In today’s class, we will learn about the Google webmaster tool and how to link your website in it. Further, you will learn about submitting a sitemap into it. In my previous class, I discussed that when you start a new blog, search engines don’t know about it. So sitemap submission is a process to get the Google indexing easily.
Link website with Google Webmaster
First of all, open this link http://www.google.com/webmaster/tools/, and sign in with that Gmail account with which you have registered your website.
Click on Add a property
It will ask you to input the URL of your website.
Input your website URL and click add.
On the next step, it will ask to verify your website in different ways. Google Analytics is the best way to do it easily.
Click on verify. Google will check that if any website is running with the email ID with which you sign-in. If yes, Google will show your website in webmaster tools.
How to Submit Sitemap in Google Webmaster Tools
Method 1: Through Webmaster
At the dashboard, your website will look there as I pointed with the blue arrow.
Below from it, you will see 3 different options, select the 3rd option i.e. Sitemaps
Now click on Add/test sitemap
In the empty box, write sitemap.xml
After submission, you will get the message that the sitemap submitted.
Click on the dashboard, where you will see that your sitemap is submitted to Google. Wait for the Google crawler to index your website.
Method 2: Google Sitemap Submission by XML Plugin
Google asks for website verification for linking a website to the webmaster. I have told you the method of Google Analytics that is quite easy and simple to do. Here, I came with a more easy solution i.e. through the plugin. The WordPress plugin that you will use for this purpose is Google XML sitemaps.
Download Link: wordpress.org/plugins/google-sitemap-generator/
This plugin has many advantages, for example, when you will use this plugin, then you will have no need to submit the sitemap to Google, yahoo, bing, etc. Whenever you will publish a post or make a new page, this plugin informs all the search engines about your post that will be indexed in within 24 hours.
Download the plugin and install it to through WordPress dashboard.
After installation of the plugin, click on the plugin from the settings. This will open the setting page for this plugin.
Do the settings as I have shown in the below image.
Click on automatic, after which you will see the URL of your website with a sitemap. Click on the link to make sure that your sitemap is created.
This is the end of today’s class. Let me know which method you like from both the method listed above. In case of any confusion, do a comment and I will reply accordingly.