Shopify SEO is essential as in other services in which content optimization is applied. In this sense, knowing how to carry out this process will allow you to obtain the best results in search engines.
In this article, we will show you some things to consider to improve the SEO of your store. Let us see:
- What does Shopify SEO mean?
- How to improve SEO on Shopify
- Other aspects to improve Shopify SEO
- Learn more about improving SEO in Shopify
1. What does Shopify SEO mean?
Shopify SEO is search engine optimization unique to this digital platform. As with common SEO, this process will allow your online store to have visibility in search engines (Google, Bing, etc.). Thus, if you do not have SEO optimization in your store, it will be very difficult to get the conversions and sales you need.
Shopify has nearly 4 million stores and over 2 million active users, so standing out is vital. Thus, you must consider the competition, organic traffic, or bounce rate to boost your store and know how to setup SEO on Shopify. Therefore, by optimizing your website for search engines, you will get more visits, conversions, sales, customers, and revenue.
2. How to improve SEO on Shopify
Using SEO will improve the Shopify rank of your online store, giving it relevance among the SERP results. This is because the most relevant results will help your store get potential customers. Therefore, you will be able to see some indications and tips to achieve position your store in Shopify.
2.1 Identify keywords for your store
Just like with regular, Shopify SEO is highly dependent on keywords. Therefore, you must identify the keywords relevant to your store that potential customers search for in their queries. On the web, there are several simple and fast ways to find relevant words and terms, such as the following tools:
- Amazon Suggest. The Amazon search bar has important data about the keywords that people search for. In this case, you can start by entering a term related to the products in your store (clothes, shoes, coffee, video games, and more). As you type, you will see keyword suggestions, where it is best to consider longer ones.
- Keyword Tools Dominator. This resource is free and will help you get relevant search terms for your Shopify SEO. Also, as you would do with the previous resource, you only have to write a word related to the products in your store.
However, choosing the right keywords for your online store can be a daunting and daunting task. However, we will show you what to consider when choosing the most relevant keywords. Thus, you should look at the following:
- Traffic potential. This metric will help you know which is the top-ranked keyword out of the set of keywords it ranks for. Hence, the higher the number, the better for your Shopify blog SEO.
- Commercial intention. Keywords with transactional and commercial intent are the best way to attract customers.
- In this case, you should prioritize keywords that have a low competition difficulty number.
- Product adjustment. The keywords you select must accurately describe the product, otherwise, you will not get conversions.
2.2 Set up your Shopify store correctly
Continuing with the process of how to do SEO on Shopify, the next thing is to correctly configure the structure of your store. In this case, we refer to internal links, collections, as well as other essential elements to have an organized site. Below, you can see some elements that contribute to this aspect:
2.2.1 Set your domain
Once you have obtained your domain name and already have your store, you need to set your preferred domain for users and search engines. Users can access your Shopify store from multiple domains, which can lead to duplicate or link dilution issues. Also, even though the portal selects the domain for you, it may select the wrong domain.
Therefore, you should focus on the version of your website that has the most links and is fully owned by you. You will be able to set your primary domain from your Domain settings in Shopify.
2.2.2 Create a logical structure
To improve Shopify SEO, you should also create a logical hierarchy of your product and detail pages. Businesses on Shopify are organized by categories, better known as collections, linked to subcategories and then to individual products. Also, you should keep the level of your collections at 2 or fewer, so users can get there with just a few clicks.
This is because the more clicks, the fewer links, and fewer users will be able to access your products, so you will have fewer conversions. Additionally, as your store grows, you must maintain order and simplicity to avoid problems. In this case, keyword research can help you create and define your collections.
2.2.3 Smooth navigation
Another essential aspect of SEO is to provide users with easy navigation and ease in finding the products. The experience you give your users that makes them want to stay longer will help you with the Shopify rank. Thus, offering logical navigation will allow users to discover products and spend more time on your site.
2.2.4 Breadcrumbs
This concept refers to the traces that the user has left to reach the page on which he/she is. As a result, this helps users on sites that contain multiple layers of subcategories. In Shopify there are 3 types of breadcrumb navigation with different hierarchical structures:
- From the browsing history. This form is not useful for search engines, although it may be useful for users.
- Attribute-Generate breadcrumbs. These serve as a filter and help search engines discover all the pages of your Shopify store.
- Hierarchy-based breadcrumbs. In this case, they are the most common and recommended since they show the main category of the product and the home page. In addition, they help to see where the site is, navigate between layers, and to understand the relationship between categories.
2.3 Shopify SEO on product and collection pages
Continuing with the Shopify SEO tutorial it is time to talk about on-page optimization. Therefore, you need to tailor the elements on-page to make them stand out in the search results. The elements that must be optimized through the appropriate strategies are detailed below:
2.3.1 Page titles
The first aspect to improve is the page title (title tag), which should have between 50 and 70 characters. However, the idea is that they do not exceed 65 characters so that they do not get cut off in the SERP. In addition, the title must contain the main keyword or a variation of it at the beginning.
In the same way, it is advisable to add some modifiers to the title, those that people commonly use when searching, such as:
- Offers.
- Better.
- Cheaper.
- Discounts.
These and other tags will help increase CTR, generate more views, and get more customers.
2.3.2 Meta description tags
The meta description is useful on your page, and through Shopify templates, you can do it easily. In this sense, Smart SEO creates meta descriptions at scale from product tokens, which include the following:
- ${title}
- ${description}
- ${sku}
- ${price}
- ${store name}
Thus, all you have to do is apply these tokens in a standard copy template and you will get optimized meta descriptions. Also, make sure that the length of the descriptions does not cover more than 155 characters and incorporates CTA (Call to Action).
2.3.3 Header tags
Shopify SEO optimization is using header tags correctly. Thus, the higher headings (H1) are for broader topics, such as the name of the product. In contrast, the lower headings (H2, H3, etc.) are for more specific topics.
Furthermore, this type of structure allows web crawlers to follow the content of any online portal. Shopify automatically sets a product name to <h1>, so you must put in the <h2> and <h3>. This is as simple as going to the product or collection page and selecting the title you want to change in the “Paragraph” tab.
2.3.4 Product Description
Although it is one of the hardest jobs, creating and optimizing the content will give you the fruits that your business needs. The essential elements that you must take into account for the optimization of the description are the following:
- Descriptions of more than 1000 words. Search engines consider content and depth within their most relevant results. However, many times it can be difficult to find so much content to describe a product but you should consider including as much detail as possible.
- Add content blocks. Part of the Shopify SEO problems is having descriptions with only H1 headers. Thus, add descriptive text to your product listings or collections, and also add a second layer of content in the body of the page. In this way, you will add more content without taking away from the quality of the user experience.
- Include the keyword. In the page description, try to include the keyword in the first 100 words and 2-4 times more naturally.
- LSI keywords. LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) refers to terms conceptually related to your keyword. You can find these words with specialized tools or by entering the keyword in Google and seeing “people also ask”.
2.3.5 Use short, keyword-rich URLs
Very long URLs are counterproductive to the SEO performance of your Shopify store. Thus, according to experts, the URLs of the pages with the best rankings in search engines are those with between 40 and 100 characters. Also, be sure to include the keyword in the URL of the page in the “URL and Identifier” field.
2.4 Find and fix Shopify SEO problems
In Shopify, you will find some technical SEO challenges that you will need to solve. Some of these issues include duplicate content, or issues in product variants, although these are fixable. Common problems and solutions are as follows:
2.4.1 Duplicate content
This problem occurs when there are 2 different URLs leading to the same or similar content. In this case, the search engines get confused and none of the duplicates make the top rankings. How said content is created is as follows:
- Duplicate product pages. Shopify creates URLs in two ways and places tags for the parent (canonical) and child (non-canonical) versions, setting the latter as a duplicate. Shopify establishes a link structure that leads to the non-canonical version of your page, the solution is to change the code “product-grid- item.liquid” like this:
From <a href =“ {{ product.url | within: current_collection }}” class=“product-grid-item”> To <a href =“{{ product.url }}” class=“product-grid-item “>.
- Duplicate collection pages. When you have large collections, you may also run into duplicates, which you can fix by updating your liquid files.
- Duplicate product variant pages. Products with slight variations (such as color) may cause duplicate content, although very rarely. Here you can take the opportunity to separate the product pages, adding long-tail keywords.
2.4.2 Optimize your Shopify Robots.txt file
To continue with Shopify SEO, you should optimize the robots.txt file so that search engines do not crawl certain pages. This is one of the essential aspects of technical SEO, and Shopify creates one for every store. This way, crawlers cannot access private pages, such as /admin, /cart, or /verify.
Moreover, it is possible to update this element but you must follow the methods of Shopify, as it is not something that simple.
2.4.3 Optimize your sitemap
A Sitemap helps search engine crawlers navigate your site. In this case, Shopify automates the process of generating and updating the sitemap. However, you will need to run constant map crawls to identify your published pages and that they are up to date.
While you cannot adjust an XML sitemap so that certain pages do not show up in search engines, you can add Shopify no index tags. In this way, the search engines discard the pages without an index that you do not want to show in the results.
Shopify noindex tag to one of your store pages, you can do the following:
- In the administration panel choose “Online store.”
- Then choose “Themes.”
- Select “Actions” and then “Edit code.”
- Next, find the “Snippets” folder and choose Product-grid-item.liquid.
- Then you will need to add the following code.
{% if template contains ‘search’ %}
<meta name =“robots” content=“noindex”>
{% endif %}
However, a SEO tool like Yoast allows you to do it more easily, just by searching for the page you want to index. Once there, you will be asked whether or not you want the page to show up in search results. Thus, if you do not want it, just choose NO, otherwise choose YES.
2.4.4 Improve site speed
This is one of the SEO optimization factors that search engines consider for ranking and visit results. Thus, to improve the speed of your Shopify site you must attend to the following:
- Disable apps your site rarely uses and allow essential ones to run.
- Compress image files (reduce their size), primarily those of home pages and collections.
- It is useful to use a tool so that images from large collections are loaded when the user arrives at the product they are looking for.
- Use Google Tags Manager to manage your tracking pixels and reduce your page load time.
2.5 Create better links
Another element that should not be missing in Shopify SEO is the links that lead to your store. For them, there are some strategies you can follow. Including the following:
- You can write blogs for third-party sites as a guest but you must follow the rules proposed by the blog owners.
- Go to sites that link to your competitors but not to your site, this, in certain cases, can help you improve your rankings.
- Blogger reviews can also attract more audiences, so reach out to reviewers of similar sites.
3. Other aspects to improve Shopify SEO
The subject of SEO in Shopify is very extensive and although with the tips above you can cover almost everything, we have a few more for you. Therefore, you will see other aspects that you can consider in the optimization of your site:
- This redirection process is useful when you need to delete pages, so the links to them will disappear. Thus, to save your prospects the hassle of a 404 error and lower your bounce rate, you should redirect. By configuring it, the user will be able to see a page with content similar to what he was looking for.
- Apps to improve Shopify SEO. You can search for apps that help improve the SEO of your store, such as Yoast SEO or Plug in SEO.
4. Learn more about improving SEO in Shopify
If you still have doubts about whether if is Shopify good for SEO, at Digitizengrow we can clear up your doubts. To contact us and hire our various services, you can do so at the number +971 43 316 688 or by email at contact@digitizengrow.com.
