A site map is a file you can create that provides web crawlers, like Googlebot, with a list of the web pages on your site. It's not mandatory to create a site map for your Help Center, but a site map provides information about the organization of your site content, which helps Google and other search engines to more intelligently crawl your site.
This article covers the following topics:
Creating a sitemap
The sitemap you generate must follow Google's sitemap guidelines. The standard way to build a sitemap is to create an XML file, with the help of a sitemap generator. The sitemap generator crawls and indexes the pages on your website. An example sitemap generator is xml-sitemaps.com, but you can find a list of more options here.
- Enter the URL of your Help Center in your sitemap generator and click Start.
- When your sitemap is generated, save the sitemap XML file locally.
Saving your sitemap in Help Center
Next you'll need to save the sitemap XML file in your Help Center so that it can be used by Google and other search engines.
- Create a new public article in your Help Center.
- Click Add File to attach the sitemap XML file to the article and Publish. Note: Don't use the drag-and-drop method to attach the XML file, because you might experience problems with the upload process.
You might want to move the article to an area in your Help Center where users are unlikely to see it, for example, the final article in a low-traffic section. Alternatively, you can move the article to Draft after you have copied and saved the URL (in step 4). Your customers won't see the article in the Help Center, but the URL can still be reached.
- Right-click your attached sitemap XML file and open it in a new window so that you can capture the location of the file.
- Copy and save the URL of the attached sitemap XML file. This URL might look something like en-us/article_attachments/900802345/sitemap.xml.
You'll need to share this URL with Google in the next steps.
Submitting your sitemap to Google Search Console
To submit sitemaps to Google, you'll perform a one-time verification of your website so that Google knows that you're the owner. Instructions are on the Google website.
To upload your sitemap
- In Google Search Console, open the Sitemaps report and select your website.
- In the left side bar, click Sitemaps.
- Under Add a new sitemap, enter the URL of the sitemap XML file you saved in Help Center.
Your link should look like this example:
https://support.yourdomain.com/hc/en-us/article_attachments/900802345/sitemap.xml - Click Submit.
Your sitemap setup is complete.
Scheduling weekly sitemap updates
Plan to create a new sitemap every week, or every time that you publish new content in your Help Center. If you regularly update your sitemap, Google and other search indexes will always be up-to-date.
16 Comments
Thank you for adding this. I wish that this would become a feature Zendesk could incorporate. Manually updating a new sitemap is time consuming...
I agree on that. Please make sitemap for searchengines part of the package
Thanks for the article, but...
Honestly, these steps are a "hack." There should be a sitemap in the root of our site that already exists for us to submit.
Does the article *have* to be public to work? We really don't need our customers seeing it.
@Dan No you can move it to Draft once you have the full URL for the file. You won't see the article in the Help Centre anymore, but the URL can still be reached.
Good tip!
But this isn't a true sitemap. Zendesk organizes all Articles under "/articles" and all Categories under "/categories".
How to I get a true sitemap of where the articles are actually places?
What's the best practice when you have your help center in multiple language, and the article are not the same ?
Do you upload one sitemap for each /hc/language ? And then add those sitemap to your main sitemap on you website ?
Hi Quentin!
Thanks for bringing this up! It will probably help many of our users. And, you are absolutely right. The best way is to create the separate site maps based on the URL's, just as you suspected.
For those on Guide Lite, you have to use the Google Analytics method to verify your URL prefix in Google Search Console. This is because Guide Lite does not allow meta tag insertion, etc.
This part of the article is wrong for Lite users: "An easy way to do it is the HTML tag option. You'll be given a meta tag. Paste the tag into the Document Head template of your Help Center, publish it, and then click Verify in Google."
This article feels both outdated and inaccurate. I am following the instructions exactly and getting a General HTTP error on the sitemap. Also, Google Webmaster Tools is now Google Search Console.
Thanks for letting us know, Carolyn. We'll flag this for review and potential correction or removal.
I read in this article comments that the article could be "unpublished" and the sitemap URL would still be accessible, but it does not work. How should we do it? I don't want to have a visible "sitemap" article just for this.
Thank you.
Hi Romain,
If you click the Preview button on the article, copy the URL up to and including the article ID. This gives you the article URL.
Example Preview URL: https://yourdomain.com/hc/en-us/articles/360052981333/preview/eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJpZCI6MzYwMDUyOTgxMzMzLCJleHAiOjE1OTc2ODg4Mjd9.rj9rqickQvlC3Ukhx0kGMQDqZECtX6AfRF5iO8GyKNA
What you should copy: https://yourdomain.com/hc/en-us/articles/360052981333
Hope that helps.
Thanks,
Maggie
Hey Maggie Ungerboeck,
I'm sorry but this does not work. If the article is not published, the attachment is not accessible...
Romain
Sorry Romain that it didn't work. I didn't realize you were looking for the attachment URL - I don't have a suggestion for that.
Thanks,
Maggie
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