Have you submitted your sitemap yet?

I go to a lot of events, and I talk to a lot of people about SEO.

Specifically, ecommerce SEO, more specifically SEO for Shopify sites. I would have to say it’s kind of my thing.

Wherever I go, I get asked “what is the first thing I can do to get found in search engines?”

Which, if you have started working on the optimization of your ecommerce store, is a loaded question. There are hundreds of signals from which Google pulls (and yes, I mostly talk about Google, because let’s face it- the majority of search queries are done through Google.)

There are lots of things to do to help you get found, and I am going to cover them through a series of blogs over the next several weeks.

But I am a fan of the path of least resistance. So let’s get one thing out of the way before we get into the nitty gritty of it all.

You have to submit your sitemap to Google. You can also submit it to Bing and Yahoo if you want, but do Google first. Always do things for Google first.

What is the point of a sitemap?

A sitemap serves as a map of your website/ ecommerce store to Google. Without it, you are not helping Google index your site, you are just allowing your site to be crawled with no clear indication of hierarchy and site structure.

Think of it like this- if you were to get dropped off in the middle of a city with no iPhone and no map and were told to get outside of the city you would be a little bit flustered.

You may take short cuts, and you certainly won’t meander every avenue trying to learn the city because you don’t know how the city functions or how to maneuver through the city with efficiency.

A sitemap does the same thing, but for search engines. You are giving Google a map of your site, and the easier your site is to navigate the better.

Fortunately, for those of you using Shopify- submitting a sitemap to Google is remarkably simple.

Here’s how to do it.

Create a Google Search Console account.

1. Click the “Search Console” button

2. Click the “Add a Property” button

3. Enter in your URL

4. Verify your property. I recommend doing it through your domain provider- it is the easiest and then you don’t have to touch a lick of code.

5. Click the “Sitemap” button

6. Click the “Add/Test Sitemap” button

7. If you have a Shopify store, enter sitemap.xml in the field. Click the “Submit” button. If you do not have a Shopify store, you either need to create your own sitemap, or contact your platform to find out how to generate one.

Alright. There you have it. Step one to your SEO success. Sitemap submitted.