A sitemap is a list of your site’s pages that you hand directly to search engines, so nothing important gets missed. Search engines usually find pages by following links, but a sitemap makes sure they know about everything you want indexed.
Setting up your sitemap
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Log in to your web office and open the Settings area, then find the APIs section, where the feed formats live.
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Create a Menu XML feed and save it using the Sitemap protocol format; this generates the standard XML that search engines expect.
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Choose your saved feed as the site’s default sitemap. Once set, it’s served automatically at yourdomain/sitemap.xml.
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Your default sitemap is also referenced in your site’s robots.txt file, which search engines routinely read when deciding what to index, so it will be found even if you do nothing more.
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To speed things along, submit the sitemap address to Google through Google Search Console.
Good to know
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A sitemap doesn’t change your rankings by itself; it just makes sure search engines can see everything. What does the persuading is covered in how to help people find your church online.
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Indexing isn’t instant: it can take anywhere from days to weeks for search engines to work through your site after a submission, so don’t worry if changes take a while to show.
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Pages that are members-only or unpublished aren’t for search engines anyway, so a sitemap built from your menu naturally reflects what visitors can actually see.
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