Setting Up Sitemap and Robots.txt

Setting Up Sitemap and Robots.txt

Sitemaps and robots.txt files help search engines discover and index your store pages correctly. Nuvi generates both automatically, but understanding how they work lets you optimize your SEO further.

How Sitemaps Work in Nuvi

Nuvi dynamically generates a sitemap.xml file that is accessible at yourstore.com/sitemap.xml. The sitemap is rebuilt on every request and includes:

• Homepage — Your store's main page.
• Product pages — All published products with their URLs and last-modified dates.
• Collection pages — Category and collection URLs.
• Blog posts — Published articles with their slugs.
• Static pages — About, Contact, FAQ, and other CMS pages.

The sitemap automatically uses your store's domain (whether it is a Nuvi subdomain or a custom domain) by reading the request host header. You do not need to configure the domain manually.

Submitting Your Sitemap to Google

To help Google discover your pages faster:

1. Go to Google Search Console at search.google.com/search-console.
2. Add and verify your store's domain (if not already done).
3. Click "Sitemaps" in the left sidebar.
4. Enter sitemap.xml in the URL field and click "Submit".
5. Google will begin crawling the URLs in your sitemap. Check back in a few days to see the indexing status.

Understanding Robots.txt

The robots.txt file at yourstore.com/robots.txt tells search engine crawlers which pages they are allowed to access. Nuvi's default robots.txt:

User-agent: *
Allow: /
Disallow: /api/
Disallow: /app/
Sitemap: https://yourstore.com/sitemap.xml

This configuration allows crawlers to index all public storefront pages while blocking admin panel and API routes.

Customizing Robots.txt

In most cases, the default robots.txt is sufficient. However, you may want to customize it if:

• You want to block specific pages from being indexed (e.g., a staging page or a temporary landing page).
• You need to add rules for specific crawlers (e.g., blocking aggressive bots).
• You want to add additional sitemap URLs.

To customize, contact Nuvi support or use the custom code section in your theme settings. Advanced users can modify the robots.txt route handler directly.

SEO Checklist

• Verify your sitemap is accessible by visiting yourstore.com/sitemap.xml in a browser.
• Submit your sitemap to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.
• Check that robots.txt is not blocking pages you want indexed.
• Monitor the "Coverage" report in Google Search Console for crawl errors.
• Ensure every important page has a unique meta title and description.