Using Google Webmaster Tools with NitroSell eCommerce

Google Webmaster Tools provides an easy way for you to submit all your URLs to the Google index and get detailed reports about the visibility of your pages on Google. With sitemaps, you can automatically keep Google informed. By submitting a sitemap you get better crawl coverage and fresher search results, enabling shoppers to find more of your web pages.

The NitroSell platform includes an automatically generated sitemap available at yourdomain.com. It contains a complete list of all of your most significant URLs, including product, department, category, and static content pages. For example, you can see the Cork Art Supplies sitemap here: http://corkartsupplies.com/sitemap.xml

Search engines like Google always check /sitemap.xml for a map, but you can also expedite the process by submitting it manually on Webmaster Tools. You can sign up to Webmaster Tools here:

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/

Once you have created your account, you’ll see a prominent Add a Site link in the top right:

The next step is to verify ownership of the site you’ve added. Google provides a number of options and we recommend the simplest of them, file upload. Here’s an example of what you’ll see:

The file can be uploaded via your NitroSell secure FTP account, into the root folder.

Webmaster Tools offers a wealth of functionality for viewing information on, and controlling, your indexed pages on Google:

Sitemaps can be submitted from the link on the dashboard on the right-hand side:

It’s as simple as clicking the Add/test Sitemap button, entering sitemap.xml and clicking Submit sitemap:

As a basic first step in search engine optimization, submitting your sitemap will ensure your site gets indexed or re-indexed more quickly and, potentially, with better coverage.

Note if a retailer is still in staging and their domain is not live then you cannot verifiy with Google using file transfer or Meta Description
You must choose the Update TXT record on DNS Option - Please Contact NitroSell Customer Support and supply the text given to you by Google it will look something like this:
google-site-verification=msrxDFVBTcw8OSvTUXABCDEFGHUFbTPtyo3U7PXQWK4

I submitted our sitemap in google’s webmaster tools but it came back with 866 errors due to invalid dates. I looked at the sitemap and it looks like the majority of the dates were 0000-00-00 for last mod. What should I do to resolve this?

Thank you,
Mike

I get this error when I submit the sitemap:

Errors
Sitemap is HTML
Your Sitemap appears to be an HTML page. Please use a supported sitemap format instead.
1

Can you please advise?

Best,
Mohsen

Can you supply the URL you’re specifying, please, Mohsen?

@tampavapor: that should be using the date the items were last updated. @belen_ibanez, would you mind taking a look, please?

Hi Mike,

You were right, we are fixing the date issue.

Best regards,
Belen

@donogh Found the issue. It was my bad. I was adding the sitemap for the non-www version and it was being redirected to homepage which obviously is not XML.
Thanks.

1 Like

Hi Mike,

This issue is fixed. You can see here your sitemap with the new dates.

If you encounter any other issues let’s us know. We are glad to help.

Best regards,
Belén

You can do the verification for Webmaster tools using the HTML tag authorisation option. Much simpler than FTP.
Just add the HTML tag to meta information on your store SEO options under ‘Add extra Meta tags’