SEO on IndieMade: Getting Your Store Found on Google

Search engine optimization (SEO) is how your store shows up when someone types "hand thrown stoneware mug" into Google. Most people find it confusing because every source says everything matters. It does not. This page says what matters for a small shop, what IndieMade does for you, and the few settings worth changing.

What matters, and what does not

Search engines read three things on every page: the title, the words on the page, and the web address. The title and the words do nearly all the work. Google calls words in the address a "very, very lightweight" factor.

What matters, in order:

  1. The page title. The single biggest signal. Say what the item is, in the words a shopper would type. Be specific. You will not reach the first page for "mug" or "necklace". Amazon and Etsy own those. You can for "hand thrown stoneware mug with blue glaze". Use the material, the style, the technique, the occasion.
  2. The words on the page. A real description in plain language, not a list of tags.
  3. Photos with descriptions. The image description is the alt text Google Images reads, and Google Images sends shoppers to handmade products.
  4. Being linked to. Pins, blog mentions, your Etsy "about" page, your social profiles.
  5. A fast page that works on a phone. IndieMade handles this.
  6. Time. Rank builds over months at a stable address. Do not reset it.

What does not matter, or barely:

  • Words in the web address. Near zero.
  • Changing the address to match a new title. Costs rank, gains nothing.
  • The sitemap. Does not hurt, never ranks a page.
  • Meta keywords. Google has ignored them since 2009.
  • Stuffing the title with every keyword. Google rewrites titles it thinks are spam.
  • Submitting your site to Google. It finds you.

What IndieMade does for you

All of this is on for every store. You do not need to touch it.

  • Titles and descriptions. Every product, page, category, blog post and gallery gets a search title from its name and a search description from the first 155 characters of its text.
  • A web address, set once. Each item gets a clean address from its first title, like /blue-ceramic-mug. After that it stays put, even when you change the title. More below.
  • A sitemap and a robots file. Your store serves yourshop.com/sitemap.xml, a list of every public product, page, blog post and category, and yourshop.com/robots.txt, which tells search engines to skip your cart and dashboard and points them at the sitemap. Both work on your IndieMade address and your custom domain.
  • Product data Google can read. Each product page publishes its name, price, stock status, your shop name as the brand and its SKU in a format Google understands. If the product has reviews, the average rating and count go along too. That is what lets Google show stars under your listing.
  • Shop and breadcrumb data. Your shop name, logo and the path to each page (Home › Mugs › Blue Ceramic Mug) are published as well.
  • Unpublished products disappear cleanly. An unpublished product's page returns "page not found", so Google drops it instead of keeping a dead link. Publish it again and the page comes back.
  • Private listings stay hidden. A private or password-protected product is left out of the sitemap and asks search engines not to index it. See Private Listings.

The SEO settings page

Go to Dashboard → Settings → Search Engines (SEO). It has four parts: Web addresses, Moving here, Page titles, and Tell Google. Each setting explains itself on the page. The longer version is here.

Web addresses

Each product and page gets its web address once, from its first title. After that it stays put, even if you change the title. That is on purpose. Google cares about your title and your words, not the address. Links, pins and shares all point at the address, so keeping it protects them. Google treats an address change as a site move: weeks to settle, and a small loss each time.

Want a different address for one item? Open the item and type the new address in its Custom URL box. The old address redirects to the new one, so nothing breaks. Use lowercase words joined by hyphens. Short beats long.

Update my web addresses when I change a title is a shop-wide switch, off by default. Most shops should leave it off. Turn it on only if you want every address to match its title. Old addresses still redirect, but each rename asks Google to re-learn the page.

Two bits of folklore to retire. "Keywords in the URL rank you": near zero. "The URL must match the title or Google gets confused": Google reads the title and the words on the page. What is real: a clear address gets a few more clicks from humans, and a misleading one, like /blue-shirts selling red shirts, is worth fixing once, by hand, with Custom URL.

One example. You have a /blue-shirts page that has ranked well for years, and the trend is now red. Rename the title to Red Shirts and keep the address: every link and all the history stay, and Google ranks you on the new title. Better still, red shirts are a new product. List them, keep blue shirts, and rank for both.

Moving from another platform

If your shop lived on Etsy, Shopify, Squarespace or another platform, Google and your old links still know those addresses. Every old link that lands on "page not found" costs you a shopper and a bit of ranking. Keep as many old addresses as you can.

  • Simplest: open each product or page and set its Custom URL to the path it had before, for example /products/ceramic-mug. Old links land on the right item and Google carries the history across.
  • When the old address cannot be reused: a redirect does the same job. Search engines call it a 301. Email support@indiemade.com with your old addresses, usually an export from your old platform, and we will build them. If you use an AI assistant through our connector, give it the old addresses and ask it to add the redirects.
  • When the move is done, tell Google Search Console under Settings → Change of address.

Page titles

The title is what search engines weigh most and what shows in the browser tab. Every product, page and category uses its own name as its title. You can write a different one for any item in its SEO title box.

  • Add my site name to the end of page titles gives "Ceramic Mug | Shop Name". It keeps your shop name next to every result. Turn it off if your site name is long and crowds out the product name.
  • Homepage title is optional. Search engines and browser tabs show it for the homepage, exactly as typed. Blank means your site name. It is the one place a longer phrase like "Shop Name - Handmade Ceramic Mugs" fits without cutting off other pages.

Tell Google about your site

This part shows your sitemap address with a Copy sitemap address button, and a link to your robots file. There is nothing to set. Paste the sitemap address into Google Search Console once, under Sitemaps, and move on. A sitemap does not make a page rank. It helps new pages get found a little sooner, and Search Console then shows which pages Google has and has not picked up.

SEO on one item

Open any product, page, blog post or gallery and look for the Search engine optimization (SEO) section near the bottom of the edit form.

  • SEO Title — what Google shows as the blue link. Blank uses the item's name.
  • SEO Description — the grey text under the link. Blank uses the first 155 characters of your text.
  • Custom URL — the web address. Blank keeps the address the item already has. Type one to change it on purpose, with a redirect.

For most items the automatic values are right. Fill them in when a title is long, when the first sentence of your description is not the best summary, or when you want to aim at a specific phrase shoppers type.

Categories have the same SEO title and description, plus a rich-text description that shows on the category page. A category page with a real paragraph about what is in it ranks better than an empty grid. Go to Dashboard → Products → Categories and edit a category. See Managing Product Categories.

Many products at once: go to Dashboard → Products, tick the products, and choose Search & Replace from the bulk actions. It finds and replaces text in SEO titles and descriptions as well as product titles and descriptions. Preview first, then run it. See Bulk Editing Products.

Your custom domain

If you use your own domain, your store can be reached at two addresses: yourshop.indiemade.com and www.yourshop.com. Google treats those as two sites and splits your ranking between them. The fix is a permanent redirect from the IndieMade address to your domain, so there is one address and all the credit goes to it. Email support@indiemade.com and ask for the redirect to be turned on. Your Google Shopping and Pinterest feeds keep working from either address. See Setting up a Custom Domain.

Writing that helps you rank

  • Use the words shoppers type. "Sterling silver hoop earrings" beats "Luna Collection No. 4". Put the plain description in the title and the creative name after it.
  • Start descriptions with the useful sentence. The first 155 characters become the search description unless you write your own. Lead with what it is, what it is made of and who it is for.
  • Give each image a description. Say what is in the picture.
  • Write category descriptions. A paragraph about your mugs on the Mugs page gives Google a page worth ranking for "handmade mugs".
  • Keep a blog. Fresh pages about your process, materials and shows are the easiest way to add new search content. See Adding a Blog on IndieMade.
  • Collect reviews. Reviews feed the star rating Google can show. See Getting More Reviews.
  • Leave addresses alone. Rank builds at a stable address over months. Change a title whenever you like. Change an address only when it is wrong.

Checking your results

Three tools tell you whether your SEO is working. They answer different questions, and they do not overlap much, so most shops end up using all three.

IndieMade Analytics: who came, and from where

Every IndieMade shop includes the Analytics add-on. It is switched on from the first day of your trial and there is nothing to install. Open it at Dashboard → Analytics. The full tour is on Analytics.

For SEO, the reports to watch are:

  • Visits by traffic source — how much of your traffic comes from search engines versus social, direct visits and other websites.
  • Search engines — which engines send you visitors (Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo and so on).
  • Landing pages — the first page a visitor lands on. If a product page shows up here, people are finding it in search.
  • Most viewed pages and Product views — what visitors look at once they arrive.
  • Visitors over time — the trend. SEO changes take weeks to show, so look at months, not days.

Each report has a chart, a date range and a CSV export. Plus shops also get Advanced Analytics, which adds reports like what shoppers searched for inside your store and did not find. That is a good source of words to put in your titles and descriptions.

Google Search Console: what Google thinks of your store

Analytics tells you about people who reached your site. Google Search Console tells you about the people who saw your store in Google and did not click, and about pages Google could not index at all. It is free, it is the only place this information exists, and every shop should set it up.

  1. Go to search.google.com/search-console and sign in with a Google account.
  2. Click Add property and choose URL prefix. Enter your store address, for example https://yourshop.indiemade.com or https://www.yourshop.com if you use a custom domain.
  3. Pick the HTML tag method to verify you own the site. Google gives you a line of code that starts with <meta name="google-site-verification". Copy the whole line.
  4. In your IndieMade dashboard go to Settings → Advanced → Add to Head, click Add New Profile, give it a name like "Search Console", paste the line into the Code box, and save.
  5. Back in Search Console, click Verify.
  6. In the left menu choose Sitemaps, enter sitemap.xml, and click Submit.

Give it a few days to fill in. Then check:

  • Performance — the exact search phrases people typed, how many times your store appeared, how many clicked, and your average position. If a phrase gets lots of views and few clicks, improve that page's SEO title and description.
  • Pages (under Indexing) — which pages Google has indexed and which it skipped, with the reason.
  • Shopping and Enhancements — whether Google read your product data and ratings correctly.

Google Analytics: optional, for deeper tracking

Google Analytics is Google's own visitor-tracking tool. It covers much of the same ground as IndieMade Analytics, in more detail and with a steeper learning curve. You do not need it to do good SEO. Add it if you already use it for other sites, if you run Google Ads, or if you want to build custom reports. See How to add Google Analytics to an IndieMade Website.

Google Shopping

Search results and Google Shopping are two different things. To list your products in the Shopping tab and in Shopping ads, see Google Merchant Center.

Questions? Email support@indiemade.com.