library_books Documentation

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Submit your Sitemap

Once your sitemap is created you would want to let search engines know where it is.

This should be done only one time, after that PRO Sitemaps will notify search engines about every sitemap update automatically (unless you will disable "Ping search engines" option in your configuration).

Automatic Submission
Submit Sitemap

All necessary steps can be done in an automated way using the "Auto Submit" feature that we provide (currently available for Google only). You will need to link your google search account and PRO Sitemaps will guide you through all steps and will perform submission for you.


Manual Submission

On the "Submit Sitemap" page you will find detailed (and simple) instructions on how to submit sitemap manually to major search engines. Generally, the process consists of a few steps:

  1. Open Google Search Console page in browser
  2. Add an entry for your website and verify it (if you have not done so before)
  3. Now create an entry for domain that hosts your sitemap:
    • enter "https://aX.sitemaphosting.com" domain as "Site URL"
    • on "Verify ownership" page you will select either "Upload an HTML file to your site" or "Place an XML file on your web server" option, you would need to copy those details in your PRO Sitemaps account to confirm to search engines that you own that specific subdomain on sitemaphosting domain
    • click "Verify" button in webmaster account
  4. add sitemap record in that newly added sitemaphosting domain entry (you will find exact sitemap filename shown on "Submit Sitemap" page in your account)

And done! Sitemap has been submitted.


Host on your domain

We recommend to submit sitemaps directly from our servers (sitemaphosting domain).
If you prefer to submit sitemaps from your own domain, there are other options:

  • The simplest option might be to download sitemap files from View Sitemap page and upload to your website.
    However, in this case sitemaps on your domain will NOT be automatically updated when a new sitemap is created in your Pro Sitemaps account. Essentially, you would need to re-download and update sitemap files each time manually, which is inconvenient.
  • You can use the API that we provide to get notifications when sitemap is created on our side and update sitemaps on your domain accordingly.
    This option requires some programming skills and is suitable for website developers.
  • If your server supports PHP language, we have a read-to-use script that you can install on your website. You can find it in the "Host on your domain" tab on "Submit Sitemap" page and upload it to your website. That script will retrieve the latest sitemap using the API from our servers and display it as if it's been located on your website.
  • If you own website on the Wordpress platform, you can use our PRO Sitemaps Wordpress Plugin - it will turn an XML Sitemap created by PRO Sitemaps into a self-hosted sitemap. Additionally, it can optionally initiate sitemap update each time a new post is created on your website.
Sitemap reference in robots.txt

In order to notify search engines of your sitemap location it is also recommended to put this line in your robots.txt file:

sitemap: https://aXX.sitemaphosting.com/XX/sitemap.xml