Target audience: Account manager or marketing specialist in charge of basic SEO troubleshooting for agency client website.
| Overview | Follow these steps to add a sitemap to the client’s shopify store. |
| Equipment & Supplies | Client’sGoogle Search Console credentials. |
| Prerequisites | Client’s website verified by Google. |
Step 1: In your browser’s address bar, go to www.google.com/webmasters. Click on the green button labeled Search Console. If prompted, enter the client’s username and password.
Step 2: Open a second tab in your browser. To ensure there are no other sitemaps pointing to the client’s webpage, enter the following URL in the second tab’s address bar: http://www.yoursitename.com/sitemap.xml
Step 3: Your browser should indicate the page could not be found. Proceed to step 4.
- If you see content as in the image below, perform the steps outlined in steps 12 to 13 of this guide, and begin again from step 2.
Step 4: On the Google Sites main dashboard, click the tab labeled Sitemaps on the left hand side of the webpage.
Step 5: Under the section titled Add a new sitemap, type “sitemap.xml.”
- It is critical you type exactly “sitemap.xml”, as other variations such as Sitemap.xml or sitemap.XML will result in Google not indexing the client’s site.
Step 6: On the right hand side, click the blue button labeled Submit.
Step 7: Upon clicking Submit, a popup message will indicate the sitemap was successfully created.
Step 8: When the popup message disappears, navigate to the table labeled Submitted Sitemaps. On the status column, verify that the word success is displayed in green.
- This indicates the sitemap loaded correctly, and no further action on your part is required.
Step 9: If the operation was not successful, the status column will instead show [X] errors, where [X] is a number starting from 1.
- This number indicates the number of errors that must be fixed to proceed with submitting the sitemap.
Step 10: Click on the status column to see error details.
- If fixing the errors are beyond your technical abilities, please contact a member of the development team.
Step 11: Once the errors have been fixed, you must resubmit the sitemap by repeating steps 1 – 8 of this guide.
Step 12: Click the symbol at the top right hand corner of the webpage. Click the option labelled remove sitemap.
Step 13: You will get a popup asking to confirm the delete operation. Click cancel to cancel the operation, or click remove to proceed with the operation.
Version History
| Date | Name | Changes | Approved by | Date |
| 20.10.19 | Giancarlo Guerra | Added screenshots. Edited for clarity. | Supervisor X | 25.10.19 |
| 12.11.19 | Giancarlo Guerra | Removed whitespace. Formatting. | Supervisor Y | 15.11.19 |
