Submit your site to search engines

Search engines have to find your sitemap before they can index your content. This page walks the search engines group of the SEO checklist: sitemap settings, the robots.txt entry, cron, and the Google and Microsoft accounts that give you insight into how your site performs in search.

Goal

Your XML sitemap configured and discoverable by Google and Bing, and the accounts created that you need for Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools, and analytics.

Prerequisites

• The SEO checklist opened and saved once; see Work through the SEO checklist.
• What an XML sitemap is; see SEO essentials.

Steps

Open the checklist at Configuration → Search and metadata → SEO Checklist/admin/config/search/seo-checklist and work down the search engines group.

Review sitemap permissions

Drupal CMS installs the Simple XML Sitemap module with the SEO Tools add-on, so this item is already complete. The module creates an XML sitemap, a structured list of URLs that lets search engines readily crawl and index your site’s content.

Use the item’s Configure permissions link to ensure the appropriate user roles can perform tasks related to the sitemap.

Configure the sitemap

1. Use the item’s Configure link, or go to Configuration → Search and metadata → Simple XML Sitemap → Settings/admin/config/search/simplesitemap/settings, to review the sitemap’s settings.
2. Use the Inclusion tab/admin/config/search/simplesitemap/entities to choose which entity types appear in the sitemap.

Verify the sitemap line in robots.txt

The SEO Tools add-on adds your sitemap’s URL to the robots.txt file in your web root, which helps search engines locate the sitemap quickly. To confirm, open /robots.txt on your site in a browser, or web/robots.txt in your project, and verify the line Sitemap: /sitemap.xml exists.

Check the cron schedule

Cron takes care of periodic tasks like checking for system updates and refreshing the internal search index. Simple XML Sitemap regenerates the sitemap on every cron run, and by default cron runs every three hours. Verify the schedule makes sense for how often you publish new content.

Create the search engine accounts

• Google: a Google Account (Gmail or Workspace) gives you access to all Google services, including Google Tag Manager, Google Analytics, and Search Console. The Google Analytics recommended add-on asks for a Google Analytics Measurement ID or a Google Tag Manager Container ID; see Tags and analytics for how the pieces fit.
• Microsoft: a Microsoft account gives you access to Bing Webmaster Tools. You can also sign in there with a Google or Facebook account. Select Sign In, choose a method, and if you pick Microsoft without an existing account, use the provided link to create one.

Set up the Google Tag module

Two checklist items cover installing and configuring the Google Tag Manager module. In Drupal CMS, the Google Analytics recommended add-on installs the module and asks for your Google tag ID during installation, so follow Set up Google Analytics to complete both items.

• To add or change your Container ID later, go to Configuration → Web services → Google Tag/admin/config/services/google-tag.
• Use the item’s Configure permissions link to ensure only trusted roles can administer Google Tag containers.

Submit your sitemap to Google

Google can find your sitemap in several ways: Search Console, the Search Console API, or the Sitemap entry in your site’s robots.txt file. If the robots.txt entry you verified earlier exists, Google will likely find the sitemap on its own. For the other options, see Google’s sitemap submission documentation (developers.google.com).

Verify your site with Bing and submit the sitemap

Authenticating ownership of your site with Bing gives you access to Bing Webmaster Tools and insight into how your site performs in Bing. Follow Bing’s guide to adding and verifying a site. As with Google, the robots.txt entry usually suffices for sitemap discovery; you can also submit the sitemap with Bing’s Sitemaps tool.

Verify

• Visit /sitemap.xml on your site: the XML sitemap loads and lists your pages.
• robots.txt contains a Sitemap: line pointing at your sitemap.
• The search engines group of the checklist shows your completed items saved with a date.

Related

• Previous in the checklist: Meta tags. Next: On-page SEO.
• Set up Google Analytics completes the Google Tag items.
• Tags and analytics explains containers and tags.