How to Add a Google XML Sitemap to your Blogger Blog

The XML Sitemap file is like a directory of all web pages that exist on your website or blog. Search engines like Google and Bing can use these sitemap files to discover pages on your site that the search bots may have otherwise missed during regular crawling.

The Problem with Blogger Sitemap Files

An complete sitemap file should mention all pages of a site but that’s not the case if your blog is hosted on Blogger.

The default XML sitemap file of any Blogger blog will have only the 26 most recent blog posts – see example. That’s a limitation because some of your older blog pages, that are missing in the default XML sitemap file, may never get indexed in search engines. There’s however a simple solution to fix this problem.
Generate a Complete Sitemap for your Blogger Blog

This section is valid for both regular Blogger blogs (that use a .blogspot.com address) and also the self-hosted Blogger blogs that use a custom domain (like postsecret.com).

Here’s what you need to do to expose your blog’s complete site structure to search engines with the help of an XML sitemap.

    Open the Sitemap Generator and type the full address of your blogspot blog (or your self-hosted Blogger blog).
    Click the Create Sitemap button and this tool will instantly generate the necessary text for your sitemap. Copy the entire generated text to your clipboard (see screenshot below).


 
  Next go to your Blogger dashboard and under Settings – > Search Preferences, the enable Custom robots.txt option (available in the Crawling and Indexing section). Paste the clipboard text here and save your changes.

And we are done. Search engines will automatically discover your XML sitemap files via the robots.txt file and you don’t have to ping them manually.

Blogger XML SitemapBlogger XML Sitemap

PS: If you have

switched from Blogger to WordPress, it still makes sense to submit XML sitemaps of your old Blogspot blog as that will aid search engines discover your new WordPress blog posts and pages.



Normally the  blog’s sitemap is located at

http://www.blogname/sitemap.xml

If you take a look at this URL, you can see that it lists out the URLs of all posts on BP along with their last modified timestamp. This information will help the crawlers in easily identifying any new entries on your blog.

Managing Sitemaps on Google WebMaster Tools

Google can easily find out your sitemap URL by reading your robots.txt file, but in case you want to explicitly specify the Sitemap URL and see the crawl/indexing statistics, you can update the new Sitemap URL in Webmaster tools. To add the new Blogger Sitemap, login at the below URL using your Google account.

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/

If your blog was already added to webmaster tools, then it will be listed on Webmaster tools, if not add it using the “ADD A SITE” button. Once your blog is listed on WebMaster tools, click on the site name so that it takes you to the Site Dashboard.

Now navigate to Crawl > Sitemaps on the left side menu. Now click on the “ADD/TEST SITEMAP” button,give sitemap.xml in the text box and click “Submit Sitemap”



Once it’s submitted, you can see the results on the same page. If you had previously added blogger’s RSS/ATOM feed as the sitemap using old methods, you can delete them(or you can keep them, it doesn’t make a difference).


Blogger Sitemap – FAQ

Question #1 – Is this feature available for custom domain blogs or blogspot blogs or both?

The Blogger XML sitemap is available on all blogger blogs including custom domain blogs or normal blogspot blogs. you just need to append /sitemap.xml to your blog’s home page URL to see the sitemap.


Question #2 – Can I add this blogger XML sitemap to Google Webmaster tools?

Yes you can add it to webmaster tools as described in the tutorial



Question #3 – Should I add blogger’s ATOM/RSS feed as blogger sitemap?

No you no longer need to do that. Blogger RSS/ATOM feeds will have a maximum of 500 posts. If you use the ATOM/RSS feed method, you will have to add new feeds everytime you make another 500 posts on your blog. Instead you can just add sitemap.xml as the only sitemap for your blog. Blogger will automatically add new posts to this sitemap and convert itself into a sitemap map in case there are more posts. So you can just add sitemap.xml and let Google/Blogger do the rest.


Question #4  - Should I then remove the old RSS/ATOM sitemaps from Webmaster tools?

Yes you can remove the old feed based sitemaps, but it’s not mandatory.


Taken  from

http://www.labnol.org/internet/submit-blogger-sitemap-to-google/10149/

http://www.bloggerplugins.org/2014/12/xml-sitemap-for-blogger.html