--- title: "SEO: improve your visibility on Google" description: "Fill in the information that helps Google and Bing index your store, improve your organic visibility and bring in more free traffic." url: https://docs.vivlab.com/en/sections/seo --- # SEO **SEO** means helping search engines, such as Google and Bing, understand your store and include it in their results. This page contains the information they use for that purpose. Setting it up carefully helps people find your site through ordinary search results, without a paid advertisement. **Indexing** means a search engine has added a page to the pages it can show in results. A **sitemap** lists your site's pages for search engines. Search Console's **impressions** count appearances in Google results; **clicks** count people following those results to your site. Come here when you launch your store and want to submit it to Google, when you connect your Google Search Console account to track your performance, or when you want to adjust the default title and description of your product pages for greater consistency. The dashboard is shown in French, with English captions. ::: details Read the video steps 1. — Replace the brand name. 2. — Check the title preview, then save. 3. — The brand name is saved and appears in the preview. ::: Your changes are saved in one go with **Save** at the top of the page, or discarded with **Cancel**. ## Site domain The **Site domain** card shows the address your visitors and search engines use to reach your site, with a **Connected** badge when a custom domain is in place, or **Temporary domain** if your store still uses the vivlabsite.com development address. The **Configure** button opens the [Domain name](https://docs.vivlab.com/en/sections/domains.md) section. The tools on this page (Search Console, IndexNow, sitemap) need a custom domain: until one is connected, each affected card shows a warning instead of its content, since search engines don't index the temporary domain. ## Google Search Console Connect your Google account to verify your site, submit your sitemap and track your performance in Google Search without leaving the dashboard. Click **Connect my Google account** and allow Vivlab to access Search Console. Once the account is linked, the **Set up automatically** button verifies your site with Google and submits your sitemap in one click; the **Site verified** and **Sitemap submitted** badges confirm everything is in place. If Google could not verify the site yet, try again a few minutes later. The card then shows your statistics for the last 28 days: **Clicks**, **Impressions**, **Click-through rate** and **Average position**, followed by the **Top queries** and **Top pages** tables. Google can take a few days to show the first data. **Open Search Console** opens Google's full interface in a new tab, and **Disconnect** revokes the access granted to Vivlab. ## IndexNow IndexNow instantly notifies compatible search engines (Bing, Yandex, Seznam…) when your site content changes, so it gets reindexed faster. Click **Submit pages** after a major update to your site. The first submission generates your key and activates IndexNow automatically; the card then shows the **Key file** address (`/indexnow.txt`, with a copy icon) and the date of the last submission. A notification confirms how many pages were submitted. ## Sitemap ::: info Glossary - **Sitemap**: an XML file that lists all the important URLs of a site. It serves as a map for search engine bots (Googlebot, Bingbot…) so they can quickly discover your content, especially deep or recently added pages that aren't yet linked from elsewhere. - **robots.txt**: A text file placed at the root of the site that tells search engine bots which URLs they can crawl or not. It isn't a security mechanism (malicious bots ignore it) but a guide that points legitimate crawlers toward the pages to index. ::: Vivlab automatically generates and updates your sitemap and your robots.txt file every time your catalog, your pages or your blog articles change, there's nothing to maintain. This section lists the six files that search engines can read to index your site. Each row shows the **File** and its full **URL**: click the copy icon on the right to grab the link, then paste it into Google Search Console or the webmaster tool of your choice. | File | Path | Indexed content | | -------------- | ------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | | **robots.txt** | `/robots.txt` | Indexing rules that tell bots which parts of the site to crawl or ignore. It's the very first file a search engine reads when arriving on your domain. | | **General** | `/sitemap.xml` | Global sitemap that aggregates the four sitemaps below. This is the one to submit first to Google Search Console: it's enough in the vast majority of cases. | | **Pages** | `/sitemap_pages.xml` | All your active [showcase pages](https://docs.vivlab.com/en/sections/pages.md) (home, institutional, contact, legal notices…). _Included in General._ | | **Categories** | `/sitemap_categories.xml` | The hierarchy of your product [categories](https://docs.vivlab.com/en/sections/collections.md), with their SEO-optimized descriptions. _Included in General._ | | **Products** | `/sitemap_products.xml` | All your active [product pages](https://docs.vivlab.com/en/sections/products.md) (excluding hidden or disabled products). _Included in General._ | | **Blog** | `/sitemap_blogs.xml` | All your published and visible [blog articles](https://docs.vivlab.com/en/sections/blogs-articles.md), as well as the [category](https://docs.vivlab.com/en/sections/blogs-categories.md) pages. _Included in General._ | Submitting only the **General** sitemap is enough in most cases, since it includes all the others. The individual sitemaps become useful when you want to track the indexing of one type of content separately, for example to spot a problem specific to the product catalog without showcase pages cluttering the Search Console statistics. If your store still uses the temporary domain, the file list is replaced by a warning: search engines don't index these links. Click **Configure** to set up a [custom domain name](https://docs.vivlab.com/en/sections/domains.md) before submitting your sitemap. ## Product SEO templates These templates automatically generate the title and the description shown in Google results for each of your [product pages](https://docs.vivlab.com/en/sections/products.md). You write the formula once, and every product fills in its own values: its name, your brand, its category or its price. The preview shows you the Google result obtained with a sample product. In **Title template**, compose the formula for the title. The buttons below the field insert a variable (**product**, **brand**, **category**, **price**) at the cursor position. Without a template, the title is simply the product name. In **Description template**, compose the text shown below the link the same way, in 300 characters maximum; the available variables are **product**, **brand** and **category**, without the price. Leave this field empty and each product page uses its own description. If you had already written a general SEO description for your catalog, you'll find it here. For a specific product, a [dedicated description](https://docs.vivlab.com/en/sections/products.md#customize-the-seo-description) entered from the product page always wins over the template. ## Page title format This card adds your brand to the end of every page title, for example "Home • Your brand". This title appears in the browser tab and as the clickable link in Google; it also completes the title generated by the product SEO template. Fill in the **Brand name** (your company name by default), pick the **Separator** among the seven presets (•, -, |, —, ·, ✦, ★) or type your own with **Custom** (5 characters maximum), and turn on **Show brand name first** to get "Your brand • Home". The **Browser tab preview** shows the result on your Home and Contact pages. ## SEO audit The [**SEO audit**](https://docs.vivlab.com/en/sections/seo-audit.md) menu entry opens a dedicated page that analyzes your site's published pages to spot what holds back your search rankings. It also needs a connected custom domain. Click **Run audit**: every published page gets a **Score** out of 100 and a number of **Alerts**. Below 50, the page struggles to be found on Google. Click a row to open the detailed report: each point to improve is explained in plain terms (why it matters, where it was spotted, how to fix it), with the possible point gain and the fix to start with. The **Export to PDF** and **Run the audit again** buttons sit at the top of the report. ::: info The **Social preview**, the generated image template for pages shared on Facebook, X, LinkedIn, WhatsApp and iMessage, is now configured from your [brand theme](https://docs.vivlab.com/en/sections/themes-brands.md). ::: ::: info These features require an active subscription. Without one, a message points it out at the top of the page. :::