What You Need to Know About Shopify Sitemap

As a Shopify store owner, you will automatically be provided with what you call “sitemap.xml” files. Such files contain links to all of your products, images, and pages. This helps index your site so that it is searchable by Google and Bing, helping your store appear in search results.

If you are a Shopify seller, you can use the sitemap and submit it to the Google Search Console to index valuable pages. Adding a sitemap can help boost your sales. Additionally, it can help your site be displayed more frequently and easily on Google because the sitemap helps improve the crawling process. 

Sounds complicated? It’s actually really simple, and we’ll show you how.

First of all, what is a sitemap?

XML sitemaps lists your website’s most important pages and allows Google (or other search engines) to locate, crawl, and understand the structure of your Shopify store. This is key in improving your organic search rankings.You also need to submit sitemaps to Google Search Console for indexing, a step that allows you to monitor technical web issues.

Basically, a sitemap provides information about your Shopify pages, videos and other files that are on your site. These files allow search engines to read it and crawl your site intelligently. It is also able to assess which pages and files are most important to your site and also provides relevant information like how often sites are updated or when a certain page was updated. 

So, how do you create a sitemap?

You will first need to create a new template for which you can add custom lines of code. To create a new template:

• From your Shopify admin panel, navigate to Online Store > Themes
• In the first section (Live theme) click Actions > Edit Code
• Under the Templates folder, click Add a new template
• Select page from the dropdown and name it sitemap
• Click the Create template button

Basically, this will be the template where you are going to add custom code. Just take note to add the following code below the line of  {{ page.content }}. This is to make sure you won’t lose any styling.

Next, to list out all of your products and collections, add the following code to your new template page:

<div class="row"> <div class="col-md-6"> <h2>Collections</h2> <ul> {% for c in collections %} <li> <a href="{{ c.url }}">{{ c.title }}</a> </li> {% endfor %} </ul> </div> <div class="col-md-6"> <h2>Products</h2> <ul> {% for product in collections.all.products %} <li> <a href="{{ product.url }}">{{ product.title }}</a> </li> {% endfor %} </ul> </div> </div>

Now that your new template page is created, you need to add a new page to host the sitemap. To create a new page in Shopify, follow these steps:

• From your Shopify admin panel, navigate to Online Store > Pages and click the Add page button in the top right corner
• Add the page title Sitemap but leave the content section empty
• From the Template section on the right-hand side of the page, select page.sitemap

This means that your sitemap page has been created. You can check it by clicking View Page.

You can also check if you already have a sitemap file. This is located at the root directory of your Shopify store’s primary domain name.

You may be able to see an automatically generated sitemap that is constantly updated when you add new products, collections, images or blog posts. You should also be able to find links that separate sitemaps.

As a Shopify seller, you can submit this sitemap file whenever you might need it. However, if your store is password protected, you will have to disable it by removing your online store password.

How to submit sitemap to Google

Submit your sitemap to Google Search Console to help Google find and index your pages. Here are the steps:

1. Verify with Google Search Console first. If you don’t have an account here yet, you will need to make one, check here. Then you will have to verify that you are indeed the owner of the store.

Make sure that you have disabled password protection for your online store. If you aren't ready to launch your store, you can disable password protection for a while, and then enable it again after verifying your domain.

1. After your site is verified, go to Google Search Console. Click Sitemaps.
2. In the Add a new sitemap section, enter your domain's sitemap file name and then click SUBMIT. Your domain's sitemap needs to have a format similar to https://www.johns-apparel.com/sitemap.xml. If you don't include all of the sitemap URL, then you might receive an error message from Google.

After you submit your sitemap files, Google will be able to use it to crawl and index your store. Your store needs to be accessible for the crawler to work, so disable your password first.

This whole process can take quite some time and unfortunately, Google doesn't guarantee how long it takes for your store to be crawled.

To learn more or to troubleshoot, visit Google Search Console Help.

While Google is working on crawling your site, you might want to work on items on your page to really boost your Shopify store’s performance.

Work with a Shopify expert at Webinopoly! A Shopify expert is a professional who has taken the time to learn the ropes of Shopify and has the experience and knowledge to back up their strategies.

Such as here at Webinopoly, we’ve got experts who live, breathe and eat Shopify, and will be able to understand your concerns and provide you with timely solutions.

We can help you from setting up shop, to designing your Shopify store, developing apps and crafting content for you.

Here at Webinopoly, we create solutions that can help entrepreneurs like you build and expand your online business. If you need help optimizing your Shopify pages, building or designing it, we are here to help! 

Webinopoly is an Award-Winning Digital Agency and are experts in Design, Setup, Development, and Marketing. Our services range from building your Shopify store to theme customization, website development, migration to Shopify, SEO, and marketing.

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If you need building your Shopify website or require eCommerce solutions to be developed, you may call us at 713-805-5888, email us at [email protected], or leave us a message here.

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