Shopify sitemap is one of the features which affect the Shopify site’s SEO. Then creating and submitting the Shopify sitemap to Google Search Console plays a crucial role. Because it helps your site indexed and ranked appropriately. Besides, a site map is also beneficial for Google to find out the content. With such a large advantage, we decide to share this topic today: How to find, create and submit a Shopify sitemap to Google Search Console.
A brief of Shopify Sitemap
What is a Shopify Sitemap?
Search engines utilize an XML file which is relative to a Shopify sitemap to find the URLs on your website. Links to your product, category, blog, and marketing pages are automatically available by the Shopify sitemap. There is no way to manually modify the Shopify sitemap.xml.
Where can I find my Shopify Sitemap?
By basically adding the words “/sitemap.xml” to the end of your root domain, you can locate your sitemap.xml. An illustration of how to retrieve the sitemap for the domain “example.com” is shown below.
https://example.com/sitemap.xml
What’s in the Sitemap?
Sitemap Index File
You can view the sitemap index file for your Shopify site once you’ve arrived here. A parent sitemap called sitemap.xml index provides links to all the sitemaps on your website. These are known as child sitemaps, and they are often organized by page type.
Shopify typically generates four child sitemaps for the following categories of pages:
- Product Pages (sitemap_products_1.xml)
- Collection Pages (sitemap_collections_1.xml)
- Blog Posts (sitemap_blogs_1.xml)
- Pages (sitemap_pages_1.xml)
This aids in arranging your sitemap.xml’s pages into sensible categories. If you have a lot of products on your website, Shopify might build additional child sitemaps in the index file. When the primary child sitemap reaches more than 5,000 URLs*, these other child sitemaps will automatically generate:
*After receiving confirmation from Jackson Lo, Shopify’s International Growth SEO Lead, this was changed from 10,000 to 5,000. Sitemap.xml files are limited to 50,000 URLs. Shopify uses these additional child sitemaps to keep within that limit.
Child Sitemap File
When you click on a specific child sitemap link, a list of URLs related to that specific page type will appear. This gives Google and other search engines a comprehensive list of every URL in that specific category. This makes it so they can quickly find every piece of content on your website without having to rely on its architecture.
You’ll discover that each entry in your Shopify child sitemaps could include various components when you analyze them:
- <url>: The URL of that particular page
- <lastmod>: The last modification date of the page
- <changefreq>: An estimate of how often the page is likely to change
- <image:loc>: The featured image of that page
- <image: title>: The title of the page the image is on
All of your website’s content should be included in each of these separate entries in the child sitemaps.
Why do you need a Shopify sitemap?
As said, sitemaps aid search bots in finding websites so they can appropriately rank them. Without a sitemap, your pages can still appear and be ranked if they are accessible for indexing. However, a sitemap offers some useful data:
- What pages should appear in the index (a suitable sitemap file won’t list pages that aren’t intended for search, like product variants by color)
- How frequently do web pages get an update, and when was their last modification?
- What pages will show up what ranking priority (although it’s debatable whether Google truly considers this)
A sitemap is extremely helpful for SEO in the following situations:
- If the pages in your business are numerous. The more pages you have, the longer it takes for search engines to read through them, comprehend their content, and rank them. Therefore, A sitemap will boost the time of the process quicker.
- If dead ends and orphan pages happen on your site. A sitemap can assist search bots in locating pages on your store that are not involved in your internal linking strategy, such as those that don’t link out to any other pages or don’t have any other pages connecting to them. Keep in mind that you’ll still need to address this and create internal connections from dead-end pages to orphan pages.
- If you recently opened a store. You must have a decent sitemap if you want search engines to immediately recognize your new website.
Can you edit a Shopify sitemap?
No. Shopify automates everything for you instead of letting you manage your sitemap.
With the aid of other tools, such as Screaming Frog, you can still make a unique Shopify sitemap. If, for instance, you’ve switched to this CMS and modified the URL structure or if you have certain product variations that need to be indexed separately, it makes sense to invest more time into manually constructing a sitemap for a Shopify store.
How to find, create and submit the sitemap to the Google
Find your sitemap file
Sitemap files are automatically created. They are located in the root directory of the domains that make up your Shopify store, such as johns-apparel.com/sitemap.xml.
The sitemap files that are generated link to distinct sitemaps for your websites, blogs, collections, and products. When you add a new webpage, product, collection, image, or blog post to your Shopify online store, sitemap files are instantly updated.
Having a sitemap for your store’s main domain is enough if you’re using the Basic Shopify account. You will also have sitemaps for each additional domain you use for international domains if you pay for the Shopify plan or higher. Make sure all of your domains redirect to your main domain if you have many domains but aren’t utilizing them for foreign marketing.
Add domain properties and Google verify your website
To prove that you are the owner of your Shopify store, you must authenticate your domain with Google Search Console before submitting your sitemap. You must register for a Google Search Console account if you don’t already have one.
You must turn off password security for your online store in order to authenticate your domain. If you’re not quite ready to open your store, you can turn off password protection and then turn it back on once your domain has been validated.
Steps:
- Click from your Google Search Console account, and then from the drop-down menu, choose Add property.
- Choose URL prefix from the Select property type dialog box, then write the domain you want to add as property, including the https://
- Then click Next.
- Choose the HTML tag from the Verify ownership window. Alternatively, pick your preferred approach if you’re familiar with different verification techniques. Find out more about using a TXT record to prove ownership.
- Highlight the full HTML tag and copy it to your clipboard with cmd + c on a Mac or ctrl + c on a PC. Make sure you select everything, including the < and >. For example:
<meta name="google-site-verification" content="IV7BPLESttSpBdxSWN1s4zlr4HIcuHkGQYmE3wLG59w" />- Go to Online Store > Themes in the Shopify admin.
- Choose Actions > Edit code after selecting the theme you want to change.
- Click theme.liquid in the Layout section to start.
- Below the beginning head> tag, on a blank line, paste the meta tag that you copied in step 5
- Press Save.
- Click Verify when you return to Google Search Console.
Submit your sitemap file to Google Search Console
To make it easier for Google to identify and index the pages on your website, you can upload your sitemap file to Google Search Console.
Steps:
- Visit Google Search Console when your site has been confirmed.
- Select Sitemaps.
- Enter the sitemap file name for your domain in the Add a new sitemap section, and then click SUBMIT. The sitemap for your domain must be in a format resembling https://www.johns-apparel.com/sitemap.xml. Google may send you an error message if you don’t contain the entire sitemap URL.
If you utilize international domains and are using a Shopify plan or higher, you must submit the sitemap file for each domain. The root directory of the domains for your Shopify store always contains sitemap files.
The sitemap files for each of your domains are automatically updated if you sell in several languages. To add them, there is nothing you need to do.
Google uses your sitemap files to crawl and index your store when you submit them. Make sure there is no active password on your store because the crawler needs access to it. Google makes no promises regarding how long it will take to crawl your store because the process can take some time. Visit Google Search Console Help if you want to find out more or troubleshoot.
Conclusion
Through 5 parts:
- What Is A Shopify Sitemap?
- What’s in the Sitemap?
- Why do you need a Shopify sitemap?
- Can you edit a Shopify sitemap?
- How to find, create and submit the sitemap to Google?
We hope you can feel more clear about the Shopify sitemap. You should pay attention to the sitemap because it helps Google easy to crawl your website’s content. Moreover, thanks to providing search engines a “home base” list to crawl through, a sitemap will give protection. If you have any questions about the Shopify sitemap or about the Shopify customization service, please contact us.
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