Indexing
Overview
Understand the process and significance of ensuring that your guides are indexed when published on a custom domain. This ensures they are easily discoverable by search engines, impacting their visibility and accessibility.
Publish Guides on Custom Domains
Submit Sitemap
Ensuring your sitemap is accessible is crucial for search engines to index your docs properly. This section will guide you through checking the sitemap's accessibility and submitting it to search engines.
Locate your sitemap at /sitemap.xml. If you need to submit your sitemap to search engines like Google, follow these steps:
Open your preferred search engine's webmaster tools.
Navigate to the sitemap submission section.
Enter the URL of your sitemap (
https://yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml).Submit the sitemap for crawling.
After submitting, verify the submission status in the webmaster tools to ensure your sitemap is being crawled and indexed properly.
Adjust Robots.txt Settings
In the DocsHound interface, navigate to the publish settings. Open the Basic Meta tab, where you will find a Block robots toggle. Ensure that this toggle is disabled if you want your content to be indexed.
After disabling the Block robots toggle, verify that your robots.txt file does not prevent indexing. Submit your sitemap to search engines using the /sitemap.xml path to facilitate content discovery.
Check Robots.txt Settings
Make sure your robots.txt settings are correct to ensure your site is indexed properly by search engines. Incorrect settings can prevent search engines from crawling and indexing your content, leading to low visibility online.