Google Search Console is a free service offered by Google that helps you monitor and maintain your site's presence in Google Search results.
If you have recently added a bunch of new content to your website, Google Search Console will allow you to manually request a reindex of your sitemap.
Please note: The Force platform has modern technology built in that will automatically create your sitemap, as well as submit it to the major search engines through the Robots.txt file. If you're only looking to upload the sitemap, you can skip the steps below. If you want to configure a Google Search Console account anyways, follow the steps below.
How to do it?
First you'd need to create a Search Console account and verify that you are a website owner. To create an account please follow this link and follow the instructions: https://search.google.com/search-console?utm_source=about-page
Google will allow you to verify the sites in a couple of different ways:
1. If you have an existing Google Analytics property tag in place, it can be used to verify
2. You can request a Meta Tag verification, that can be provided to our Support team to add to the site
3. More complicated but more comprehensive, you can have the verification take place on the Domain itself through your hosting provider.
Please note that the below instructions are only applicable for live domains (www.example.com). If your website is under production or onboarding, please check back when your website is live.
The easist way to access your sitemap is to navigate to your websites homepage, then add /sitemap.xml to the URL. Example: www.*YOURSITE*.com/sitemap.xml
Alternativly you can visit your site map by:
- Clicking the Dropdown arrow icon in the top right of the dashboard
- Select Site Settings
- Select Sitemap
- Click the XML Sitemap link
If you'd like to manually add the sitemap into Google:
Open the Google Search Console Dashboard
Under the Index Dropdown, select Sitemaps
Your Website URL should already be present, type sitemap.xml into the field and hit submit
The sitemap should now appear below