Lorene Melone
How To Build a Sitemap for Your Blogger.com Blog
Creating and submitting a sitemap is kinda crucial for making sure search engines actually find and crawl your blog. If you’re not doing this, your content might stay hidden or slowly get indexed, which is annoying. This isn’t super complicated but can be confusing if you’re new to it. Here’s what worked in a couple of setups, but no guarantees it’ll be perfect every time.
Step 1 / Log into Your Bloggers.com Account
Start by heading over to Blogger.com. Sign in with your credentials — obviously. This gets you into your dashboard where all the magic happens.
Step 2 / Access Your Blog Settings
Once inside, you’ll see your dashboard. Click on Settings from that left sidebar. This is the hub for all the blog configs. Sometimes it takes a sec to load — don’t get frustrated. You’re looking for some basic options here.
Step 3 / Find the Crawlers and Indexing Section
Scroll down till you see a section called Crawlers and indexing. It’s not super obvious in some templates. If you see it, great. If not, it might be under advanced settings or similar. Essentially, it’s where Google and other search engines are told how to see your blog.
Step 4 / Disable the Robots.txt File (if needed)
In some cases, you’ll see an option for Custom robots.txt. Make sure this is turned OFF or is disabled. Because, honestly, enabling custom robots.txt can complicate sitemap generation and make search engines ignore your site or parts of it. Not sure why it works, but on some setups, enabling this prevents your sitemap from being read properly. So, toggle it off if it’s on.
To double-check, click or toggle the switch next to Custom robots.txt to disable it. It’s a simple yes/no or toggle button in most cases.
Step 5 / Generate Your Sitemap
This part’s kinda weird. In Blogger, their sitemap is actually located at your blog URL plus /feeds/posts/default?alt=rss, but for Google, the real sitemap URL is often just the root or the robots.txt. Because Blogger doesn’t generate a sitemap.xml explicitly in the folder like WordPress. So, here’s a workaround: go to your blog URL, then append /robots.txt. For example:
https://yourblogname.blogspot.com/robots.txt
Hit Enter. You’ll see some lines of text with references to your sitemap (or just automatically generated info).
Alternatively, if you want a proper sitemap.xml, you can try this URL:
https://yourblogname.blogspot.com/sitemap.xml (sometimes it works, sometimes not). If not, the robots.txt method usually gives you a good starting point.
Step 6 / Copy Your Sitemap URL
Once the page loads, copy the URL from the address bar. That’s your sitemap URL. Because of course, Blogger doesn’t always give you a traditional sitemap.xml, but the robots.txt file often points search engines to other relevant XML sitemaps or feeds. If you see a link or a mention of a sitemap there, copy that instead.
Step 7 / Submit to Google Search Console
Next, go to Google Search Console. Sign in, and if your blog isn’t added, verify ownership. That part can be a headache, but it’s pretty straightforward once you get the hang of it.
- Select your site from the property list.
- Click on Sitemaps in the left menu.
- Paste your sitemap URL (like the one in step 6) into the Add a new sitemap field.
- Hit Submit.
Sometimes, it takes a little while to show Indexed or errors, but that’s normal. On some setups, it failed once or twice, then started working after a quick refresh or a re-submit. Weird, but part of the process.
Extra Tips & Common Issues
If the sitemap isn’t accepted, double-check the link you pasted. Sometimes Blogger’s XML isn’t perfect, or Google’s just having a bad day. If you’re really stuck, adding your feed URL directly in Google Search Console as a sitemap XML often helps. Also, keep an eye on your sitemap status in GSC to catch errors early, and don’t forget to update your sitemap if you add a lot of new content — making sure Google knows about the changes.
Conclusion
Honestly, creating and submitting a sitemap for Blogger isn’t as straightforward as WordPress, but it’s doable. Just keep in mind Blogger’s quirks — like it doesn’t generate a standard sitemap.xml — so sometimes you have to work a little differently. Once that’s done, your blog’s chances of getting indexed faster and better improve a lot. Or so it seems, anyway.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a sitemap?
A sitemap is basically a roadmap for search engines. It tells them what pages, posts, or other stuff you want indexed. Helps search engines read your site structure better.
Why submit a sitemap?
Because without it, search engines might miss some important pages, and indexing can take longer. Submitting a sitemap speeds up that process and makes sure everything relevant gets crawled.
How often should I update it?
Whenever you add or delete a big chunk of content. Some folks refresh it monthly or after major updates. Keeping Google in the loop helps your pages rank better faster.
- Use robots.txt trick to get your sitemap URL.
- Make sure custom robots.txt is off if possible.
- Add your sitemap URL to Google Search Console and submit.
- Monitor Google Search Console for indexing errors or updates.
Summary
Hopefully this shaves off a few hours for someone. Blogger’s quirks are weird, but with the right steps, you make it work.