How many times have you seen this happen to you?
A map shows you how to navigate through the forest in an open-world game. You realize that the map was written in a mysterious elven language, and that you should have paid 50 doubles to Haldir the Elf to join you on your quest.
Never? Congratulations! You live a better life than me.
Before you dismiss this analogy, don’t forget to put your feet in my dwarven mithril boots.
The key to making it big is having the right tools written in the right manner. The Shopify sitemap is the best tool in the real world of ecommerce. Google can decipher its language.
Let’s look at what a Shopify websitemap is, and how to submit one for your customers to find your treasure in the Google search results.
Jump to our video tutorial below about how to verify your online store. Create a Search Console account and find your sitemap. Submit it in just three easy steps
What is a Shopify sitemap?
The Shopify sitemap is a tool that allows Google to gather information regarding your Shopify store. It is a small piece of code that covers each page of your Shopify store. This allows Google’s autobots (or’spiders) to crawl through your entire store and determine what each page does.
Shopify generates an XML sitemap for you. It’s completely controlled by Shopify and cannot be edited on your end. However, it can be manually submitted to Google to help it rank your store faster and more accurately.
Simply put, a Shopify store that has a clean and error-free sitemap will be able to enjoy higher ranking on Google.
What is the importance of Submitting a Shopify Websitemap?
What are the benefits of submitting your Shopify store’s sitemap file to Google?
We have already discussed how submitting a Shopify Sitemap is a great marketing idea to jumpstart growth. But how does it benefit our stores or our sales?
Better SEO
Google’s crawling spiders can help you if you give them what they want. Credit: Image credit
Although no one can be certain how beneficial having a sitemap for your shop is to your SEO, it is safe to say (and the sources say) that it does.
Google values clarity and your Shopify sitemap can be a clear progression of data. Although it won’t take your store to the top of search engine results pages, you can expect to rise in a few places by linking your Shopify sitemap with Google.
To speed up the ranking of newly updated pages
Your store will be updated constantly . You’ll add new products, modify existing ones, and redesign entire pages. Google takes some time to index your new content, but a sitemap can give it a big head start.
Google is notoriously secretive about how long it takes for a page to be indexed. However, predictions range from 4 days up to 6 months. However, if you’ve submitted a Shopify sitemap,
You can dig deeper into your child sitemaps, but you don’t really need to, if all you are doing is looking for how to submit your Shopify sitemaps to Google. Shopify’s developers already did all the work for your store’s websitemap. All you have to do now is get it linked to the engine.
Step 2: Verify your Shopify Store
Once you have found the location of your Shopify sitemap, you can register your shop with Google Search console. This is where you can add domains to your store for indexing by Google.
You’ll see two options right away after you arrive at Google Search Console.
Here is where things get more complicated. But, stay with us:Domain– Registering your entire store’s domain means Google will track data from all URLs of your website. All subdomains (m. // etc.) // etc.URL Prefix: Registering a prefix to your URL means that Google will track data only on . You will not be able to track different protocols or subdomains. This means that you cannot track your blog independently from your website’s rest.
To ensure that all your pages are indexed by Google, you will usually choose domain. It’s possible, however, that you only want Google to index a part of your site or a few parts. In this case, you can opt for the URL prefix.
This example will show you how to verify Shopify’s entire store using the doman option.
Next, I will enter the URL of my store without any subdomains and protocols into the domain box. Here is my homexcellent.com shop. After I have entered it and clicked continue, this pop-up appears:
This is the 2-step process that I must complete in order to verify my store.
First, I will sign in to my domain provider. Although I am using godaddy.com to host my store, you can rest assured that many domain registrars use the exact same system and DNS settings as the one I will show you.
On godaddy.com I will click on my account settings then head to my products’.
Scrolling down I’ll see All products and services under the which I can locate my domains. To manage the settings, I will click on the DNS to locate the store domain I want.
This will take me to the Records of my store. These records are arranged alphabetically according to type. The type I’m looking for is TXT. It’s located at the bottom.
After I find it, I can choose it and delete it.
To add a new record, click on Add. Fill out the specifications as follows:
- Select ‘Type’ TXT
- Type @ into ‘Host’ box
- Copy the TXT Record from the Google Search Console pop-up and paste it into the TXT Value’ field
Next, go back to Google Search Console. Click ‘Verify’ on the pop-up box.
A message should appear confirming your ownership of the store and an’Go To Property’button inviting you to visit your Google Search Console dashboard.
Step 3: Submit your Shopify Sitemap (.pdf) to Google
After you have verified ownership of your shop, it is easy to link your Shopify sitemap with Google.
Go to your Google Search Console dashboard, and click Sitemaps in the navigation menu. Paste the URL of your sitemap into the box label and click on ‘Add sitemap’. After you have completed these steps and if you followed our instructions, you will receive a success message. Your Shopify sitemap has been submitted.
You can view the sitemaps you submitted to Google Search Console, as well as their status.
That’s it! You’ve submitted your Shopify sitemap successfully to Google. Now you’ll have faster indexing and better visibility of your store (just make sure you don’t alter your TXT settings!)
This may seem like a lot of work to many merchants. You can hire Shopify experts from the Shopify Experts platform.
You can also use the trusted Shopify SEO app which will help you create, maintain, and optimize your SEO XML sitemap.
