An XML sitemap tells search engines which pages exist and when they changed. Cleitext writes it by itself, at /sitemap.xml, and keeps it up to date at every change.
What the XML sitemap contains
- An index with the date of the latest change of each sitemap
- One sitemap per content type and language, split every 1000 addresses
- The images of each page and its versions in other languages
- No 404 page, no private or hidden pages, no empty archives
Verify the site with DNS
In Google Search Console add a Domain property: write only the domain, for example cleitext.com. Google gives you a TXT record: add it to the DNS of the domain (on Cloudflare: DNS → Records → Add record, type TXT, name @). It covers every subdomain and protocol, and there is no tag to paste in the site.
The SEO page of the admin checks it for you: as soon as the record is visible, it shows “Verified with a DNS record”.
Submit the XML sitemap
In the new property open Sitemaps, write sitemap.xml and choose Submit. Then let Bing Webmaster Tools import the site from Search Console in one click.
Check it in the browser
Open /sitemap.xml on your site: instead of raw code you see a readable table, with the sitemaps, the number of addresses and the date of each change. Old addresses of WordPress and Yoast, such as /sitemap_index.xml, lead to the new one, so moving a site to Cleitext does not break what search engines already know. The sitemaps say “noindex” to search engines, so they never show up in the results themselves.
After submitting, give Google a few days. The Pages report of Search Console then tells you which addresses are indexed and why some are not. Most of the time the reason is simple, such as a page set to noindex on purpose, and you can leave it as it is.
Next step: write texts that rank, with the SEO analysis in the editor.
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