Every now and then I get asked why specific pages don’t show up in Google. Most of time this is because Google isn’t visiting and indexing all of your product pages. Each site has a limited crawl rate limit which are the number of pages Google will go through in a period of time. When …
Tag: indexing
How Google crawling your Shopify store will adjust your rankings
A JSON-LD for SEO customer was asking about Google sees and re-ranks their Shopify store based on what’s changed: And my question is… Google goes through the pages from time to time, and takes into account the changes made by improving or worsening the ranking of the pages in the search engine? Correct, Google will …
Have you ever watched a spider?
Have you ever sat and watched a spider? Most of the time they stand still and just wait for things to happen. But when they are working, they are running all over the place. Fixing a web. Moving across the ground or wall. Getting their dinner prepped. They clearly have periods of high and low …
Remember CARS to remember how Google and SEO works
The other day I was trying to describe why Google and search engines have delays before changes show up. The problem I was having is the sheer amount of technical jargon and insider knowledge required to explain even an overview of it. Then I had a flash of inspiration… Don’t worry, I remembered to put …
How indexing and ranking are different
Two SEO terms that are frequently confused are indexing and ranking. Indexing means that Google is aware that a page exists. That’s a purely mechanical process of Google finding a page and making an entry in their database for it. Ranking means that the page shows up in the search results for a specific term …
What Mobile-first indexing means for Shopify stores
Google is now using what they call mobile-first indexing for many stores. To understand this, you need to understand indexing first. Indexing is just the process where Google has software that downloads copies of your store, analyzes them, and adds the analysis to their database. It’s also called crawling because the program they use is …
2 minute check in Search Console to see if your Shopify store’s SEO is healthy
One interesting technique I’ve used is to compare how many pages are indexed in Search Console vs Google Search. For example, one site shows 612 pages indexed in Search Console. But using the special site:DOMAIN search in Google Search I see 559 results. Without knowing anything else about the site, this means that there are …
Estimating how many pages in your Shopify store should appear in Search Console
One common question I get about Search Console is, how to tell how many pages should be indexed. For Shopify stores a quick rule of thumb is to add: number of products (not variants, just products) number of collections number of blog posts number of pages Add all of those and you’ll get close to …
How to use Search Console to checkup on your Shopify store’s indexing in Google
A customer Steve emailed me asking about how to tell if his Shopify store was getting indexed properly. In order to see that it’s best to use Google’s Search Console (formerly Webmaster Tools). Search Console is a free service that collects search and SEO data about your website, but it can be confusing, contradictory, and …