New Blog STILL Not Showing Up in Google? Here's How to Submit a Sitemap

Over a month after launching it, my new blog was STILL not showing up in Google search results. I panicked! This meant that my site had not yet been indexed, but from what I've read, that should happen within 4 weeks (usually, faster). So what the heck went wrong?

One way to resolve this issue of a site not showing up in Google is to submit a sitemap.

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Now, before you start panicking because it sounds super technical, I'm going to show you exactly how to generate and submit a Sitemap to Google WITHOUT ANY technical knowledge!

Read on!

Table of Contents

How to Generate a Sitemap Without Any Technical Experience (SO EASY)

Step 1: Install Yoast SEO.

Yoast SEO is a free WordPress plugin that helps you rank better in Google Search and has a lot of other cool features. This plugin can also create a sitemap for you, so you definitely want to install Yoast SEO before you begin the following steps.

Step 2: Get your Sitemap URL from Yoast SEO plugin.

Go to Yoast SEO > General and click the tab that says “Features.”

Scroll down until you see “XML sitemaps.” Click on the little question mark icon.

Once you click the question mark icon, it should expand. Click “See the XML sitemap.”

How to Submit a Sitemap to Google (Again, SO EASY!)

Step 3: Submit your sitemap in Google Search Console.

When you click “See the XML sitemap” link, it'll open up a new tab. Copy the URL in that tab: This is your sitemap URL!

Now, before you can submit your sitemap to Google, you MUST make sure that you have already set up Search Console in Google Analytics.

If you haven't yet, you need to set up Search Console through Google Analytics.

how to set up search console in google analytics - click button in dashboard

Got Search Console? Great! Go to your Google Search Console and click “Sitemaps” on the lefthand side. Then, paste your sitemap URL into the box and click “Submit.” See screenshot below:

Now, be patient! Eventually the “Status” should say “Success,” but it does take a little while. When I submitted my sitemap, it didn't say “Success,” so I left it alone for 24 hours. When I revisited it the next day, it said “Success”! So just wait it out.

How Long Will It Take Google to Index My Site After I Submit the Sitemap?

For me, after I followed the above steps, my new blog's homepage was indexed by Google in about 24 hours. At the time of writing (48 hours later, or so), my new blog's posts still aren't indexed, but I'm not too worried. I'll keep you updated.

How Can I Tell That My Blog Has Been Indexed by Google?

When I say “indexed by Google,” what I mean is that your blog is showing up in Google Search. The easiest way to test this is to put your blog's domain in quotation marks and do a search in Google.

Here's an example, using this blog's domain:

I put “startablogforprofit.com” in quotation marks and performed a Google search.

Google returned search results showing my blog's URLs—that means it's been indexed! Yay!

So if your new blog still isn't showing up in search results, take heart! You might just need to submit a sitemap to Google. Then, wait for a few days or a couple of weeks. By that point, your blog should start showing up, as long as you have published some content.

Hope this helped!