Help!
My Shopify store is not showing up on Google.
What can I do?
Hi, I'm Clarice Lin, the ROI Doctor who helps small businesses and online stores get more
customers and more sales by getting on Google and YouTube page one.
In today's video, I'm going to teach you how to get your Shopify store on Google search.
That's one tool that you need to set up, which is the Google Search Console.
Previously, Google Search Console is also known as the Google Webmaster tool.
By getting this tool set up for your Shopify store, you can tell Google that your Shopify
store exists, and you have this product and all these pages, and Google will put it into
their storage.
And when a shopper or browser goes on Google search to search for products that could be
yours, then Google will decide to show it on Google search results.
If you don't have this Google Search Console set up, basically, you're waiting around for
Google's search algorithm to scan the entire web.
So there are hundreds and 1000s of Shopify stores and other websites going live on the
internet every day.
Google doesn't have the resources and capacities to scan every single website and or every
single store.
If you have a Shopify store or WooCommerce store and you're relatively new, and nobody's
really coming to your website, you're just sitting there waiting for Google to know about
you, then you will never appear on Google search.
If you want to be found on Google search, you need to set this tool up, Google Search
Console, you need to verify that that's your store, that's your website.
And what you need to do as well is to submit a sitemap, what your website is about, what
other pages that you have, what product pages that you have you submit it on this tool,
and then Google will process this information, then they will know over on their site, on
their system, they will know that, oh yes, there's this store that's right here.
So the next time if someone's searching about the products that your store offers, then
they can show them your product pages.
Otherwise, it's never really going to show up.
How do you set up Google Search Console then?
Shortly, I'm going to show a screenshare on my computer where I'm going to show you how
you can sign up for this account.
And how can you verify it?
And once you have this account set up, what information or how can you navigate around
Google Search Console so Google will have the correct information for your website.
So let's head on to my computer.
Let's go.
Right now we are in front of my computer, go to Google and type Google Search Console.
And this is the results you will see here, click on this first results over here, click
on this, after you click on that results, you will come right here.
This is the Google Search Console homepage.
And you can click on Start now.
This button over here that says start now.
And you will bring you to a gmail sign in, a Google sign, it says sign in to continue
to Google Search Console.
So if you have an existing gmail account, or if your business suite account is from
Google, type that in.
If you don't have, then you might want to create an account before you come back here.
Login with this email, type in your email address, and then you click on next over here,
the blue button, then it will bring you to the next page of log in, which is to enter
your password and click on Next.
And this will bring you to the Google Search Console.
So this is the reporting interface.
If you have everything set up, every time you want to check on your Google search status
on which pages have been indexed, or which pages are getting you clicks from Google,
this will be where you will be directed to.
So right now, if you don't have any account set up for your Shopify store.
So this will be empty, and you need to click on over here under Search Console, you will
click on the down arrow button.
And this will show up, add property.
So click on that.
Then this dialog box will pop up.
So you have this adding property type domain, as well as the URL prefix.
So for your Shopify store, you can just type in your Shopify email address.
So anything that starts with www or m dot, your URL, com anything that has HTTPS or HTTP,
you can add in right here.
So you can type it in you don't have to add the WW you just have anything after www.
You don't have to enter HTTPS as well.
So you just type in like what it says over here.
Here example.com, so you can just put in your URL something.com or.co.uk, whatever.
So once you enter that, then you will be able to click on Continue.
In this case, the continue button will be enabled, it will turn gray so you can continue.
And this dialog box will show up to say verifying the property that you're setting up.
Once that's verified, then the next step would be, they'll be giving you some instructions
on how to verify your domain ownership via DNS record.
So if you have a DNS provider like GoDaddy or other DNS provider, you can select from
this little arrow button, they will give you different instructions on what you can do,
you can sign into your, if you have GoDaddy, which some of you might have.
So for myself, most of my websites, I use namecheap.com.
So you sign in to that website, and then you can copy this text over here, click on this
button copy, and then you can sign in, go into your domain name provider, and paste
this in onto your website.
Once this piece of code is pasted on your DNS provider, if you didn't buy your URL directly
from Shopify, you was on your own GoDaddy or Namecheap, or other provider, which you
can see from this list over here.
So you will be copying this piece of text and then you go to your providers website,
sign in, and then you can paste this code there.
And once the code has been saved, pasted and saved, you click on verify below.
As you can see, there's this gray button over here, verify.
So before you paste this code in, you don't verify if you're not ready, you can say verify
later, I'm not going to go into the details of the individual DNS provider, you'll be
able to follow the instructions over there.
So once it's verified, the next thing, oh yes, this other other DNS provider on one
on one or if you have other DNS provider, there is a list here, so you can search for
yourself.
Once you have verified, then this is going to show up.
So on this screenshot over here, there's a settings right on the left hand panel is the
menu.
So right at the bottom, there is a settings.
If you click on Settings page, it will show that you are a verified owner.
So what's the purpose of verification?
The idea is that only you has the Shopify store owner will be able to have direct access
to this information of how you communicate your website or your online stores, web pages
and product pages with Google, if you were not able to paste the code directly, set it
up, then what happens is anyone, you, me anybody in the world, you can go and submit your website
information to Google.
And that's why you need ownership verification.
The whole purpose of what I've explained earlier is basically to tell Google, you are the owner
of the Shopify store, you own the URL, you own your store, and you want to submit your
information to Google and tell them to index your pages.
So when people go on to google.com, and search for any products related on your store, they
will pull up your product pages.
So that's basically what ownership verification is about.
Without this process, basically, instead, anyone can come into your store and submit
some bogus information to Google and you don't want that.
This will show you are verified, after you've done if, after you have done the verification,
then it's done.
And the next thing, oh yeah, so if you have other users or you have other other people
using your Google Search Console, you can also use this page to add other users to give
them permission.
And if you have Google Analytics, and you know how important it is to know how people
are navigating themselves on your online store, you can also connect your Google Search Console
to your Google Analytics.
This is where you can connect them together.
Next thing is you need to do is to add a new sitemap.
On the left hand side of the Google search console you will be able to submit a sitemap
that basically shows what it is about so if you submit your sitemap you can add in this
information URL over here so for your Shopify store you have your url.com, your Shopify
store url.com and remember to make sure that your store is ready to be unlocked.
So most of the time, after you have created your Shopify store itself, what happens is
your store is locked by a password that's what is being done to make sure nobody kind
of hacks into your store or but once you're ready for anyone, everyone to access those
pages you unlock it with a password, says unlock it, when you submit this sitemap here
to Google to tell them what are your, how are your pages connected to each other, how
many pages do you have, then Google will be able to access this information.
This is like giving them a map of how your website looks like, how the pages are connected
together.
If your store is still password protected, then this wouldn't work.
And you might likely have an error show up.
If all goes well you've unlocked it and then you go here and add in your new sitemap, likely,
the second part of your URL sitemap is usually sitemap dot XML.
So this XML file is a file that's automatically generated by Shopify for your store already,
so you don't have to generate it yourself.
And once it's done, you click it on and you'll be able to click on this Submit button over
here.
Once you submitted it will show up here as a line, it will tell you which date you submitted.
And what's the status if it's green and how many URLs you have.
These URLs should show the number of pages that you have on your website.
Let's say you have product pages and all your other pages and it adds up to like 20 and
it shows up as 10, it means that some of your pages are maybe locked.
And then Google is not able to access those pages.
So they can't index those pages, meaning that they don't, they are not able to pull those
pages and show to Google search users.
So you want to make sure the number of pages that you have correspond to the number of
discovered URLs.
So that's a good check for you.
Once everything is submitted and then you discover that maybe some of your pages are
not discovered by Google yet, you can actually go over here, which is URL inspection over
here, you will be able to type in or copy and paste your URL here and ask Google to
individually index those pages.
So once those pages are indexed, then you're all good to go.
So you just need to wait for Google to process all this information, categorize all those
pages that you have submitted to them.
And then Google will know whether when someone goes on to Google search or image search for
your product, whether it makes sense for them to show your product page to them, whether
it's relevant to what a potential shopper is looking for, and to also double check that
you know that all the pages on your Shopify store has been indexed, this is a little hack
for you.
You can go to your browser itself, and type in site, colon, your Shopify store URL type
in, and then type on, Enter.
And that will show you all the pages that Google knows about your online store.
So if you have 20 pages, then you will see 20 URLs pop up on the search results.
So this is basically like a little hack to kind of query to Google, which are the pages
that Google knows about your site.
So this is kind of like a double check.
This is a good check, because you can see specifically, which are the pages that are
being shown on, what are the missing pages.
So in the sitemap checker, you can see that if you have 20 pages and 10 show up, you know,
10 are missing.
But maybe you don't know which are the 10.
So okay, you can actually show you, which are the 10 that has been indexed by Google.
And then you will be able to reconcile and say, oh, this is this 10.
Okay, I have this other 10 other products over here, I know exactly which one is and
then you can go and submit to the URL.
As I mentioned earlier, you can submit them here individually submit it, like all your
10 different URLs, you specifically tell Google, I have this page here, please index it.
And that's it.
This is how you set up a Google search console for your Shopify store so Google knows all
about your product pages or all your content pages so they can show it to potential shoppers
when they are searching for products on search.
Now you know how to set up Google Search Console and how to send over all the information about
your Shopify store over to Google search.
What you need to do now is to wait patiently for a couple of days to one to two weeks to
wait for Google to come back to you.
Once your website has been registered on Google system, you will be able to find out by going
back to search console and see what are the pages that has been registered on Google.
And if you need more information on how you can also get your products listed on Google
Shopping.
You can also check out some of my other videos right here, where I show you how you can set
up, if you also want to be listed on Google Shopping for free, this is my other video
that you need to check out over here.
And if you also need other help all about free listings and how to overcome these errors
or disapproval problems with Google Merchant Center, this is my other videos right here.
So do check them all out.
If you enjoyed this video and found it useful, tap on the like button.
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any of my future videos.
I'll see you.
Bye