Keep Google In the Loop — Push Out a Fresh Site Map as Often as You Can
Are you blogging, publishing, or managing a web site? Then make sure you are keeping Google indexes up-to-date! We always complain that they know too much about us, but this is one of those edge cases where we want them to know even more!
It’s also very easy to do with the Google Search Console (or the Bing Webmaster Tool for Bing). This is critical if you want the world to access your new stuff in a timely manner and it may even help your overall Google site rankings by sending the message that is fresh and updated regularly. Do that for every new page you add, whenever you make changes, heck, just do it every two weeks.
Submitting Pages Individually
If your site is tiny, you can submit the pages individually and request indexing every time. Anytime you change the content, add a new page, etc, go ahead and submit it. If this is your first time on the Google Search Console, you will need to register your web property (basically prove that you own or control the source code by adding a key that Google can read from their end).
For Larger Sites or Larger Changes
If your site is big or if you’ve done some major overhauling, you can submit all your pages at once using a page called a ‘Sitemap’. This is a hierarchical data structure in XML that maps out your entire web site staring form the landing page all the way down. You can use a service like XML Sitemaps Generator (it is free if your site isn’t too big).
Free Online Google Sitemap Generator. XML-sitemaps.com provides free online sitemap generator service, creating an XML…www.xml-sitemaps.com
This tool will map out your entire site and produce an XML downloadable file. You then add that to the static folder of your website and submit that URL to the Google Search Console.
Be warned though, if any of the links on your site map are broken, the Google indexer will reject it the whole batch. That’s it. Do this on a regular basis and you’ll have the world looped in!
Thanks for reading!
Manuel Amunategui
If you are looking for branding help or want to apply similar techniques at scale, don’t hesitate to contact me at information@keepthetalk.com
Manuel Amunategui, Curator ViralML.com, Founder KeepTheTalk.com. Author of “Grow Your Web Brand, Visibility & Traffic Organically: 5 Years of amunategui.github.Io and the Lessons I Learned from Growing My Online Community from the Ground Up”
