Ghost
How to get your Ghost blog indexed by Google
Ghost ships clean SEO defaults and a sitemap — the work is getting new posts crawled the day you publish.
https://yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml
Ghost is built for publishing, so its SEO defaults are strong: an auto-generated sitemap at /sitemap.xml, sensible structured data, per-post meta and canonical fields, and a clean robots.txt out of the box. For a Ghost blog the real lever is speed — getting each new post crawled the day it goes live.
Where your sitemap lives
At yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml, a sitemap index that links to /sitemap-posts.xml, /sitemap-pages.xml, /sitemap-authors.xml and /sitemap-tags.xml. Ghost keeps it current automatically. Submit the top-level /sitemap.xml in Google Search Console.
Ghost-specific gotchas
- Each post's settings panel has Meta data, X/Facebook cards, and a Canonical URL field — set the canonical only when you're deliberately pointing at another URL (e.g. cross-posted content), otherwise leave it to default to self.
- Draft and scheduled posts aren't in the sitemap until published — expected.
- Author and tag pages are included; if you don't want thin tag/author archives indexed, manage that at the theme level.
- If you're on a subdirectory or subdomain setup behind a reverse proxy, make sure the public URL in Ghost config matches what you want indexed so canonicals are correct.
Step by step
- Confirm your public URL is set correctly in Ghost config so canonicals and the sitemap use the right domain.
- Verify the domain in Google Search Console and submit https://yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml.
- Publish your post (it enters the sitemap immediately).
- Push the new post's URL through the Indexing API so Google crawls it the same day instead of waiting for the next scheduled crawl.
Point IndexerNow at your sitemap, then push new and updated URLs through Google's Indexing API and IndexNow on your own account and quota — no plugin, no code.
Connect your Search Console and indexFrequently asked
Where is the Ghost sitemap?
At yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml — a sitemap index linking to sub-sitemaps for posts, pages, authors, and tags. Ghost generates and updates it automatically.
How do I get a new Ghost post indexed fast?
Publish it (so it enters the sitemap), make sure its canonical is self-referencing, then push the URL through the Indexing API. That turns a multi-day wait into a same-day crawl.
Does Ghost need an SEO plugin?
No. Ghost has SEO essentials built in — sitemap, structured data, meta and canonical fields per post. There's no plugin system for it, and you don't need one for solid indexing.