Search engine optimization is an important way for businesses to increase sales and improve site performance. You may know the importance of SEO since back in the days of keyword stuffing and clickbait copy. Ranking higher on the Google SERP is not a cup of cake for everyone. So, To rank your content higher on the first few pages of Google, the content on your site should match the user’s search intent.
It all comes down to understanding how the search engine algorithms work and how you can improve your site experience. When reaching customers globally, it all comes down to setting up and managing an online store. But if you want an online store to rank high on search results, you need to optimize the store for SEO using Shopify SEO tips.
What is Shopify SEO?
Shopify SEO means increasing the visibility of Shopify stores in the eyes of Google. In the online world of competition, the store owner needs to get the e-commerce website to stand out from the competitors, and this can be done through implementing Search engine optimization (SEO).
Users type keywords or phrases to get specific results on Google, and the search engine tends to display top-ranked websites because these websites are SEO-optimized.
According to Neil Patel, around three-quarters of users do not wish to go beyond the first page of Google. Hence, the site owner’s goal is to rank the website on the first page of Google. That’s where SEO comes into existence.
There is a direct relationship between the higher you rank on SERP, the more traffic your e-commerce website will get.
Search engine journal says that a Shopify store that ranks on the first page of SERP gets twice as much traffic as it gets on the second page. However, there is a difference between Shopify SEO and website SEO. Shopify SEO refers to optimizing not just content but also product listings.
Why is SEO Important For a Store?
1. A significant chunk of traffic comes through organic searches.
SEO is the best way to get more visitors to your store. But if you have not created an SEO strategy yet, you might miss tons of traffic and lose revenue.
Research studies from Brafton content marketing say that around 95% of the web traffic comes from the first page of search engine results in pages.
SEO-optimized online stores can turn organic traffic into customers. When SEO is done correctly, every e-commerce owner can increase traffic, boost conversions, and get more sales.
2. Reducing dependency on paid ads
If you are thinking of getting customers by flushing money into paid ads, you are on the wrong track. Moreover, Spending big bucks on advertising can consume your profit margin and leave nothing for your business.
Now, companies no longer need to allocate a certain budget to advertising. Using proper keywords can help the store owners get the desired result.
Using SEO to rank an online store can take considerable time and effort, but it can bring compounding results for your business in the long term. Therefore, SEO is considered the best acquisition channel to turn leads into customers.
3. Ranking first on SERP gives you at least 30% traffic daily.
If your site is SEO optimized and ranks well on the first page, you probably get more clicks compared to ranking on 11 pages.
4. SEO makes it easier for customers to find the store online
One of the most prominent challenges for store owners is getting people to find their store on the go. It’s easy for the store owner to convince the customer and get them interested in buying from you.
However, think of a situation wherein customers do not find the store in the first place, then you will never succeed.
Why E-Commerce Stores Do Not Rank?
They have more product pages but less informational and valuable content. The e-commerce site can rank if it has better authority and many backlinks; hence it’s easier for the store owner to rank the site on the first page of search engines.
Read Also: Shopify vs WooCommerce
Optimize Your Shopify Store With Shopify SEO Tips
Here are the 10 Shopify SEO tips to Optimize your Shopify Store-
1. Establish the site hierarchy
One of the most important Shopify SEO tips is to establish the site hierarchy. When you structure your online store, you make it simpler for visitors to navigate and make it easy for search engines to crawl the pages. According to Shopify, Shopify store rankings start with site structure.
If the store structure is complicated and lacks basic SEO practices, then search engines find it challenging to find your site.
The store owner needs to keep things short and simple, which means the store structure should be easy to navigate for the customer.
How your content is structured on the site is an important pillar for SEO success. When someone visits your store, they should be able to find the items in the shop on the go.
Research studies suggest that when customers can easily find the products on the go, they spend more time on the site, thereby improving the search rankings.
Hence, the Shopify stores should have a simplified site structure. When you follow a simple site structure, customers do not have the headache of finding products from the store. Avoid using more categorization of products and make it easy for search engines to go through it.
Content on the Shopify store can be organized using the following structure –
1 way – Homepage> product page> category page
2 way – Homepage > category page > subcategory page> product page
Here is an example of the above –
Major category – Clothing
1 Subcategory – men
2 Subcategory – Women
3 Subcategory – children
You must add an About section and a contact page on the website. These pages play a dominant role in winning customers’ trust, as they might feel that your stores are credible and trustworthy.
Additionally, never skip the search box on the e-commerce site, as it makes it easier for visitors to find what they are looking for.
2. Using data-driven keywords
Another prominent Shopify SEO tip is using Data-driven keywords. Your potential customers can find you by typing specific words or phrases on the search engine.
By typing such keywords, the first few results will show the specific results and let the customers buy from you, not from others.
Shopify stores comprise keywords and product pages; if you want to rank the store on search engines. It is possible by doing keyword research.
Consider keywords as the potatoes for your SEO strategy. Use keyword research tools such as Semrush and Ahrefs to find out the keywords related to your product and use those keywords while writing content for the Shopify store.
The other effective way of conducting keyword research is to create a checklist of at least 5 topics related to your product and ask yourself: What words or phrases are people using for this product?
Put yourself in a customer’s shoes and think of certain words or phrases for which you would likely get ranked.
Here are some other ways to research keywords for the product you are selling –
- Create a buyer persona who represents your ideal customer avatar.
- Search for various forums such as Quora and Reddit. Observe what people are talking about similar products, such as what keywords they use in conversations.
- Search by using relevant social media hashtags.
- Analyzing the competitor sites and closely monitoring titles, meta descriptions, image alt text, etc.
- Check out people also ask, and people also search for questions on Google
Here, choose those keywords that have high search volume but lower competition.
Never do keyword stuffing in your Shopify content, as it will keep your site’s ranking lower.
3. Optimize metadata for product pages.
After keyword research is conducted through keyword research tools, the next step is strategically placing those keywords throughout the Shopify store.
It’s high time for you to optimize the site. Here, you need to optimize the content using the relevant keywords. Shopify allows the business owner to optimize titles and meta descriptions for SEO.
Utilize the keywords in meta descriptions, titles, and body text to make it easy for the search engine to find your pages and understand the subject of each page.
While writing titles and meta descriptions, make sure to follow 3 Shopify SEO tips to optimize your Shopify store-
- Include target keywords
- Include long tail keywords
- The length of titles should come between 50-60 characters
Additionally, optimize the store pages with the relevant keywords. When you decide to optimize the pages, start doing it with a homepage, top-selling product pages, and product collections.
Here, you can use the keywords using a simple formula –
Keyword 1 – Shop for keyword 2 – store name
4. Improves user experience
Now, the next Shopify SEO tip is to improve the user experience of the Shopify site.
You can do so by using a few Shopify SEO tips-
- Increase your site speed because the longer the time the site takes to load, the lower your page rank will be. When visitors can seamlessly navigate through the site, and everything moves quickly, then visitors are more likely to spend time on the site.
- Your Shopify store can become faster by using well-optimized images and mobile-friendly themes. Use images that are as per Shopify recommendations. If images are larger, try to compress images using tools such as tiny JPG.
- Avoid adding animations and sliders on the site; it will reduce the site’s speed.
- Use a responsive theme so the Shopify store can work on any device, including smartphones, tablets, and desktops. Search engines like Google are always searching for a site that provides an easy-to-navigate interface to the users, which improves the rankings of the site and brings more repeat customers.
- Your site must be mobile responsive as the majority of customers love to shop using their mobile phones.
Also Read: Shopify Theme Development: Ultimate Guide
5. Begin Blogs
Why not start a blog on your Shopify site and guide them throughout their journey?
Creating blogs on Shopify stores increases the chances of getting more leads and, at the same time, increases the possibility of ranking the site on search engines.
Even Shopify allows store owners to add a blog to a site and post those blogs to drive traffic. However, many e-commerce stores are not adding blogs to their online stores. The primary motto of an e-commerce site is to get more revenue, which is entirely possible by posting more informational content.
Here are the golden Shopify SEO tips for someone who is running an e-commerce store –
- Identify the top keywords and conduct a manual Google search on those keywords.
- Observe what type of content is ranking high on Google. Is it more informational or transactional?
- Lastly, analyze your content, and if there are no blogs on those keywords and it matches the user’s search intent, consider coming up with such high-quality content pieces.
Another essential Shopify SEO tip for the Shopify website is to use more videos and produce engaging product page content. With unlimited video editing, you can create high-quality, personalized videos that resonate with your audience and showcase your products in the best light. Engaging content like this has the potential to hook visitors, keeping them on the site for a longer time and increasing the likelihood of conversion.
Incorporating AI video editing tools can streamline the process of creating high-quality videos, making it easier to enhance your product pages.
When search engines realize that customers love your content and spend more time on it, they are likely to push the content on the first page of SERP.
7. Rank higher with content marketing.
Content is something that pushes people to come to your site. You will likely get leads if you put time and effort into creating high-quality and original content. Many e-commerce site owners have been struggling with what they need to write. So, store owners should start by writing about what their customers are asking for.
Content is a goldmine for businesses as it lets the customers know about your brand, giving you more leads.
Blogs have proven to have great results for many businesses, and you, too, can boost your Shopify SEO rankings.
Additionally, adding reviews of customers can prove to be worthy for your business as it can generate loads of traffic on the e-commerce site. Giving a solid FAQ page to your customers covering the potential answers might help them out and their search ends with it.
To optimize the site rankings for an e-commerce store, here are the 4 major tools that can help you do so –
a. Plugin SEO
It is a tool that keeps on updating all the time when there is a change in a search engine’s algorithms. This tool helps store owners save time, helping them fix SEO issues and, at the same time, improving their SEO score.
It gives them deeper insights by telling the store owners where the Shopify SEO is and how they can improve it.
The tool gives you suggestions on improving store search rankings, page views, and conversions; check your meta descriptions, headings, and article structure to ensure your site is well optimized.
b. Smart SEO
It helps e-commerce store owners improve the search rankings of their store and gives access to SEO issues such as meta tags, page speed, image optimization, etc. Not only that, but it also automatically checks and fixes the broken links in the store.
c. SEO image optimizer
Google demotes those websites that do not follow best SEO practices.
The store owner needs to optimize images, and at the same time, ensure that the quality of images is top-notch. Hence, an image optimizer tool can speed up your site without compromising quality images.
d. SEMRUSH
It is a great keyword research tool that can help you find out the top keywords your competitors are ranking for and observe which pages of competitors’ sites are getting the most traffic.
SEMRUSH (a keyword research tool) can give you access to more data and insights to outperform competitors.
9. Build links to your store.
Link building is when your site starts getting links back from another site. Links are an effective way that googles consider for ranking an e-commerce site. By link building, we are not telling you to buy links. Instead, monthly link building services help ensure a consistent and natural approach to acquiring quality backlinks.
Building links to your store can establish credibility and make your site trustworthy in the eyes of search engines and potential customers.
Here are some strategies that can help you to get more links to your store –
a. Manufacturer links
If you are selling products manufactured by established companies, there is usually a policy that the retailers can get backlinks from them. The best way to build links for the store is to send them an e-mail and ask them to link to your store.
b. Influencer voices
Another way is to reach out to top industry leaders or influencers, ask them for an interview session, and get their links.
c. Mentions
It might be possible that you have been mentioned in various places without being linked. So, To find who has mentioned you in their content, you can use mentions.com. Just send them an e-mail and ask them to link it back to your site.
d. Broken links
Here, you need to dig deeper and find broken links to the competitor’s site which is offering similar types of products as you are doing.
When you find them, you can now reach out to the site owner, tell them about the broken links, and ask them to link back to your site. You already know that broken links affect SEO and site performance.
Hence, it’s a win-win situation for both – repair a backlink and get a backlink.
While social networking does not directly affect search engine rankings for your articles and blog posts, it may be an effective additional tool when used in conjunction with other SEO strategies. Post links to your articles or blog posts on social media to maybe drive more people to your website. In addition to raising brand awareness, this improves your chances of obtaining backlinks.
Final Thoughts….
If you are thinking of ranking your store on Google, then consider implementing Shopify SEO tips for Shopify stores.
If you think using Shopify can generate leads for your business, you are on the rollercoaster side, you must do various things ranging from doing keyword research, creating quality content pieces, and getting backlinks.
Optimizing your store for SEO might feel overwhelming for you in the beginning but once you get the hang of it, SEO can turn into a flywheel for your business.
If you are having any issues with SEO for your Shopify store, you can hire top rated Shopify app developers or go through our Shopify app development services.
Also Read: VR In ECommerce
FAQs
Q1. Is Shopify good for SEO?
Yes, for most parts. Shopify is good for SEO. It is because of the following reasons –
- Shopify can tell you about the preview of how the site appears on the search result pages. It allows the merchants to write page titles and descriptions, add alt tags for images, and add blogs to an online store to help you optimize the e-commerce store.
- The site structure of Shopify is well organized. For instance – Home page > Category page> Product page
- Shopify stores are well optimized for mobiles as these stores are mobile-friendly.
Q2. How much does Shopify charge for SEO?
Shopify charges $999 per month for SEO
Here are the best SEO tools for Shopify –
- Plugin SEO
- Smart SEO
- SEO image optimizer
- TinyIMG
Q4. Is Shopify as good as WordPress for SEO?
Shopify is better than WordPress in Technical SEO, Performance, and Accessibility with the help of its proprietary platform Liquid.js. On the other hand, WordPress has numerous powerful tools and plugins for On-Page SEO because of various plugins such as Rank Math, Yoast SEO, etc.
