The sitemap is an important document when it comes to ranking your site on Google and other search engines. It acts as a navigational aid for search engines in looking throughout your site to find pages and the structure. A good sitemap will detail, with good levels of accuracy, which pages are parent pages and which are subpages of the other pages.

The better your sitemap is, the easier it is for search engines to crawl your website, to understand the page’s structure.

Sitemaps don’t often need to be created on Shopify sites, whenever a new page is created, the page is added to your XML sitemap. This saves you time and effort in creating XML sitemaps yourself, which is one of the ways that websites don’t get ranked quick enough.

Key Takeaways
1
To solve sitemap issues, create a Google Webmasters Account, upload your XML sitemap, and submit it for Google’s indexing.
2
Add and authenticate your site’s URL, then navigate to the ‘Crawl’ and ‘Sitemaps’ area.
3
Upload your XML sitemap to Shopify and submit it for Google indexing. Repeat for new content.

Problems with Sitemaps

The problem is that without a sitemap, you run a high risk that your website won’t be indexed properly. Pages that might be important, like landing pages, could be missed off completely and therefore, not be ranked on Google or other search engines. This could cause you to lose traffic, leads and sales.

Additionally, on-page optimization is crucial for ensuring that each page of your site is easily discoverable and ranks well in search engine results. And without a good sitemap, it can sometimes take months for Google to see your new store. Most stores have a three to six month penalty applied against them. A sitemap won’t compensate completely against the new domain penalty, but it will help.

How to Solve Problems with your Sitemap

If you’re having problems with your sitemap there are easy solutions. For one, you can generate a Google Webmasters Account and then upload a sitemap yourself. This will encourage Google to crawl your website and help you recover from a Google Penalty.

Step 1: Sign In

The first step is to sign in to your Google Webmaster Tools (or create an account if you haven’t already).

Step 2: Choose your Site’s URL

Next, you need to choose your site’s URL. If you can’t see it in the link, then you might need to add it and then authenticate your website. There are several ways this can be done.

Step 3: Crawl Area

Within the webmaster tools console, click on the ‘Crawl’ link located on the menu. Then you need to click on the ‘Sitemaps’ area.

Within this area, you need to select the option that reads ‘Add/Test’ Sitemap. This is located in the top-right corner.

Step 4: Input

Now upload your sitemap, this should be in XML format, and you can often find this on your Shopify website.

Step 5: Submit

Now you can click on the option that reads, ‘Submit Sitemap’ and this will be sent to Google. It can take a few days or even weeks for the pages to have been indexed by Google. Therefore, don’t expect instant results.

Step 6: Repeat when you Publish Vital Content

Now you need to repeat this process every time you upload vital content to your website. This could be key products or landing pages on your website.