Why Videos Help eCommerce
Wondering why videos help eCommerce? This blog post is going to breakdown exactly why video is such a useful tool for eCommerce. Firstly showing some statistics to backup it’s effect.…
Now that you have set up all your keywords and meta descriptions on your website pages, the next thing to look at is getting Google to index your website so it can be found on the search engines.
In order to do this, you need to create something called an XML sitemap (it’s not as scary as it sounds, honest!) which is a document that links every page on your website and which Google can read.
It is quite complicated to create your own XML Sitemap from scratch but there is a great website that can do this for you and for FREE! The website is called XML Sitemaps and here is the link https://www.xml-sitemaps.com/
Once you are on the XML Sitemaps website, you will see a box that asks you to enter your website address and a couple of other details. Here is a screenshot of what I would type if it was for Littlebigbox, I have included notes on what you need to do for your website details.
Once you have finished following the steps above, click on the START button! It will then start to grab all the URL’s from your website and place into a format that Google can read.
When the process is finish, click to download the UNCOMPRESSED version of the Sitemap, as shown below.
Now that you have downloaded you UNCOMPRESSED XML Sitemap, the next step it to upload this file to your website. Now, it really depends on what website software you are using and if you have access to the FTP of your website.
If you are using Content Management Software such as WordPress or Joomla, you should be able to upload your sitemap through your uploader section in the admin of your website.
However, if you have a static website and have to upload files through an FTP such as FileZilla, then you need to open your website files via your FTP software, once that has loaded just drag and drop the SITEMAP XML file into your website files, make sure it doesn’t go into a folder!
If you are unsure on how to upload your SITEMAP to your website please ask your website designer as they should be able to do it for you 🙂
Now that you have uploaded your sitemap to your website, the next step is add your sitemap to Google Webmasters. If you don’t have a Google Webmasters set up, I highly recommend it as it’s a great way to index your website with Google and keep track of how well your website is ranking and what search terms users are using. Here is a link if you need to set up an account (you can login with your Google account details if you have a Google account) https://www.google.com/webmasters/
All logged in and set up on your Google Webmasters? Great! Next we need to upload your sitemap.
When you login to your Google Webmasters you should see something similar to this:
As you can see from the screenshot above I have an arrow pointing at the CRAWL tab, this is what you need to click on and when you do a drop down menu will appear and you will need to click on the link called SITEMAPS.
Once you have clicked on sitemaps, a new page will appear and this is where you will be adding your sitemap! As you can see from the screenshot below, there is an Orange button that says ADD/TEST SITEMAP, click on this button. A pop up tab will appear and it shows you your website address but gives you a text field to add the route of your sitemap file. For example I placed my sitemap just inside my website files so my URL is littlebigbox.co.uk/sitemap.xml, however if you placed yours within a folder it would be www.example.com/folder/sitemap.xml and so on.
Once you have added the route to your sitemap, click on the blue SUBMIT SITEMAP button.
Success! Your XML Sitemap is now being indexed and all your pages will then be indexed to Google. It can take up to 24 hours for the sitemap to submit fully but once it’s finished it will then start indexing your URLS to Google. How exciting! 🙂
Please Note! If you add any new pages, blog posts or altered your page URL’s, resubmit your XML Sitemap to Google Webmasters, but before you do that you must follow the steps above with downloading a new XML Sitemap from the XML Sitemap website (link can be found in the article).
We hope you found this guide helpful and have some new found knowledge of SEO! However if you feel you require further help, we now run a 1 to 1 SEO Training Workshop.
© Littlebigbox Limited is a company registered in England (Company No. 13663893) Romsey, SO51 6BY. (VAT No. GB448056874). All Rights Reserved · Privacy Policy