How do I create my Store's Site Map?

 

Your Shift4Shop store comes with a dynamically generated sitemap which can be submitted to both your Google and Bing Webmaster Tools services.

Submitting your sitemap to Webmaster Tools

When adding your sitemap to your Google or Bing's Webmaster Tools service, simply enter the URL as:

http://[domain]/sitemap.asp

This is a special script we've created for all Shift4Shop users which will take all of the product and category listings, and dynamically print them out into an XML formatted map which the webmater tool services will use to map out your site.

Each time the asp page is called, the indexed items are recreated on the XML, thereby updating automatically as products and categories are added to your store.

Additional Information
The store's sitemap file is created automatically by the store and cannot be edited, deleted or disabled.

If you'd like to create a custom sitemap file of your own, you may do this as well. Simply upload your created sitemap to the web folder of your account's FTP and reference that file instead. Just be sure to name it something other than "sitemap.xml"

If you are looking to submit your sitemap to Google, there are multiple methods you can utilize such as:

  • Updating your robots.txt file to include the following line:

Sitemap: https://[domain]/sitemap.asp

Tip
Updating the robots.txt file to include your sitemap will also work for other Search Engines such as Bing.

  • Submitting your sitemap within Google Search Console. They have a Sitemap report feature dedicated to this. For more information please see here.

Submitting a Sitemap to Google

  1. Log into Google Search Console.
  2. Find the “Sitemaps” tab on the left sidebar.
  3. Navigate to the “add new sitemap” section.
  4. Copy and paste your URL: https://[domain]/sitemap.asp
  5. Hit submit

Submitting a Sitemap to Bing

  1. Log in to Bing Webmaster Tools
  2. Find the “Sitemaps” tab in the left sidebar menu.
  3. In the upper right-hand corner of the Sitemaps page, you’ll see a “Submit Sitemap” button.
  4. Enter your URL: https://[domain]/sitemap.asp
  5. Hit submit

For more information, we recommend consulting Google's own documentation.

Note
Products that are hidden or out of stock will not display in the sitemap.

Product, Category and Manufacturer Indexes

In addition to the dynamic sitemap, your Shift4Shop store also includes index pages that contain listings of your products and category links that also dynamically update. These listed links are then picked up by crawlers as they access your site and are used to further assist in the indexing of your site.

By default, the product and category indexes are already present on your site. (Look at your store's footer to see them). However, if you've accidentally removed them and would like to recreate them, the following informaiton will help.

Adding the Product and Category Index

  1. Log into your Online Store Manager
  2. Go to Content >Site Content
  3. Look towards the right hand side and click on the "+Add" button at the top right
  4. Type the name of the page, you can use "Product Index", "Category Index", "Product Sitemap", etc. Click "+Add"
  5. Look to the far right of the newly created page and click on its "Action >Content" button
  6. Enter "product_index.asp" or "category_index.asp" under the Link field.
  7. Click Save Changes

Manufacturer Index

If your store uses Manufacturers, you can also create a Manufacturer Index for it as well. Simply follow the same steps as above, and link the extra page to "manufacturer_index.asp"

Additional Information
Sitemaps will only go as deep as the main category and 1 sub-category.


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