How to submit XML sitemap to Google and Bing?


submit xml sitemap to Google and Bing

Struggling with creating and submitting sitemaps to Google or Bing? Sitemaps are one essential tool to get your site properly indexed by Search Engines. While they are not absolutely necessary, they can be a roadmap for search engines to crawl and index your web pages. 

If you are struggling with crawling and indexing your important website pages, sitemaps can make a significant difference. In this blog post, we will discuss how to create, submit and manage XML sitemaps.

Table of Contents

What is an XML sitemap?

So, what is a sitemap? It’s a file that lists all of the pages you want search engines to crawl on your website along with some other details like change frequency, location, priority and last modified date. 

This file includes information about the pages, videos, images and other files. Search engines like Google read this file to crawl your site more efficiently. Sitemap is what guides search engines to crawl pages on your website and also prioritise important pages. 

XML format is the most used sitemap format but you can also opt for HTML or RSS/Atom Feeds. XML stands for Extensible Markup Language and it is a standard format used to encode data in a structured manner. 

In this post we will talk about creating XML sitemaps which look something like below. 

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″?>

<urlset xmlns=”http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9″>

   <url>

      <loc>http://www.example.com/</loc>

      <lastmod>2005-01-01</lastmod>

      <changefreq>monthly</changefreq>

      <priority>0.8</priority>

   </url>

   <url>

      <loc>http://www.example.com/catalog?item=12&amp;desc=vacation_hawaii</loc>

      <changefreq>weekly</changefreq>

   </url>

   <url>

     <loc>http://www.example.com/catalog?item=73&amp;desc=vacation_new_zealand</loc>

      <lastmod>2004-12-23</lastmod>

      <changefreq>weekly</changefreq>

   </url>

For most sites, you can access your sitemap by adding sitemap.xml to your URL. For us, it’s https://wpcreative.com.au/sitemap_index.xml and it’s created automatically by the RankMath SEO plugin.

Sitemap Index WP Creative

Do you actually need a sitemap?

The straight forward answer to this is NO. Your website and pages can be indexed and crawled by search engines, even without creating a sitemap. If your website is small with proper internal links, discovering pages might be easier and creating a sitemap might not be necessary. With that being said, creating a sitemap speeds up the crawling process and in overall, does more good than harm.

The main purpose of an XML sitemap is to help search engines like Google to find and crawl the important pages on the website. Sometimes, your pages might not be easily discoverable and a sitemap might be necessary. This is especially true for small websites (less than 500 pages).

Additionally, sitemaps can include information about each URL, such as below that aids your SEO efforts.

  • Page last update date
  • Page change frequency
  • Page’s priority or importance 

So, sitemaps are not an absolute necessity but they do help with the following.

Improved Indexing and Crawling

Sitemaps ensures all pages, including those with dynamic content or isolated from the main site structure, are indexed.

Faster Updates

Sitemaps help search engines quickly find newly added or updated pages helping in crawling and indexing.

Better Crawl Management 

For large websites, sitemaps guide search engines on which pages are most important, helping to prioritise crawling and manage crawl budget.

Generating an XML sitemap

Creating or generating a sitemap is easy and straightforward. If you are using WordPress CMS and SEO plugins like Yoast SEO or RankMath, chances are these plugins are creating your sitemap automatically unless you’ve manually turned them off. There are other sitemap specific plugins on WordPress. 

If you are not using any of these plugins or if your website is not built on WordPress, you might need to create the sitemap manually. You can do this by using one of the following methods.

Online Sitemap Generators

If you search for online sitemap generators you will get a list of tools like XML-sitemaps that allow you to generate sitemaps by simply entering your website’s URL. You can download the file and submit it to search engines. Remember that not all tools are completely free and some might require you to pay to download the XML sitemap file or some might have URL limits of 200 or 500 for free users.

SEO Tools

If you have Tools like Screaming Frog and SEMrush, you can create sitemaps using these tools as well.

Custom Creation

For those with technical skills or small websites, you can manually write the custom script for the sitemaps. This is not advised for larger websites as this would take a lot of time. 

After creating the sitemap, you will need to add the file to your website’s root directory which can be accessed from [your website domain]/sitemap_index.xml. 

How to submit a sitemap to Search Engines?

Now that we’ve discussed what and why of XML sitemaps, let’s get into how you can submit the sitemap to Google.

How to submit XML sitemap to Google?

Follow the steps below to submit your XML sitemap to Google:

Step 1: Access Google Search Console and select your website property.

Step 2: Click on the “Sitemaps” option in the left-hand menu.

Submit XML sitemap on Google Search Console

Step 3: Add a New Sitemap URL to the field and click the Submit button. 

image 1

After submitting the URL, you will need to check the status. Google Search Console will show the status of your submitted sitemap, including whether it was successfully processed and if any errors were found. If it’s correctly indexed, you will see Success under the status column of the Submitted sitemaps section.

image 2

Submitting sitemaps with Search Console – Is it necessary?

Submitting a sitemap with Google Search Console may not be absolutely necessary. Google has specified some of the cases where submitting a sitemap might be helpful. I’ve summarised this below.

For large sites, it’s challenging to make sure that every page is linked by at least one other page on the website. This makes it more likely that Googlebot might not discover some of your new pages and this is where sitemaps come into play. 

If your site is new and has few internal or external links to it. Googlebot and other web crawlers crawl the web by following links from one page to another. As a result, Googlebot might not discover your pages if no other sites link to them.

Your site has a lot of rich media content (video, images) or is shown in Google News. Google can take additional information from sitemaps into account for Search.

How to submit a sitemap to Bing?

Follow the steps below to submit a sitemap to Bing. 

Step 1: Access Bing Webmaster tools and select your website property.

Step 2: Click on the “Sitemaps” option in the left-hand menu.

Sitemap Section Bing Webmasters

Step 3: Click on Submit sitemap on the top right corner

Bing Webmaster Tools Sitemap

Step 4: Add a new sitemap URL to the field and click the Submit button.

Submit sitemap to Bing

Similar to Google, Bing also has a status column for Sitemap status.

Keeping your sitemap updated

It’s recommended to update your sitemap at least once every 1-2 months, or even more frequently for sites with frequent content updates. You will also need to update your sitemap if you make major changes to your structure or content.  

If you are using SEO or other sitemap plugins to manage sitemaps, you can select to update your sitemap automatically when you add a new page or make changes to your website. Another option might be to use custom scripts that generate and submit updated sitemaps at regular intervals.

Still struggling with sitemap updates and getting your website pages indexed? We provide WordPress website growth plans to help you manage your website as well as improve your website’s SEO.


Updated on: 25 July 2024 |


Sazjan Neupane

Sazjan Neupane

Sazjan helps us reach our dream clients with his expertise in Search Engine Optimisation, PPC, Project Management & Online Business Development. He has worked with a variety of clients in different industries over the last 5 years. In his free time, Sazjan enjoys traveling and exploring new cultures.