Let's see how you can create a sitemap for your project & make it available to Google, Bing and other search engines.
By default, the sitemap will be available in your project. The option for the sitemap can be found by navigating to Project > SEO > Sitemap
Sitemap Generator
The first feature we will see in depth is the Sitemap Generator. Let's cover the various tabs that are available:
General:
This tab shows the main setup to generate a sitemap. The first field requires you to input your domain.
💡Tip: Google will crawl your URLs exactly as listed. For instance, if your site is at http://www.example.com, don't specify a URL as http://example.com (without the www).
⚠️ Do not end your URL with a slash (/)! Our platform will do that automatically.⚠️
The optional dropdown below provides general information to search engines and may not correlate exactly to how often they crawl the page. In most instances, you can leave the dropdown as is for now.
Once you have entered the domain name, it is time to generate your sitemap! This can be achieved by clicking on the save icon, which will automatically generate the sitemap.
💡Tip: Want to make sure your sitemap is correctly visible online? You can visit yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml to view the generated sitemap!
Languages
The language tab can be used if you want to exclude a certain language from the sitemap.
Exclude
The Exclude tab is something you can use when a url needs to be removed from the sitemap.
Note: This will show you a message to make sure that the URL you provide in the exclude field is consistent with the one we provide in the 'General' tab!
Editor
When we have succesfully generated our sitemap, the Editor tab becomes available. This will give us a preview of our sitemap as well as the ability to edit the sitemap that has been generated.
We recommend this setting only if your are familiar how sitemap works.
Database
This tab will only be visible after generating a sitemap & when Dynamic Content has been installed!
After generating our sitemap, the Database tab will become available. This allows to automatically add detailpages from a collection to our sitemap.
Ensure to activate the collection you wish to include in the sitemap, then click on the save icon to regenerate your sitemap with the detail pages included.
Custom Sitemap
If you need a custom sitemap, you can easily upload your own to your project.
Keep in mind that if you make additional changes (new pages, detailpages,...) you'll need to manually re-upload your sitemap
In the following example, using a custom sitemap will show you a message that it's not possible to automatically update your custom sitemap.
Robots.txt
A standard robots.txt file will automatically be included. If you require a custom robots.txt, simply delete the current one to upload your own version.
Submit your sitemap to search engines
The 'Sitemap Generator' tool is designed to create sitemaps for your use. This simplifies the process as you only need to submit your sitemap file to search engines.
In this article we will provide additional information for:
Google Search Console
Bing Webmaster Tools
Google Search Console
- Sign in to Google Search Console.
- On your Search Console home page, select your website.
- In the left sidebar, click Crawl and then Sitemaps.
- Remove outdated or invalid sitemaps
- Click the Add/Test Sitemap button in the top right.
- Enter sitemap.xml into the text box that appears.
- Click Submit.
Bing Webmaster Tools
- Sign in to Bing webmaster tools.
- On the My Sites page, select your website.
- In the left sidebar, click Configure My Site and then Sitemaps.
- Remove outdated or invalid sitemaps like http://example.com/sitemap.xml
- Enter your sitemap URL into the text box at the top. Your sitemap URL will look like something like this: http://example.com/sitemap_index.xml.
- Click Submit.