Search visibility guide

Help search engines find your website

Make your site easier for Google and Bing to discover, crawl and index with a clear sitemap and the right webmaster tools.

Follow the four steps Ask us for help

What submission means today

You do not need to submit every page by hand

Search engines can discover pages by following links, but a new site may have few links pointing to it. A sitemap gives crawlers a reliable list of the pages you want them to know about.

Submitting a sitemap is a discovery signal, not a guarantee of indexing or higher rankings. Useful content, working pages and clear internal links still matter.

A practical checklist

Submit your site in four steps

Work through these once when your site launches, then keep your sitemap current as pages change.

  1. 01

    Create your sitemap

    Use the sitemap generated by your website platform, or create an XML sitemap containing the canonical pages you want search engines to discover.

  2. 02

    Verify your website

    Add your site to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. Each service will ask you to prove that you control the domain.

  3. 03

    Submit the sitemap

    Enter the full sitemap URL—usually https://yourdomain.com.au/sitemap.xml—in both webmaster tools and check that it processes successfully.

  4. 04

    Monitor indexing

    Use the indexing reports to spot blocked pages, broken links and sitemap errors. For an important new or updated page, request a fresh crawl through the URL inspection tools.

Official tools

Start with Google and Bing

These free services show how each search engine sees your website and whether your sitemap has errors.

GGoogle

Google Search Console

Submit your sitemap, inspect individual URLs and monitor which pages Google has indexed.

Open Search Console
BMicrosoft

Bing Webmaster Tools

Submit or import your sitemap, review crawl information and use IndexNow for faster update notifications.

Open Bing Webmaster Tools

Good to know

Submission helps discovery—not ranking

A sitemap can help search engines find your pages, but it does not move a site higher in results. Keep page content useful, titles descriptive and important pages connected with clear internal links.

Need a hand?

Let us help you get found

Our team can help with your sitemap, webmaster verification and the technical foundations of your website.

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