Hi guys, this is just a quick update to the original video In this course, as happens, as things move forward some of the tools we use when working with our course and our Shopify stores change and to enjoy that operate. And one of the ones that we use for this course and also in this pre audit module is sem rush. Now it was a, they did have a free trial have now changed that and there's no free trial option available. I think the smallest option is a $99 per month. You don't actually need sem rush anymore. So make sure when you work through this course if there's reference to sem rush, you can certainly ignore it.

And the other change that's happened is actually Iris now I refs is updated and a lot of the information is provided Now certainly overlaps into sem rush so it'll make sense as you go through the course. There used to also be a seven day free trial with riffs and now they've changed it to a seven day trial for $7. So still, for a really cheap price, you can get all the information you need for your store as you're working through this course. So, I highly recommend you pick up that seven day trial for $7. To no brainer really to make sure you get everything, all the information you need to work through the course properly. So like I said, just an update, please ignore any reference to sem rush as you go through the course.

We will be replacing the videos in their entirety as we go on, but I just wanted to quickly make the update so people can continue going through the course. Thanks enjoy the rest of this video. Hey guys, welcome to one of the first videos in the Shopify x SEO training series. This video we're going to go through your pre audit preparation. So before we start optimizing any store and trying to improve performance rank killings and traffic, we want to get an understanding of where the store is sitting at the moment in the market for your particular product or your particular niche. So, to do this, we're going to use a number of different tools.

And we're just going to go through in this quick video and look at the tools that are required, and then how to set them up. So what we've tried to do is provide recommendations for tools that are that are free or free with a trial. So that means you can use them on a free trial. And once the free trial expires, you may want to then subscribe to those tools. However, with the free trials, we should be able to, you should be able to to obtain all the information you're required to do the audit of your site and then you can simply cancel the trial before your subscription kicks in. So these tools are pretty powerful and the tools that we Every day, if you have a quite a big store or you've got budget there for subscriptions, these tools are pretty handy to, you know, to use as reference on an ongoing basis.

So that's an option there as well. But certainly, with the free setup, you'll be able to get all the information you need. So we'll just work through them. Now, some of these for anybody who is a little more advanced. Some of these tools you'll know how to use already, so just bear with us. And we're going to work through we're going to work through the tools that require and setting them up.

So the first thing and the most obvious one is Google Webmaster Tools. So using Google and providing Google with the information they require handing it to them, is the best way for Google to then get all the information it needs. And it can go and value your site. So if you haven't done so already, you need to set up a Google Webmaster account and then include your site within that account. So we're going to go through that now. So you see Simply, first of all, you need a Gmail account.

So if you don't have one, set up your Gmail, and then you can simply head on over to google.com, slash webmasters. So I'm just going to pull, bring up, pull my screen over. And we can work through the process now of setting up Webmaster Tools for your site. So once you log into, we just click on Google here. Once you log into a Google Webmaster Tools, you'll come to this screen. And you'll be able to add your site here.

So I'm going to use an example site that we've set up. So you just put your site in here. And because Shopify, by default, is has an SSL certificate, so HTTPS, you can put in HTTPS, and then you can put in your store. And you've dropped down here to just for either an Android app or a web sites, obviously It's a website and we just click Add property. And then what it'll do, it'll go through the process and ask you to verify ownership. So there's a number of ways you can do this, you can do this through, what we'll do is pick up where the domain was actually purchased.

And for this one, it was actually named cheap. I'm not going to use this method, but I like to use easily alternate method, because we can add code to the site to verify and we go to alternate methods and then HTML tag and model do will provide you with this tag here. So then all you simply do is copy that tag and you can put it in a notepad or snap copy to your clipboard, and then head on over to your store. So one thing you need to do is make sure you've connected your store to a domain. So I'll just show you what I mean by that. Again, this is pretty rudimentary stuff.

But some of you might have not got to this point. So when you first set up your store, it's set up on a subdomain, like it is at the top here in the left hand corner. So whatever you call your store, it'll be your store.my shopify.com. To be able to add it to Webmaster Tools, you need to purchase your domain and then connect your domain to your store, which you can see it's done here. So the sub domain here, now redirects to the new domain, here, and this will be the domain of the store. So then to add your meta tag to verify, we simply go to online store.

And this now seems like it's a little bit complicated. There'll be a bit of code here, but it's pretty simple to do. And it's it's pretty hard to make a mistake. So click on actions, and then we go to Edit code. The reason I like doing it this way, it's just you hard coded into the site and then there's less chance that they'll be problems along the way. Then on the left hand side here, you'll be provided with a list of files.

And we just want to click on theme liquid on the layout. And then you'll say this, the fall card comes up here on the right hand side, and you just come down to normally, it'll be about line number four, and it'll have the head section here. So all you need to do is put your cursor just at the first part of that head section there like I've done here. And then I'm just going to click Control V, and paste the code into the head section of the code here. Click Save to that saved and then we go back to Webmaster Tools, and we're going to see whether it's actually verified. So if I click Verify now, it should tell me that it's verified correctly.

And it's not doing it at the moment. Sometimes it takes a little bit of time. Okay, what I've just realized is there's one more step You need to make sure before you can verify your domain using this method, what you need to do is make sure that your site is the down here, under preferences. And where it says enable password, you need to unclick that, and then click Save what that'll do it. When that's clicked, it puts up like a maintenance screen on the homepage of the site, and Google can actually crawl the site. So you need to unclick that, click Save, and then go and verify the site.

So then I've done that and click Continue. And now the site's verified. You can always come back and enable a password while you if you need to, if you're building a site or whatever, but once the site's verified, it's verified. But I'm just gonna leave it unclick for now. Okay, the next thing we need to do is submit our sitemap so you normally only do this once your site up and Going and at least launched and live. So click on Sitemaps.

And it's going to ask us whether we want to add a sitemap, a sitemap for your store. So now unclick the password if we go to the site, the site is now live. So the sitemap for Shopify is sitemap dot XML. And here's a sitemap here. If I had the pages neighbor products would be a lot more code section here. So we grab, copy and paste sitemap dot XML.

There we go add sitemap pasted into the section here, click Submit, then refresh the page. And it will tell us that the sitemap map is is pending. It's been added. And once Google gets around to crawling a site, the sitemap will be added. So what the sitemap is it gives Google all the pages in the The best possible way for it to crawl and it can crawl through the site and get an understanding of all the pages. Okay, and the last thing we need to do is set out international targeting on the site.

So under search traffic, we can go to international targeting. And it says he obviously that Google hasn't processed the site yet, because it's only just been added, go to country. And then you if you're targeting users, or targeting customers in a certain country, this is where you can set it. So just be aware, though, if you've got a country domain, such as.com.au or co.site.co.uk, country domain, that Google will automatically identify that as a site that's serving that country. But if you've got a domain, say you're, you have a site that's dot co.uk, but you're actually wanting to sell global Then you need to make sure that you you target users all over the world. So you'd leave this unchecked.

But if you're a business that only wants to target a specific country, you can go target users. And then you can select where you want the site to serve those users. That That doesn't mean that other people won't be able to find your site outside of that particular location. But it just provides Google with a little more information to geo locate the site. So for this particular site, I'm just gonna leave it on targeted so it's global. So that's pretty well it for Webmaster Tools for now.

When we go through auditing the site, we'll work through a lot of the elements of Google Webmaster Tools, but now you have your site set up and Google's able to crawl it through Webmaster Tools. Okay, the next tool we need to set up is sem rush comm what sem rush is is a A tool that aggregates data from all over the internet, and will pull back data for information on your particular site and your particular market. And it's a very powerful tool that we're going to use working through the audit of the site. So, what we've been able to do is negotiate a free trial with sem rush for our students. So in the show notes, there'll be a link with the link to the free trial, and then you can sign up for the free trial and I will use all the features of sem rush for that free trial period.

It's as images here, it's an all in one marketing toolkit for digital marketing professionals, location specific, and you can get a great look lots and lots of information on keyword data on total market analytics. And as we work through it, and you'll see how powerful it is. So sign up with free tool that was so the free trial That'll get us started with sem rush. The next tool we're going to set up is a refs. Similar to sem rush just provides a little bit of a different information and some further information. So we can use it as a bit of a cross reference tool.

Also very powerful, has a seven day free trial by default. And we'll just head on over to Iris now. And you can see up here in the right hand corner status in their free trial, just be aware, you will need to put credit card details in there but if you cancel the trial before the expiration of the trial, you won't be charged. So I highly recommend that you sign up for the free trial both on sem rush and Iris and once you've got the information you need for your site, you can cancel your subscriptions. The next tool we're going to use in our toolkit is site liner. This is a free tool Just pull up the URL here sightline here.

So you just need to keep this for reference. Don't need to sign up for anything here. We'll use this later on for the audit as well. And then the last tool we're going to look at is Screaming Frog, which is pull up, Screaming Frog, screaming frog.co.uk we are going to download the SEO spider tool, you can download that for free. It's a desktop application. So download it, we get up to 500 URLs, free per search.

So for most stores, that's going to be adequate if you've got a huge store. Certainly you may want to think about actually purchasing the license of the software. But even with the free 500 URLs That can be crawled. It gives you plenty of information to get started. So again, no need to purchase, can use it free, free version and to get started with our audits. Okay, so there are tools that we need to have organized to get started with our audits.

So I'll see you in the next video. And we'll get started on actually auditing the site finding out where a market is.