Shopify is growing in popularity. According to their About webpage, they boast that 1.7 million companies use their services. Other estimates suggest that Shopify could lie or that it’s been a while since they updated their website. According to estimates, over 3.2 million sites use Shopify as a platform. It also shows that W3 is the most popular. Although Shopify isn’t quite as well-known as other platforms not devoted to e-commerce, such as WordPress and Magento, it’s more likely to be employed by sites with high traffic.
You get the idea: a lot of people use Shopify. If you’re reading this probably, you’re using it too. It’s a fantastic e-commerce site that is easy to use and secure; it can do much straight out of the box.
However, as you’ve guessed, we’re always trying to figure out how we can make our sites more efficient, including websites that run on Shopify. This is the most comprehensive Shopify SEO tutorial. It’ll assist you in improving your Shopify website’s ranking on Google and other search engines.
We’ll go above and beyond the basics as well. If you follow this guideline, it is possible to improve your rank. Still, your customers’ satisfaction will improve by making your website more user-friendly, loading faster, and relevant to your client’s desires and requirements.
Be aware that this guide is fast, and aside from its “Start with the basics” section, we assume you’ve already mastered a solid base of technical expertise. We’ll provide the technical terminology and acronyms to make it a guide for intermediate users. This is particularly true of the more technical parts – “Duplicate content, crawling, and indexing” and “Improving site speed.” People who are relatively new to the field and have a little knowledge of SEO but aren’t confident in the technical details can skip these sections.
There’s an amount to discuss here, so let’s jump into it.
Begin by learning the basic
All the SEO efforts in the world will not be worth a dime without foundation. We’ll cover the basics of SEO; without them, any of our other suggestions will be worth much.
If you’re confident that you’ve got the basics down, then use the headings as a list and skim over most of the section. Do not skip anything; simply nod your head while reiterating what you’ve already learned. Whatever you want to do is fine with us.
Get a top domain name.
It’s not difficult to see. If you want to rank on the internet, you’ll require the right domain. Pay for your domain every year, and make sure you take the time to choose the right one! Note that the TLD you use has a negligible influence on SEO – you can use .com, .net, .whateveryourcountrysTLDis.
When you’re not sure of a suitable domain, Shopify has a domain name generator that you can use. Great for brainstorming!
Make use of to purchase the premium version of Shopify.
Maybe this is a given; We’ll say it nonetheless. The fundamentals, don’t you think? If you’re on an evaluation version of Shopify and have not used it for a long time, the work you’re about to invest in your SEO will vanish after the trial. If you’re trying out the software with Shopify, you are welcome to take advantage of the trial; however, for those who want to see lasting results, it’ll cost you a little bit.
Use Google Analytics
Google Analytics is one of the essential tools used for everything SEO. The gathering of data and SEO are closely connected. If you don’t know the keywords being searched for, the person visiting your site and what methods they’re using to locate your site, you’re not able to improve your SEO very effectively.
We might, at some point, write an article about the setup and use of Google Analytics – let us know if this is that interests you! In the meantime, look at the Shopify Google Analytics setup guide.
SEO applications along with SEO firms
There are a variety of SEO tools that are free or paid and applications you can utilize to discover issues on your Shopify website. As you’ll discover, there are reasons not to use these apps. The more apps you use and the more performance issues you’ll encounter. If you’re a novice to SEO and require some guidance, applications like Plug-In SEO can help.
There are also tools such as Screaming Frog to assess the quality of your internal and external links. There are many more tools than we could perhaps discuss in this article – but if they are relevant to any of our SEO strategies during the process of this guide, we’ll notify you.
Our most important tip is? Find an SEO agency to handle all the work for you. They already have every tool you’ll ever need – even more importantly, they know how to utilize them. They also have information and strategies that can only be accessed when you’ve worked in the SEO business for a long time. Simply delegating your SEO to experts is possible to save time and money.
The basics are covered. Let’s start optimizing!
Keywords and optimization of content
You can do many technical things to boost the performance of your Shopify site’s SEO. We’ll look at those. However, let’s start by focusing on one of the primary aspects of content optimization.
The basic concept is that to attract people to your website, you must have content. There’s more to it than a page for products (though we’ll also optimize them). There will be blogs. The content you put on your site must be distinctive and relevant.
However, before we write new and exciting content for your website, we must know what people looking for your product are looking for.
This means that we must…
Keywords research
The first stage of any successful SEO Content strategy. You’ll find keywords that people are looking for and are directly linked to your products. Keywords are all associated with attributes that can be tracked. They include:
- How many people are looking for the term
- Competitors: how difficult is it to rank highly on the search engine for the phrase you want to rank for?
- Relevance: How relevant the term is to your company
- Intent, which we’ll be discussing in the next
While relevance will help you determine if the query you’re looking for will likely be asked by someone interested in your product and services, the intent will tell us why they’re doing a certain search. This can help you identify what stage in the funnel the user is in and create content specifically for the specific part of your funnel.
These search intentions include:
- Informational: Most often top of the line, These questions are made by those who wish to know more about a particular subject.
- Navigational: People use search engines to get to the site they want to visit. It’s not necessary to make your site more navigable. They’re just Google-ing your homepage.
- Transactional: These are usually the ones who would like to purchase. The pages of products are optimized for purchase intention.
- Commercial: They’re generally middle of the road – they’re looking for “best,” “cheapest,” or other things. Listicles and posts designed to push the needle towards your business are ideal for these terms.
You’ll require the right tools to conduct keyword research for search engine optimization. It is also important to consider the keywords you think prospective customers are likely searching for.
The best keywords are widely searched and relevant and have little competition. Naturally, these keywords are not common. Therefore, focusing on the so-called long-tail keywords is often more beneficial. These words with low competition are used less often yet are relevant to your company and the products you offer.
When you begin to build up long-tail keywords, your website is likely to gain credibility through search engines, and your site will begin appearing on the top pages. Then, you can start targeting shorter, less relevant keywords.
Meta Titles and Meta Descriptions
Shopify has a page that explains how you can include titles and meta descriptions to your web pages. Your research on keywords is getting results, and you’ll be able to incorporate keywords that you’re interested in in the page’s title and meta description.
The art of creating great titles and meta descriptions isn’t quite as easy as just putting in the most keywords you can. Loading too many keywords signals that you’re keyword-stuffed, which can have serious negative effects.
Include your targeted keyword in the title; it should be at the top of the name. Then, you can add your name in the middle of the title and add an incentive to click, such as “Free shipping” or “On sale” towards the final.
We’ll discuss headings in a little bit in the absence of the most specific conditions; your page’s title and H1 must be identical. However, Shopify will do this automatically, so you don’t have to fret over it.
Consider the meta-description as an elevator pitch. It’s a short overview of your website, including keywords for your target and a call to action. Making it short at 160 characters or less is the best. Include your keywords and the most relevant copy being inside the first 100 characters or less.
You are free to experiment and get creative in your meta descriptions – they’re not an exact science. A well-placed joke or another thing that helps you stand out could help. If you have multiple pages, You can also multivariate test the meta descriptions of your pages.
Optimizing URLs
Shopify does a decent job of creating URL users. However, you may discover that the URL they generate doesn’t fit your requirements. If this happens, it’s fairly simple to alter the URL. It is possible to change your URL the same way you modify the title of your page and meta description.
It’s important to note that Shopify URLs often include the words /products/ or similar. You can’t modify that portion of your URL. While this isn’t the ideal choice for SEO, The only way to get around it is to begin hosting your website on a different platform and then only use Shopify for its e-commerce capabilities. It’s not the best solution in any way. But don’t fret. Using the words /blogs/ or /products within your URL isn’t an SEO cause by any stretch of the imagination.
Your URLs must also match the title of your page. This stops users from clicking for fear of coming to the wrong page. Also, it ensures that the targeted keywords will appear in your page’s URL and title.
Optimizing product descriptions
Descriptions of products are the mainstay of optimization of keywords in Shopify. It’s a bit of a tightrope because you’ll want your descriptions of products to be informative and keyword-rich. It is also possible to add anchor texts within your product description.
It’s much, but fortunately, your descriptions of your products could be as extensive or brief as you’d like them to be. In this article, we’ll offer a piece of advice that might seem contradictory.
Do it if you are forced to compromise SEO principles to gain clarity.
The priority is to ensure that the potential buyer knows they are interested in purchasing the product you offer. If every person who comes on your site purchases what you offer, this sends highly good messages to Google that those searching for certain keywords want the product you offer.
There’s a good thing: A well-written description of your product almost does not compromise SEO principles. It will be keyword-rich since your prospective buyers are searching at those specific keywords, and your product is answers to their queries.
Here’s an illustration. Let’s suppose you have an apparel store that makes use of top-quality, ethically sourced materials. You’re designing a simple cotton t-shirt. You could use keywords such as “ethical fashion” or “best cotton t-shirt.”
It’s simple to envision how your product description could contain these phrases. “To be the most ethical label for fashion, we’ve designed what we believe is the most comfortable cotton shirt. Made in America and made of 100 100% cotton shirt is comfortable and lightweight. Layer it for a more formal look or wear it by itself to create a casual style”.
In this article, we’ve informed our clients about our product, why it’s distinctive and how it will benefit them. We’ve even given them a little insight into our company. It doesn’t seem off-putting even though we’ve added various keywords.
Use blogs to draw customers to your shop.
Although descriptions of your products are bread and butter occasionally, it’s a little more appealing to draw people to visit your store. This is why blog posts are so important.
Blog posts are usually used to attract top-of-the-line (and certain middle-of-funnel) customers. They are ideal for those who aren’t aware of your business or for interested people. The best part is that you can use them to focus on the right keywords with informational content.
Descriptions of product descriptions, as you know, are best for commercial and transactional intention keywords. We’d like to attract buyers who are likely to purchase and hope they’ll come across your page, fall in love with it, and then add it to their shopping carts immediately.
Through blog posts, we can address key phrases such as “What makes fashion ethical” and “Why is fast fashion so problematic.” These are long-tail keywords we mentioned earlier. These are things that aren’t searched frequently yet are relevant to your business’s field of expertise.
If someone is looking up these questions and we’re operating an ethical shop for fashion that sells ethical clothing, they’re likely in ethical fashion. If we can answer their questions, we’ve provided them with a service at no cost. It means they’ll get an enjoyable first encounter with our brand, and it could make them more likely to purchase.
Blogs should be posted regularly, at minimum, every month, but it’s even better when you post at least once weekly. The fact that you update your website tells the search engines that your company is active and offers you an opportunity to produce appealing, optimized content for search engines.
Make sure to think about image optimization.
We’ll be talking further about optimizing images when we move into the more technical portions of this article. More specifically, we’ll be discussing compressing images. In the meantime, we’ll talk about naming images and alt text.
The principle is that it is recommended to include alt text in every image you upload. Alt text informs users what the image’s content is if it fails to load. It can also assist those with visual impairments navigate your website more efficiently. The best part is (for SEO reasons) that it tells search engines what your picture is.
Don’t use keywords. Make sure you use an accurate description of what the image represents. This alone could be enough to be able to hit a keyword or two. After all, if you’re promoting your brand on a cotton tee with an alt-text, “OurBrand’s cotton tee” is an excellent descriptive text and could meet your search engine requirements.
External links that are built
We’ve chosen keywords and created an array of high-quality material for you to use on your Shopify website. What’s next?
Let’s go on a short excursion – you’ll see why this is important in a second. If you’ve written an academic essay and you’re aware of the importance, it is to reference your sources. Sources are often other academic papers that also cite academic research papers. Suppose a specific paper is frequently cited and regarded as a reputable source. You could even claim it has a good amount of credibility.
Google was designed around the same principle: when many web pages are linked to a certain page, that must indicate that the page is beneficial. This gives the page greater authority and also helps it to rank higher. Pages share a portion of the authority of other sites they’re on. Also, when one page gets high rankings, the entire site is more likely to be ranked highly.
Variant pages could be your best friend.
As we know, variations of pages created by swatches will automatically redirect to the product’s main page. However, different variant pages may be created with their URLs, distinct from similar products. They will not be able to display an option to select swatches that can be clicked.
It’s your choice how you’d like to manage these different pages! It is possible to combine them by using clickable swatches. However, you may also decide to keep them separate. Separate pages are useful for testing multivariate results. They may also be useful if you have a specific demographic more inclined to favor one type of test over the other.
You can optimize your keywords for each variation – but be careful not to create a million different pages for every slight modification to the details. It’s usually unwise to do this.
You can modify your robots.txt file using Shopify!
We’re thrilled to write this piece in 2021. Why? Because Shopify has made it simple for you to gain access to your robots.txt files. This means you can block crawlers from robots.txt instead of manually adding the noindex tag on several pages.
Shopify is adept at automatically preventing things like carts, admin pages, internal searches, and orders. They may have denied access to a page you’d like to be indexed, so verify the content that’s not allowed.
Navigation on the site
There’s nothing more frustrating than a site that is difficult to navigate. What should you do if you don’t know which page you’re currently on, how to return to where you began, or what to do next?
You can leave the site and look for another.
This is precisely this kind of situation we’ll help you beware of by avoiding this article. A website that is simple to navigate is more enjoyable for users. This means increased users spending time on your website and gives clear signals to the search engine. A well-designed site is also easier for search engines to navigate, which results in greater positive feedback.
Be sure to follow the breadcrumbs.
Breadcrumb navigation is incredibly simple to integrate into your site. Every online store should have it. To help you understand the breadcrumb navigation is like this:
Screenshots were obtained from bestbuy.ca.
It is easy to pinpoint precisely where and how you reached there. Simple, useful, essential.
Adding breadcrumb navigation to Shopify could be as easy as just a few clicks, as you’ll find in the link. Make sure you add it now if it’s not yet available on your site.
Structures for sites that aren’t as deep are still your best friend.
Crawlers can be lost on websites fairly easily, and people too. To prevent this from happening, you should use the structure of your website in a shallow way.
What would a superficial structure of a site appear like? A little bit like this:
Thanks for the sitemap! Octopus.do to provide the map!
As you’ll see, the precise nature of your website’s structure could differ from this. But the idea remains the same: you should create a structure for your site which is just 3-4 layers deep. If you go beyond that, it’s difficult to navigate your site, even with breadcrumbs!
Naturally, there are some exceptions to everything. Big retailers usually have more complex site structures because they require subcategories for their subcategories and subcategories. The majority of SMB online shops are not, however, going to have to be concerned about excessively extensive site structures.
Make use of collections to simplify navigation.
“Collections” is what Shopify is known as categories. It’s not a surprise that you should categorize the items you sell. For instance, if you’re a clothing shop – you’ll probably need collections of men’s, children’s and women’s clothes.
It is possible to build collections by hand, and several items may appear in multiple collections (though it could result in some odd internal linking behavior that we’ll discuss in the future).
The most effective way to create collections, in most instances, is, however, to build collections automatically. Tag each item on your store with various tags, and then create the collection to add items tagged with specific tags when they are added. Tags provide a variety of features that extend beyond search engine optimization and website structure; however, we strongly encourage you to understand how to use tags.
Conclusion
We’ve covered a lot of ground in this webpage, starting from the most fundamental to most complex aspects that comprise Shopify SEO.
If you can tackle this task on your own, then great job. As you can see, there’s a lot involved in optimizing websites and the more work you put into it, the more benefit you’ll gain from it.
The thing is: SEO is not a one-time endeavor. Starting with updating the blog each week, implementing an external linking strategy, ensuring that your structured information is current and updating your sitemap, you’ll have to improve your SEO each time you add new content to your website.
This is an enormous amount of work. However, you don’t have to tackle it all on your own. You could let us take care of all of it. We’re Shopify experts, and our SEO services for e-commerce cover everything we’ve covered here, plus many other things.
