How can I improve my website's indexing on Google?

Blueye · ‎04-07-2024

Hey Shopify Gurus!

I have been unsuccessfully trying to fix my website's blueyegroup.com indexing on Google to optimize the way it appears in search results. Namely, I want each main header page (Home, Shop, Lessons, Lifestyle, About Us) to appear as sub-results in the google search, with their proper respective meta descriptions.

Instead, the google search outputs random pages from the website as sub-results with inaccurate meta descriptions ( please see below).

I have tried submitting individual pages for indexing on Google Search Console, improving meta descriptions for each important page as much as possible, and submitting multiple sitemaps, but so far, none of this has fixed the issues I am facing.

Any help would be greatly appreciated - thank you!

Ben

kjproweb · ‎04-08-2024

Hi Ben,

Here's a step-by-step guide that will help you fix a few problems before resubmitting your site to Google for indexing.

Fix your page titles. Some of your page titles are incorrectly named. For example, your "Shop" page and look at the canonical tags. You've got -- < <link rel="canonical" href="https://blueyegroup.com/collections">. What's happening here is --- you've got a menu tab named [Shop] but the actual page is named Collections. Decide what name you really want to give the page. Is it a Shop page or a Collections page?

On this same menu tab (Shop), notice carefully what your Title Tags look like and also the meta-description tag. The Title Tag reflects "Categories". That's problematic. Also, you made the mistake of using the exact same H2/meta-description tag for this page as you did for the home page and other pages.

<title>Categories – Blueye</title><meta name="description" content="Kitesurfing | Wingfoiling | Foiling - Lessons and Online Shop in Washington DC, Philadelphia PA, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware. Devoted to living a water connected lifestyle.">

**With duplicate H2/meta-description tag along with confusing title tags and page names, Google is confused. So, they're indexing multiple pages.

The quick and simple solution in your case is to use "noindex" meta tag on the pages you'd like Google to ignore. Of course those pages will show up as visible to your website site visitors --- because everyone can see the Drop Down menu tabs.

Add the following code to the <head> section of the HTML for the pages you don't want indexed:

<meta name="robots" content="noindex">
This tells Google's crawlers not to index that specific page. After this, log into Google Search Console and resubmit your XML site map.

All the best,

Kevin James

Technical SEO Expert & Full-Stack Developer

Shopify Approved Partner

Kevin James
Technical SEO Expert, Front-End WebDev & Shopify Partner #917172

View solution in original post

OneMobile · ‎04-09-2024

Hi @Blueye

The sub-results you're referring to are called sitelinks. And unfortunately, sitelinks are automatically created and displayed on organic search results. However, you can improve your chances by ensuring your website's structure is logical and easy for search engines to understand by following the best practices below:

Use a clear hierarchy and text links. Make sure all the important pages you want to appear are accessible from the homepage
Link to your main pages (Home, Shop, Lessons, Lifestyle, About Us) using clear and relevant anchor text
Ensure each page has a unique and descriptive title and meta description
If inappropriate and unwanted sitelinks appear, you can demote them via Google Search Console:

Go to the Google Search Console.
Select 'Search Appearance' and then 'Sitelinks'.
Enter the URLs of the sitelinks you wish to demote.

I hope that this helps!

If you find my answer helpful, please hit the Like button or Mark as solution to show me some encouragement.
OneMobile: The #1 Mobile App Builder For Shopify Merchants
Pick ready-made themes & customize with drag-n-drop editor.

View solution in original post

Blueye · ‎04-08-2024

Thanks @Kaiya . Any tips on what can be done before hiring an expert? I am specifically looking to 'force' Google to recognize the main website pages for proper sub-result search outputting. Doesn't Shopify have a built-in way to prioritize page hierarchy for SEO purposes?

kjproweb · ‎04-08-2024

Hi Ben,

Here's a step-by-step guide that will help you fix a few problems before resubmitting your site to Google for indexing.

Fix your page titles. Some of your page titles are incorrectly named. For example, your "Shop" page and look at the canonical tags. You've got -- < <link rel="canonical" href="https://blueyegroup.com/collections">. What's happening here is --- you've got a menu tab named [Shop] but the actual page is named Collections. Decide what name you really want to give the page. Is it a Shop page or a Collections page?

On this same menu tab (Shop), notice carefully what your Title Tags look like and also the meta-description tag. The Title Tag reflects "Categories". That's problematic. Also, you made the mistake of using the exact same H2/meta-description tag for this page as you did for the home page and other pages.

<title>Categories – Blueye</title><meta name="description" content="Kitesurfing | Wingfoiling | Foiling - Lessons and Online Shop in Washington DC, Philadelphia PA, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware. Devoted to living a water connected lifestyle.">

**With duplicate H2/meta-description tag along with confusing title tags and page names, Google is confused. So, they're indexing multiple pages.

The quick and simple solution in your case is to use "noindex" meta tag on the pages you'd like Google to ignore. Of course those pages will show up as visible to your website site visitors --- because everyone can see the Drop Down menu tabs.

Add the following code to the <head> section of the HTML for the pages you don't want indexed:

<meta name="robots" content="noindex">
This tells Google's crawlers not to index that specific page. After this, log into Google Search Console and resubmit your XML site map.

All the best,

Kevin James

Technical SEO Expert & Full-Stack Developer

Shopify Approved Partner

Kevin James
Technical SEO Expert, Front-End WebDev & Shopify Partner #917172

Blueye · ‎04-09-2024

Super helpful - thank you @kjproweb !!

kjproweb · ‎04-09-2024

Sorry for the typos! I was on the phone and multitasking.

I hope the solution worked.

Kevin James

Kevin James
Technical SEO Expert, Front-End WebDev & Shopify Partner #917172

Blueye · ‎04-09-2024

Hey Kevin, your instructions are very clear - thanks again!

I am however having trouble implementing them. For example, I cannot change the URL for my "Shop" page because it is using the "Collections List" template whose code file I am unable to locate in the code editor. And for some reason my theme (Ella) seems to assign the default online store meta-description to the "Collections List" template , hence the issue you correctly identified with duplicate meta descriptions.

Also, while I can easily apply your "noindex" method to pages and blog posts, I am unable to do so for Collections in Shopify Admin (which erroneously appear as sitelinks as well).

OneMobile · ‎04-09-2024

Hi @Blueye

The sub-results you're referring to are called sitelinks. And unfortunately, sitelinks are automatically created and displayed on organic search results. However, you can improve your chances by ensuring your website's structure is logical and easy for search engines to understand by following the best practices below:

Use a clear hierarchy and text links. Make sure all the important pages you want to appear are accessible from the homepage
Link to your main pages (Home, Shop, Lessons, Lifestyle, About Us) using clear and relevant anchor text
Ensure each page has a unique and descriptive title and meta description
If inappropriate and unwanted sitelinks appear, you can demote them via Google Search Console:

Go to the Google Search Console.
Select 'Search Appearance' and then 'Sitelinks'.
Enter the URLs of the sitelinks you wish to demote.

I hope that this helps!

If you find my answer helpful, please hit the Like button or Mark as solution to show me some encouragement.
OneMobile: The #1 Mobile App Builder For Shopify Merchants
Pick ready-made themes & customize with drag-n-drop editor.

Blueye · ‎04-09-2024

Thank you @OneMobile - this is also very helpful!

ConvertMateSEO · ‎05-30-2024

You can only add the home page link as a sitelinks search box while the rest of the pages are picked on a random basis. Shopify allows to add custom meta tags including titles and descriptions from the store preferences section.

Sitelinks pages are picked on the following data by the algorithms:

High engagement time
More internal links point to these pages
Getting high-traffic
High-quality backlinks pointing to these pages

These pages in sitelinks keep changing with time. Optimize meta tags of all the priority pages and create internal links for them. ConvertMate can help you generate keyword-rich meta titles and descriptions faster.

Was your question answered? please mark it as an Accepted Solution
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saim23 · ‎05-30-2024

In order to make your desired pages appear in Google search results, You have to convince google that they are the most important pages of your site. One way is to add most of the internal links those this desired page. Second, this is to build backlinks from other sites to these pages. the third thing that you already implemented is the inclusion of these pages into the header.

How can I improve my website's indexing on Google?

How can I improve my website's indexing on Google?

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