Setting up Google Search Console and submitting a Shopify sitemap is essential for improving your website’s visibility on Google. Here are the steps you need to follow:

  1. Create a Google Search Console Account:
  2. Add Your Property (Website):
    • Click on the “Add Property” button in the left navigation menu.
    • You will then have two options. Choose the “Domain” method or the “URL prefix” method to add your website as a property:
      • The domain method is recommended for most Shopify stores. It involves adding a DNS record to your domain registrar. This could be Shopify, GoDaddy, Namecheap etc.
      • The URL prefix method has 4 further options, one of which requires adding a HTML meta tag to your Shopify theme.liquid file. If you update your theme, you might need to add this again to your new theme files.
    • Verify ownership of your property using the method you selected. If you don’t know how to do either of these, or are uncomfortable with adding DNS records to your domain, then contact your Shopify developer.
  3. Access the Sitemap Section & Submit:
    • In the Google Search Console dashboard, click on the “Sitemaps” tab in the left-hand menu.
    • Click on the “Add/Test Sitemap” button.
    • Enter the URL of your sitemap (usually example.com/sitemap.xml) and click “Submit.” Of course substitute example.com with stores your domain name.

That’s it. After successfully submitting your sitemap, you can monitor your Shpoify store status in Google Search Console. For example, Google Search Console provides valuable insights into how Google crawls and indexes your site. You can see what keywords are driving traffic to your business, or check for any errors and warnings. Use tools like the URL inspection tool to check individual pages, request indexing, and identify mobile usability issues.

Note: If you have multiple international domains like .co.uk or .eu, you will need to repeat this process of each international domain and also submit a sitemap for each domain.

Tip: We recommend you connect google search console to Google Analytics GA4 to get valuable insights to how Google organic search traffic contributes to growing your online sales.

Ciarán Oglesby

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