How to properly index a Shopify store?
As an online marketer or Shopify store owner, you want your Shopify store to be found by potential customers. So it can be done in many ways — Social Media, Social Ads, SEA — but here we're going to focus on the SEO aspect of this discovery in the eyes of the world.
SEO is the search engine optimization of your Shopify store. It's quite simple to understand; A user will type a specific query in the search bar, the goal is to position your site in the first Google results to attract as many visitors as possible.
There are various best practices for doing this, including using good markup, good content, good technique, and optimized site speed. But sometimes it happens that Google does not reference your site, for one reason or another, so it may be useful to call on a Shopify SEO agency to carry out an audit of the errors that may exist on your Shopify store.
But how do you make sure your Shopify store is indexed by search engines? In this blog post, we are going to explain the steps to index your Shopify store and improve your SEO starting with the creation of a Search Console if this is not done, also verifying your sitemap, verifying no-indexes and /disalow, and finally the on-page aspect which can block the indexing of your Shopify store.
SummaryCreating a Search Console
The Search Console is a free tool from Google made available to webmasters which is used to check the coverage of your website by Google, as well as its performance on Google's organic search to improve your conversion rate. ( CRO Agency )
Among the many tools that may exist on the Search Console, we can find;
- URL submission for forcing indexing (to be used sparingly, one URL per day)
- Check the latest URLs crawled by Google
- Check the latest links sent to your Shopify store
- Submit your Sitemap
- See your website's latest performance in terms of impressions, clicks, CTR
- See indexing problems detected by Google's crawler
- Manage your Discover feeds (Beta)
- Temporarily remove URLs from indexes
- And much more
How to create a Search Console?
To create your Search Console, we advise you to carry out domain validation, unlike validation via URL. This way you will be less subject to CSS changes and different bugs in your CMS.
To proceed, you must enter your .txt code in a new DNS record via either your FTP or your DNS records (simpler) via your host.
Why is my Search Console property not verified?
There are two reasons for this: Either you made a bad manipulation and therefore the DNS registration did not take place, in this case, start again by following Google's guidelines; either the property and awaiting validation, it can take up to 24 hours depending on the different hosts and hosting plans to validate your property, so don't panic, and be patient!
Can I add users to my Search Console property?
You can add users to your Search Console property by assigning them a specific role, that of Administrator, or simple reader. To do this, go to settings -> Users and Permissions. From here you can manage access to your Search Console by adding or removing users. Note that you must have owner access to perform this operation.
How do I verify that my Shopify store has a Sitemap?
To check if you have a sitemap, you can simply type:
www.yourshopifyshop.fr/sitemap.xml/
If you have a black page that displays with XML data, then you have a sitemap. If the page you encounter indicates a 404 error, it is possible that you do not have one, you will then have to create it manually in the Shopify settings, or call on a Shopify expert.
It should also be noted that there are two types of sitemaps, namely; The XML Sitemap and the HTML Sitemap. The XML sitemap serves as a map for indexing robots, while the HTML sitemap serves for navigation between pages, and indirectly, SEO, but this is not its primary purpose.
How to create an XML Sitemap on Shopify?
If unfortunately your Sitemap was not automatically generated on Shopify, you will need to hire a Shopify SEO expert, because it is impossible to generate this sitemap other than by code.
Shopify does not let us have control of this document, and therefore it is impossible to modify it simply without going through the code.
Submit your sitemap to Google
To submit your sitemap to Google, all you have to do is go to the "Sitemap" category in the left panel on your previously created Search Console. Then, you can enter the direct URL of your sitemaps (avoid at all costs 301, 302 redirects, 5xx and 4xx response codes as well as /disallow sitemaps in the robots.txt), then click on submit.
Google will then crawl your sitemap and come back to this document every one to two weeks to check for new content.
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Robots.txt, checking no-indexes and /disalows
The robots.txt is a document that your Shopify store provides to the crawler each time it goes to any URL on your website. It is in a way this small text document of a few lines which will define the rules of exploration of your website, for example, the impossibility of exploring the Admins pages with /disalow admin or specific pages of your store Shopify as /disalow "products category".
How do I edit my robots.txt on Shopify?
As we have just seen, the robots.txt contains very important directives for all search engines, so it is essential to be able to modify this file on Shopify without going through the code each time. For this, you need to hire a Shopify expert who can do it simply by creating an application that will allow you to modify your robots.txt without going through the code.
Once you've done this, you'll be able to edit your robots.txt in the "Online Store" section of your Shopify settings.
In particular, check that your /disalow do not compromise the indexing of your website.
What is a no-index tag?
A no-index tag is an HTML tag that tells search engines not to index a given page on your website. This tag is very important in Shopify SEO, because if you want a page not to appear in search results, for example, your "thank you" pages or product category pages that are not intended to be indexed, then the no-index tag can be useful to you.
How to have a good On-page SEO on Shopify?
Having good on-page SEO, in simple terms, means having well-organized pages, so that the search engine understands what your pages are about and can index them accordingly. Here are some tips for optimizing your on-page SEO:
1) Have unique and relevant titles for each page
2) Write unique and quality meta descriptions for each page
3) Use the right H1, H2 and H3 tags
4) Use quality images with ALT tags
5) Optimize the loading speed of your website
6) Use external links to quality websites
7) Use internal links to other pages on your website
8) Make sure your website is mobile friendly
9) Write quality and unique content for each page
What if these tips aren't enough? You can always contact Tamara Agency to hire a qualified Shopify agency .
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