Paste the full URL of your Blogger (blogspot) blog
You've put in the blood, sweat and tears to make a kickass blog, now make sure people can find it by creating a Blogger sitemap in Google's XML format. This type of sitemap is the best way to make sure all your posts and pages get indexed effectively, improving search engine visibility in the process.
Fortunately, generating an XML sitemap file is quick work when using Slickplan. 4 steps and you're on your way.
💡 SlickTip: Check your Blogger sitemap for errors and issues with our sitemap validator.
If you're looking for a way to generate XML sitemaps for non-Blogger sites, head over to our XML sitemap generator.
Generating Blogger XML sitemap files doesn't always go as planned and sometimes issues pop up when you submit your sitemap to Google. Here's how to fix the most common ones.
| Common Blogger sitemap issues | Solution |
|---|---|
| Blocked pages due to robots.txt rules | Use Google’s URL inspection tool to identify and resolve technical issues quickly |
| Google Search Console not loading Blogger sitemap.xml - ‘Couldn’t fetch’ error | There are a number of things you can try according to Rank Math, who go in-depth on all the following options:
|
| Older posts dropping from search results | Regularly update your blogs and resubmit your sitemap |
XML sitemaps act as roadmaps for search engines like Google and Bing to follow while indexing your site.
They're formatted in a way that makes understanding your website architecture, discovering content and learning the relationships between pages deadly efficient.
By providing search engines with an XML sitemap, you're essentially handing them a directory of all your posts and Blogger pages
And the easier it is for major search engines to crawl your site, the greater visibility your blog will get in search.
A great way to get your site organized before all of this is to use a visual sitemap generator to get a bird's-eye-view of your Blogger site and optimize the structure as needed in our sitemap creator.
Taking the time to optimize your Blogger blog with a well-structured XML sitemap and other SEO tools can significantly improve your blog’s performance and reach.
If a Blogger sitemap is the roadmap, a robots.txt file acts as an instruction manual, telling search engines which parts of your site they can and can’t access.
To guide search engine crawlers on which pages to index or ignore, customizing your blog’s robots.txt file is worth looking into.
For Blogger blogs, the default txt file disallows search bots from crawling the '/search' pages. In layman's terms, that means that search engines like Google can't index your blog's internal search results. Which makes sense, neither you nor Google wants those results pages showing up, you want real content popping up there.
To customize this file, go to your Blogger Dashboard, head to Settings and then to the ‘Crawlers and Indexing’ section.
Here, you can edit your robots.txt file to include specific rules. For example, adding Disallow: /feeds prevents search engine bots from crawling the feed section, while Allow: /.html ensures that individual posts and web pages are crawled.
A well-optimized robots.txt file can:
Another strategy for search engine optimization on Blogger is using custom robots header tags.
These tags are page-specific directives placed in the HTML head section of individual pages, influencing how search engines index your content.
To enable custom robots header tags, go to your Blogger Dashboard and navigate to the ‘Crawlers and Indexing’ section.
How to set Custom Robots Header Tags Settings on Blogger #blogging
Custom robots header tags let you set specific instructions like ‘noindex’ or ‘nofollow’ for individual pages or posts, where ‘noindex’ tells search engines not to show a particular page in the results and ‘nofollow’ tells them not to follow the links on that page.
These custom tags emerge as particularly useful in preventing the indexing of archive and search pages, as mentioned above, which helps avoid duplicate content issues among other things.
Creating and maintaining an XML sitemap for your Blogger blog is a key step in optimizing your site for search engines and, in turn, boosting your search engine optimization.
By generating a comprehensive Blogger XML sitemap, submitting it to Google Search Console and other search engines, and customizing your robots.txt file, you're giving your content the best shot at being indexed efficiently and accurately.
An XML sitemap is a file listing your blog's URLs, like a roadmap for search engines. It helps Blogger blogs get indexed better, especially for content not well-linked internally, improving search traffic by making sure search engines find your important posts.
While Blogger already creates an XML file for your blog, you can get a comprehensive map with something like Slickplan's free sitemap generator for Blogger. Just enter your blog URL and download the complete XML sitemap.
To submit your XML sitemap to Google Search Console, add your website's URL, verify the site and then submit sitemap in the 'Sitemaps' section of the console. This straightforward process will help Google index and understand your website more effectively.
If Google Search Console says a page is blocked, check your robots.txt file or noindex tags for that particular URL which can prevent indexing. Use the URL Inspection tool in Search Console to confirm the block and identify the specific issue.
Custom robots header tags can improve your blog's SEO by allowing you to set specific instructions like 'noindex', 'norachive' or 'nofollow' for individual pages, enhancing search engine visibility in the process.
