SEO Your Blogger Blog with Google Sitemaps

I was reading the other day that blogging is having it's tenth birthday this year. I've been involved in various web technologies since the mid-90s and fondly remember building my first animated gif, updating my code in Notepad and manually uploading it using a free FTP client.

When it comes to blogging, I am a complete newbie. As a newbie, I'm obviously working out things for the first time that a less experienced web-user but more experienced blogger would have cracked some time ago. However, I searched and searched for a guide that would help me add my blog to my Google Webmaster account. Adding the URL is easy enough, but I wanted to create an xml sitemap file and submit it, as I do for other websites I build and maintain.

After finding the solution in a Google white paper, I discovered it's extremely simple...


Before we begin, please ensure

• You have submitted your blog to Google via http://www.google.com/addurl.
• You have registered for a Google Account.

Next, we need to create a new site in the Google Webmaster application

• Access your Google Account.
• Select Webmaster Tools from the main Google Account page.
• Under the dashboard title, enter the site URL and click 'Add Site'.

Next, we need to verify we are the owner of the new site

• Go to the Webmaster Tools Dashboard
  
• Alongside your new site, you will notice two links 'Add' and 'Verify' - click 'Verify'.
• On the page that follows, select 'Add a meta tag' in the drop down menu and copy the text shown in the box.

• Access Blogger in a new window and click the 'Layout' tab.
• Click 'Edit HTML' in the navigation panel.
• Paste the verification code underneath the [head] tag of your document and click 'Save'.
  

• Close the Blogger window to return to the Dashboard - click the 'Verify' button.
• Google will verify the site
  

Now we have verified our site, we need to submit our blog sitemap

• Back to the Dashboard again and click 'Add' in the sitemap column
• In the Add Sitemap box, enter 'atom.xml' and click 'Submit Sitemap'

• Repeat the process for 'rss.xml'
• Repeat the process for 'feeds/posts/default'
• Repeat the process for 'feeds/posts/default?alt=rss'

Blogger blog optimised for Google using Webmaster Tools and Sitemaps - Done!


Keywords
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