Hi! I’m really excited today because our blog is finally going live, and hopefully yours is too! In the last tutorial we taught you how to create an XML Sitemap for you blog. This sitemap is going to help search engines find your blog. Now, you have to let them know you exist and that you want them to crawl your website!
I am going to show you how to launch a blog by submitting your sitemap to Google and Bing.For this tutorial, you will need the URL to your sitemap.
If you used the XML Sitemap plugin, your URL will be http://yourblog.com/sitemap.xml
If you used the Yoast WordPress SEO plugin, your URL will most likely be http://yourblog.com/sitemap_index.xml
Check your plugin details for the correct URL.
Submit your sitemap to Google
You should already have a Google account for you blog after setting up Google Analytics so all you need to do now is sign in to http://www.google.com/webmasters/.
On the welcome page, type your website URL into the box and click Add a Site.
Verify Ownership
Next, Google wants to make sure you own the blog you will be submitting, to do so download the HTML file provided by Google. Do NOT change the name of the file.
Leave this tab open and then log in to your cpanel at yourblog.com/cpanel
Navigate to your file manager and select document root for yourblog.com
Upload the document to the public_html file.
Once the upload is complete leave your cPanel and go back to the Google webmaster tab. Click the URL link in step number 3. If you get a response from Google saying it was not successful, did you place it in the wrong file? Did you change the name? Double check those two things and try again.
Submit sitemap
On the dashboard for Google Webmaster Tools, click the Sitemaps tab.
Once it opens up, click Add/Test Sitemap and add your sitemap URL and then click Submit Sitemap.
Submit your sitemap to Bing/Yahoo
This process is almost identical to the process above, but for Bing, and it has a few less steps.
Go to http://www.bing.com/toolbox/webmaster and sign in. If you don’t have an account, create one and then sign.
Next, type your domain name and then click Add Site
Fill out your personal information, the URL of your website and the URL to your XML Sitemap.
Verify you own the blog.
You will then be asked to verify that you own the blog. I will walk you through the steps for verifying using option 1, the XML file
First, download the file to your computer. Then, log in to your cpanel at yourblog.com/cpanel (make sure to leave the bing webmaster tab open).
Navigate to the file manager and select document root for yourblog.com
Verify that you are in the pubic_html file of your blog and click Upload. Upload your saved file.
(If you need pictures for the cpanel steps, refer to the process of verifying with Google above)
Once the upload is complete, go back to the Bing webmaster tab and visit the link next to Confirm successful upload.
That’s it. Your submission to Bing is now complete. Once you have verified you own the blog, Bing crawls the sitemap located on your blog.
Hopefully you’ll start getting traffic from search engines soon. Don’t be too upset if you don’t though, it can take a while. Now that your blog is set up and ready to go, tell all your friends and family about it!
What do you like best about your new blog? Did you complete all of our 19 suggestions for starting a blog? If not, which ones did you implement on your blog? How long did you work on your blog before you went public with it? (Don’t ask me how long it took us for this blog, it’s embarrassing.)
Thanks a lot. Information you have been shared is really helpful for my site.
Thanks again
Kristie Thank you for the checklist, it has been very helpful. I was able to submit my blog to google, but I am having so much trouble with bing. I cannot find my cpanel in Godaddy or wordpress. I believe connecting it to bing may be slightly different now since its been about 5 years since the article was first published. I think that may be the case because connecting to google was a few steps different. Do you have any suggestions?
Hello Kristie,
Your entire tutorial has been awesome! I am having trouble with connecting my website to google — and any other site for that matter including Pinterest. It’s not verifying my website. Do you have any advice on a forum I could get help from?
Thanks,
Kayla
I’m so glad the start a blog series has helped you out! You might have to verify and connect Pinterest and Google after your coming soon page is removed. Sometimes they aren’t able to access all the information they need with the coming soon page. It will be okay to do this after you launch. I’m excited for your new blog!
Hi Kristie! If I already added my google meta between the head and body, where do I add the bing meta?
Thanks!
Lauren
Same place Lauren! Just put paste it in right after the google meta.
Is is possible to do this before the site is live/ just in the building phase? Or does it need to be public (with or without a coming soon page) for it to work?
You can do it before launching, as long as you have everything set up for Google to read. They just won’t be able to crawl your content until it goes live.
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Hello, I am on this last step and I can’t seem to figure it out, I can’t find the document root, I’m using bluehost. I have a file manager, and I tried uploading there but it wouldn’t work for me.
Oh no. I’m sorry you’ve been having troubles with this step. It’s been a few days since you’ve left this comment, were you able to sort it out?
It says I have an error. My site map can’t be found. I have the yoast SEO site map… Do you have any tips?
Hi there. Sorry I’m just seeing this, were you able to sort it out?
Hi!
When I log into my cpanel and go to the file manager there is no document root for me to download….. what do I do? I have Yoast SEO as my plugin.
What options do you have for your file manager?
Thank you so much! These steps have been very helpful and easy to follow!
Thank you!!! As a new blogger this has been so incredibly helpful!!!!
Glad you found it helpful Bridget! Hopefully you’ll start seeing some search traffic soon!