog. Create an account in Feedburner and add your blog to it. Identify your Feedburner feed URL. For e.g. my feed URL for this blog is http://feeds.feedburner.com/bytesandbites

2. Now add your Feedburner feed URL to Blogger. In Blogger's Dashboard, go to Settings > click on Site Feed > then add your feed URL in "Post Feed Redirect URL"

3. Next, sign in to Google Webmaster Tools with your Google Account and add your blog to it. Next, Click on Sitemaps in the sidebar > Add Sitemap. Choose "Add General Web Sitemap" and under "My Sitemap URL is:", ADD THE FOLLOWING VALUE:

rss.xml?orderby=updated in the box after
http://yourblognamehere.blogspot.com/

For e.g. http://bytesandbites.blogspot.com/rss.xml?orderby=updated

4. That's it! You have now successfully submitted your blog's sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools. After Google has successfully indexed your blog, your sitemap status should change from 'Pending' to 'OK' under Sitemaps > Overview. Be patient as this process may take a while.

Have a good weekend everyone :)

2 comments comment | Posted in » ,  

Related Posts by Categories



Widget by Hoctro | Jack Book

  1. 2 comments: Responses to “ How To Create A Sitemap for Blogger To Work With Google Webmaster Tools ”

  2. By J on January 1, 2008 at 12:56 PM

    Ah, thanks so much.

    Well, it hasn't been approved yet, but if it doesn't clear, I'll be back here for clarification, as any error was probably on my end, not yours!

  3. By Christopher Kia on January 1, 2008 at 8:00 PM

    Hey j thane, glad i could help :). Do come back and tell me how it went!

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

Welcome To Bytes and Bites!

Christopher Kia. Passionate, loves tech, yummy food and wants to live his life purposefully. A medical student who spents most of his time in hospitals running after his team of doctors. Otherwise can be found sleeping in his room. Supports Nike, IKEA, Mac, Dell, Mozilla Firefox and also Windows XP (not Vista!). Blogs mainly about his life, findings regarding computers, technology and the internet that he finds interesting and also food, glorious food. His dreams are to join the Amazing Race and also set up a medical center one day. Oh by the way, he is the author of this blog. Support him by telling him what you think about his posts and blog! Come back for more updates!

Google