So you’ve launched an online store on Shopify, stocking it with fantastic products and creating a sleek design.
But months go by and no sales come through.
You check online and discover that your Shopify store is buried deep in Page Two — otherwise known as Google purgatory.
This scenario highlights the importance of Shopify SEO.
According to statistics, online stores receive 35% of total traffic from search engine results pages.
And ranking on Google’s Page One may increase everyday traffic by up to thirty percent.
This blog post will teach you how to apply Shopify SEO Specialist strategies to raise the exposure of your store and draw possible clients — therefore increasing the conversion and sales potential.
Describes Shopify SEO
Shopify SEO is the technique of making a Shopify store more search engine visible. This calls for many approaches and strategies meant to appeal to search engines to your online store, so generating more natural traffic and drawing possible buyers.
The growing popularity of the platform among e-commerce enterprises drives the necessity of good Shopify SEO. BuiltWith use statistics show that Shopify is now used by as many as 4.24% of the top 10,000 websites.
Boost Shopify’s SEO With Eight Easy Steps
If you want to learn how to enhance Shopify SEO and start seeing those sales numbers grow, here are eight key steps that can help:
Step 1: Conduct thorough keyword research. Use reliable keyword tools to identify the terms potential customers use when searching for products like yours.
Step 2: Create engaging content pieces that are relevant to your products. This not only attracts visitors but also signals search engines about the relevance of your site to certain keywords.
Step 3: Learn how to enhance Shopify SEO with apps! Yoast SEO is one of the popular tools for gathering valuable insights and suggestions to improve SEO.
Another great tool for improving SEO on Shopify? Content at Scale! This all-in-one content marketing software will take care of steps 1-3 with its keyword research tool, AI writer, and SEO suite all accessible from one dashboard.
Step 4: Optimize your product pages. Incorporate your keywords into title tags, meta descriptions, product descriptions, and image alt text.
Step 5: Improve the internal linking structure of your store. Fortunately, Shopify offers easy options for adjusting links between relevant pages within the store.
Step 6: Add site breadcrumbs on each product page for better navigation. You can do this with ease in most themes offered by Shopify.
Step 7: Eliminate low-usage Shopify apps from your website to increase loading speed, which plays a vital role in ranking higher in search results.
Step 8: Lastly, keep an eye on Google Analytics. It helps monitor organic traffic, locate broken links, track customer behavior, etc.
Now let’s look at different Shopify SEO strategies based on these steps.
11 Secret Strategies for Shopify SEO
1. Create Product Variant Pages
One common issue that many online store owners encounter is duplicate content. These are essentially multiple URLs created for the same product with slight variations such as color or size.
The creation of these separate URLs often results in identical or similar product descriptions and images across different pages, which can be problematic for search engines as it becomes difficult for crawlers to determine which version is more relevant to a user’s query.
Having separate URLs for each product variation doesn’t always have to be an SEO problem. Some Shopify sites could benefit from this structure by optimizing each page for specific target keywords related to its unique attributes.
The questions to ask are:
Do you have the resources necessary to create unique content (including both text and visuals) for all your different variants? Can you effectively optimize each page with appropriate meta tags and structured data based on its particular variant?
If your answer is “yes” to both questions above, then maintaining individual URLs might work well in boosting your Shopify store’s visibility on SERPs. However, if your answer is “no” then you may be better off consolidating your product variants into fewer pages.
2. Optimize Titles and Product Descriptions
Optimizing your Shopify store’s titles and descriptions is not rocket science, but it does require a strategic approach.
First Things First: Use simple words that address customer questions. This practice enhances the user experience by providing clear, succinct information about your items or services.
Avoid keyword stuffing at all costs. Instead, aim for a natural integration of these terms.
You can use Google Trends to find broad terms related to your products and match these with the terms reported in Google Search Console. This will give you insights into what people are asking about when they search for products like yours — valuable data that you can then use for your product titles and descriptions.
In addition, consider creating reviews or comparison videos and adding them to your product descriptions. Videos have become increasingly popular among consumers as they provide visual demonstrations of how products work and what benefits they offer — making them highly engaging forms of content.
3. Conduct Keyword Research
Just like any other e-commerce store, a Shopify store needs to optimize its content for search engines. To do this effectively, you need to conduct thorough keyword research.
Look for keyword opportunities you can win with low competition or low keyword difficulty scores. However, don’t focus too much on search volume. Even if some keywords have lower volume, high conversion rates indicate their transactional nature, making them worth optimizing for.
You can also review the keywords on your site that get the most clicks or impressions from Google Search Console. This tool provides valuable insights into how users find and interact with your website on search results pages.
To come up with new ideas or variations of high-priority keywords, consider using keyword tools like Semrush, Ahrefs, or Moz.
4. Add Content to Product Pages
A common issue with Shopify stores is that product pages lack unique on-page content or use identical descriptions across multiple items.
To improve SEO and increase visibility in search engines, consider incorporating detailed and distinct descriptions for every item in your online store. While this may seem time-consuming, taking a targeted approach can streamline the process.
We recommend starting with high-priority products based on their sales performance. You can leverage Shopify’s “Sales By Product” report found under Dashboard > Analytics > Reports > Sales to identify these priority items.
This strategic approach allows you to focus your efforts where they are most likely to impact potential customers and enhance search results rankings quickly.
The next step involves working closely with copywriters or using an app like Content at Scale to create user-focused product descriptions.
Your chosen keywords should be naturally incorporated into these descriptions along with relevant details about the features of the product and the benefits that matter most to users.
5. Blog on Shopify
Google often prefers informational content over transactional content. This trend emphasizes the need to keep a blog on your Shopify store.
Many Shopify shops concentrate mostly on products and ignore content marketing during their first development. However, eliminating a blog from your online store could cause you to pass on major possibilities.
A well-kept blog is a great venue for producing and distributing educational material appealing to search engines as well as possible consumers. If Google ranks more articles or blog-style material for keywords connected to your company, then concentrating on content marketing can be a really smart approach.
Blogging can be time-consuming if you manage a small company with a small staff particularly if you are creating long-form material. But you could publish a 2900-word piece in minutes using an artificial intelligence tool like Content at Scale!
6. Optimize Images
One often overlooked aspect of how to enhance Shopify SEO is image optimization.
The first step in optimizing Shopify images is to choose the right file format for your visuals. The battle between JPG and PNG formats rages on, but each has its strengths and ideal use cases.
JPGs are generally smaller in size, making them great for product photos and other complex images where file size might be an issue.
PNGs, on the other hand, support transparency which can come in handy if you’re dealing with logos or graphics that need to blend seamlessly into different backgrounds.
Once you’ve chosen a file format, the next step is to reduce image file sizes without compromising quality. It may sound like magic but it’s entirely possible using tools like TinyPNG. This tool compresses your images while maintaining their visual integrity so they load faster — a crucial factor when it comes to both user experience and search engine rankings.
A picture may speak a thousand words, but search engines still rely heavily on text-based information. So make sure you name your files descriptively before uploading them to Shopify.
7. Send Google Search Console Your Sitemap.
Sending Google Search Console your sitemap for your store will help you improve your Shopify SEO even further. This is like providing your website with a search engine GPS.
Search engines cross your website guided by a sitemap. It provides every URL on your website together with pertinent information including when they were last updated, frequency of change, and relative importance.
You must build a sitemap before you turn it in. Although you may accomplish this by hand, using your CMS—content management system—like PHP will help you to produce one automatically. Google has more detailed guidance here.
After that, submitting a sitemap to Google is easy:
- Login to Google Search Console.
- Select “Sitemaps” from the menu on the left.
- Add your sitemap URL to the text box, then hit “Submit.”
In just three steps, you’ve paved the way for Google to discover all the hidden gems on your site.
8. Fix 404 and Redirect Errors
Did you know that unresolved 404 and redirect errors can hurt your site’s ranking? It’s like having a broken compass.
Fixing these problems not only enhances the user experience but also facilitates navigation for search engine bots.
9. Off-Page Shopify SEO Guide
Your Shopify store’s reputation management is a crucial off-page strategy that can significantly boost your site’s visibility.
A well-managed online presence builds trust among customers, leading to higher conversion rates over time.
Reputation management involves monitoring and addressing how your business is perceived online. This includes responding promptly to customer reviews, both positive and negative, and engaging with customers on social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter.
An excellent reputation leads to more clicks on your website links from search results pages (SERPs), which tells Google that you’re providing valuable content.
In addition to managing your brand’s image online, offering high-quality products and services also plays a significant role in how to enhance Shopify SEO.
For prospective customers who might be looking through several stores before deciding what to buy, quick response times help to establish confidence.
A simple return policy guarantees consumers they won’t be left with undesired products.
Above all, delivering what you offer guarantees happy consumers who will probably post good reviews – another consideration Google takes into account when ranking websites.
10. Update The Robots.txt File to Kick Out Duplicate URLs
Search engines hate redundancy. When they find duplicate content on different URLs, they get confused and don’t know which version to rank higher. This confusion can lead to lower rankings for both versions — not cool.
Duplicate URLs are like party crashers in the world of SEO, causing content duplication that can mess up your rankings. The good news is that we have our very own bouncers called robots.txt files to show these duplicates out the door.
Updating these files helps eliminate irrelevant repetitive details and ensures that Google indexes all the valuable information.
Check out this step-by-step guide from Google developers on how to do this correctly.
11. Use a Shopify App Like Fast Simon
Fast Simon is one of the top Shopify SEO apps designed to help improve the ranking of Shopify sites on SERPs. It optimizes product pages by adjusting the internal linking structure to provide product details. It also optimizes metadata based on target keywords identified through keyword research.
Beyond just improving individual page rankings, experts typically suggest adding site breadcrumbs for better user navigation — something which Fast Simon excels at, unlike WordPress platforms which require additional plugins like Yoast SEO.
By automatically generating breadcrumbs based on your website hierarchy and incorporating them onto each webpage, users will have an easier time navigating your store while also giving Google more context about how different pages relate together – further boosting overall site rankings!
