Marketing Monday: How To Create A Sitemap And Get It In Google Search Console

Originally Published December 2019

Are you tired of waiting for your web pages to show up on Google? Have you been submitting URLs to Search Console individually? Creating a sitemap and submitting to Search Console can save you a lot of time. So, let’s learn how to do it together.

Today we’ll go over:

  • How To Build A Sitemap On A WordPress Website
  • How To Add A Sitemap to Search Console
  • How To Build A Sitemap On A Non-WordPress Website

Also, be sure to check out our YouTube video on the subject if you prefer to watch rather than read.

Title Card reading: How To Create A Sitemap And Get It In Google Search Console

How To Build A Sitemap On A WordPress Website

– Login to WP
– Plugins > Add New
– Search Yoast > Install
– Find Yoast in Menu > General > Features
– Toggle XML Sitemaps to “On”
– Right-click “See the XML Sitemap”, copy link
– Will automatically update sitemap as you add

First, you want to login to your WordPress. Your login URL is going to be different than ours. It should be unique for security purposes.

On the left-hand side, once you’re logged in head down to “plugins”, and then click on “add new”. Within there, you’re going to search for Yoast. Search plugins, type in Yoast. At the top left is going to be Yoast SEO, it’s a purple icon. You’re gonna want to click “Install Now”. Mine says “Update Now” but yours will say “Install Now”.

Once that’s done installing, on the left-hand menu, you’re gonna see that the “Yoast SEO” icon has appeared. You’re going to want to hover over that and click on “General”. Once you’re in there, you’re going to see a sub-menu, click on “Features”. Scroll down to XML sitemaps. Mine’s already toggled to “On”, and yours may be toggled to “Off” to begin with. You want to flip that back to “On”.

And then click on the question mark above it, that’s going to let you see the XML sitemap. Now you can click this and take a peek at what the XML sitemap looks like  and grab the URL. Copy the URL out of there, the search bar.

Yoast is gonna automatically update the sitemap based on new pages and new posts that you’re creating. You don’t have to update the sitemap. It’s a static URL, you put it in Search Console, and everything will be taken care of.

How To Add A Sitemap to Search Console

Head to search.google.com/search-console. Login as your user.

Once you’re in there, top-left choose your domain, ours is Cohlab.com.

Once you’ve got that chosen, on the left-hand choose “Sitemaps” then you want to enter the URL from before as your sitemap, then click “Submit”.

Now a few seconds later it’s going to be successful, and Google is going to monitor that sitemap for changes periodically. So Yoast will automatically see what pages and posts have been added to the website, the sitemap will be updated automatically, and Google since the sitemap is entered in Search Console, will automatically put those in search results for you.

– Login to Search Console
– Choose your domain
– Left Menu > Sitemaps
– Enter sitemap URL from before > Submit
– A few seconds later
– Successful, Google will monitor sitemap for changes periodically.

How To Build A Sitemap On A Non-WordPress Website

– xml-sitemaps.com
– One-time capture of your site
– Manually be placed on your webserver via FTP or cPanel
– Can be added to Search Console after that

If you’re not using WordPress – if you’re using Wix or Weebly, one of those other website builders, they may have a sitemap option for you to build one. But if they don’t, you can build your own at xml-sitemaps.com.

So right in the homepage at the top, type in your web address, ours is https://cohlab.com, then click “Start”. It’ll start to crawl your entire website, all the pages, and images, and collate them and create a file.

That file, you’re going to need a web developer’s help. They’re going to need to put that in through FTP or cPanel onto your web server. Once they get that onto that web server, then they’ll be able to give you a link that you can put into Search Console.

Thanks for watching. Check out our other Marketing Monday videos on the left to help you learn how to develop your website and handle digital marketing for your company.