5 Big Deal SEO Updates You Asked For

In the past few weeks the Shazamme team has been working hard to deliver on some SEO features you asked for. So now we’re happy to update that we’ve added the following SEO capabilities.

Upload your custom sitemap, robots.txt and other files

By default, Shazamme automatically generates sitemap.xml and robots.txt files for each site. If you want to replace these with your own custom files, now you can. The new custom file upload option also supports ads.txt so feel free to upload it too, if you need to. 

To access the file upload, go to SEO & Site Settings in the editor, then scroll down to Custom sitemap, robots.txt & other files. If you need help, please see this Article

You can also use this to upload certain files like .json, .xml, .js and .txt to any path on the root of the domain. This gives you more flexibility to add your own files that Shazamme might not generate, like security.txt, humans.txt, ChatGPT indexing rules and others.

Store and multilingual pages now included in Shazamme's default sitemap

To help you with your site’s SEO optimization, Shazamme’s default sitemap file will now include store pages (if the site includes one), and your site’s translated multilingual pages. All of this is done automatically behind the scenes for you, so you don’t have to do anything.

Additional no index & no follow settings in the platform

We’ve added several no index and no follow settings to give you more control over what search engines can crawl and index as you build sites for clients. Here’s what you can now set to no index and no follow in the platform:

#1 The entire site

Tell Google and other search engines not to crawl and index the entire site. To do this, go to the SEO & Site Settings section, then scroll down to Set the entire site to no index, and click the toggle button to turn this on or off.

#2 Blog posts

You can choose to set a specific post to no index. To do this, go to that post’s settings and scroll down to Set post to no index. Click the toggle button to turn this on or off.

#3 External links

When adding a link to your site, you’ll see that we’ve updated the Website URL linking settings. Now when you add an external link, you can check one or more of these new checkbox options: no follow, sponsored link (to tell search engines this link was paid for), and User Generated Content (to tell search engines this link’s authority and reliability can’t be vouched for).

#4 Downloadable files

Now you can set a downloadable file on your site to no index. This can be a good idea if, for example, your client’s site contains files that may serve site visitors, but might not align with the site’s overall SEO optimization. To do this, open the Media Manager and go to the Files tab. Select the file in question and then check the Set file to no index box below it. 

New Google Tag Manager integration

We’ve integrated Google’s Tag Manager right into your site’s SEO & Site Settings, under Google Tools (formerly Google Analytics). The Google Tag Manager allows you to install and manage different marketing tags without any use of code. Some examples include Google Ads conversion scripts, Meta Pixel code, remarketing tags and more. 

This adds Google Tag Manager into every page of your site for you automatically, and follows Shazamme’s recommended best practices for performance. 

To enable the Tag Manager on your site, simply enter your Google Container ID, formatted as GTM-XXXXXX.

Add images’ alt text in the Tabs widget

We’ve added an image alt text field you can use in the Tabs widget, to provide details about each tab’s image. Adding image alt tags is important because it lets search engines better understand what the purpose of the image is. In addition, the alt tag serves as an accessibility aid for site visitors who aren’t able to view the image.

These are the recent SEO capabilities we've added to the platform. As we continue to add more capabilities to the platform, we're excited to know these updates will help to boost your workflow, the sites you build and your clients' businesses.