Adding sitemaps for your Blogger.com blog

Sitemaps

Before Sitemaps, all pages in a websites where made known to search engines crawlers by submitting them. With sitemaps, all pages in a website can be made know to the search engines (incl. Google, Bing and Yahoo). A sitemap is just an XML file that lists URLs for a website (with some additional data about each URL.

Here is a short description how to add sitemaps to your blog on blogger.com. Having a Sitemap will increase your chances of being indexed by the search engines by providing them with more information about your blog.

Google

In order to provide google with a sitemap for your site, you have to use the google webmaster tools: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/home.

In order to use them, you need to have a google account. Once you've logged in, click on the "Add a site..." button:

Then type in the URL of your blog (i.e. http://yourblogname.blogspot.com):

Once your site has been added, the Site verification page opens. Select "Add a Meta tag" as verification method. A meta tag will be generated, copy it and open blogger.com. Edit the design of your blog and select "Edit HTML". Paste the copied metatag just after the tag.


the Dashboard will be displayed. Click on the "Submit a Sitemap" link:

It will take you to the Sitemaps tool. There click on the "Submit a Sitemap" button:

Then complete the displayed URL to point to a feed of your blog i.e. one of those:

• atom.xml
• rss.xml
• feeds/posts/full
• feeds/posts/default?alt=rss 
• feeds/posts/default?max-results=500
• feeds/posts/default?orderby=updated

After pressing "Submit Sitepad", you'll see the feed link in the Sitemap list:

Bing

Bing is the Microsoft search engine. Submitting a sitemap is really easy:
Just open the following URL in your browser:
http://www.bing.com/webmaster/ping.aspx?siteMap=http://yourblogname.blogspot.com/atom.xml
e.g.:
http://www.bing.com/webmaster/ping.aspx?siteMap=http://benohead.blogspot.com/atom.xml

Yahoo

 Submitting a sitemap to Yahoo is also extremely easy:

Just open the following URL in your browser:

http://search.yahooapis.com/SiteExplorerService/V1/ping?sitemap=http://yourblogname.blogspot.com/atom.xml

e.g.:

http://search.yahooapis.com/SiteExplorerService/V1/ping?sitemap=http://benohead.blogspot.com/atom.xml