1. How compatible is Shopify with natural SEO?
Given the high praise Shopify has received as an e-commerce platform, you might be wondering how SEO-friendly it is right out of the box.
Shopify offers lots of SEO features right from the start, such as automatically generated sitemaps, editable title tags, meta descriptions, URLs, image alt tags, a free SSL certificate, and more.
Is Shopify good for SEO? Yes!
That said, it's still not the most ideal platform for SEO. There are lots of things you can do to climb the rankings. So, if you plan to improvise, you simply won't reach the true heights of your store's potential.
By making various SEO improvements, from the most basic to the most advanced, while choosing the right theme and adding the right applications, you will quickly put your store in a position to achieve the best rankings on Google. You don't have to be a Shopify SEO expert to rank highly.
2. Shopify On-Page Enhancements
On-page SEO refers to the practice of optimizing your store's internal pages to improve their search engine rankings. It includes various factors such as the quality of your code, the textual and visual content, the HTML tags you use, the usability of your site, and much more.
All of these factors are under your control, so start optimizing your store's rankings by managing your On-Page SEO with Shopify.
Basic Shopify on-page improvements
Before moving to the next level, ensure that all of the basic elements on the page are correct. Here's how to improve SEO on Shopify with on-page improvements.
Optimize page titles on Shopify
First, write compelling page titles that people will want to click on. If including keywords in your titles is important for crawlers, make sure they're not stuffed with keywords and that they're interesting enough for human readers as well.
Because Google only shows the first 50 to 60 characters of most page titles, make sure they're no longer than 60 characters so they're not truncated in search results. Also, always include your main keywords at the beginning of your page title, in case your page title is truncated.
Also, make sure that you have one and only one H1 tag on each page. This is because Shopify SEO titles are the default H1 tag for pages created by Shopify, so avoid manually adding an H1 tag elsewhere on the page.
Optimize meta descriptions on Shopify
Meta description refers to the text that is displayed under the title on the search results page. Like the title tag, your meta description should not only appeal to Google robots using keywords, but the text should also attract and convince real people to visit your site.
When writing meta descriptions for product pages, consider your value proposals. Do you offer free shipping or a discount?
For example, to encourage clicks to its website, Deramores uses the description to tell the user that all purchases over £25 receive free delivery.
Again, make sure your meta descriptions are short - under 155 characters, otherwise they may be truncated in the SERPs. Try to include your unique selling proposals (USPs) in the descriptions.
Optimize URLs on Shopify
Include keywords in the URLs of your pages, while ensuring that the URLs are short and simple, avoiding fillers (such as “the” and “for”).
To change your page title, meta description, and URL, navigate to the page you want to edit and scroll down to “Search Engine List Overview,” as shown below.
As you can see, on-page optimization focuses on optimizing all of your text content for keywords. Well, the same goes for visual content...
Optimize all images
Make sure that all of your product images have a descriptive file name (not something like 298343798.jpg) and write descriptive alt tags that illustrate the nature of each image.
This is useful not only for search engine crawlers who can't “see” your images, but also for visually impaired people who use screen readers.
And of course, include keywords in the file name and the alt text of all images.
Optimize content for the right keywords on Shopify
In addition to titles, meta descriptions, URLs, and image alt tags, it's critical to optimize all of your website's content — blog posts, product descriptions, an “about” page, and more — for primary and secondary (or “semantic,” that is, related) keywords.
When it comes to content, regularly creating long content optimized by keywords, such as how-to guides, articles, and articles, will go a long way in achieving top rankings on Google.
By publishing this type of useful content on a regular basis, you can target various keywords that have different intentions for users. In other words, some of your pages (like blog posts) may target information searches (for example, “what is a onesie”), while other pages (like product pages) may target low-volume keywords that indicate a purchase intent (for example, “buy onesies for women”).
An application like SEO Plug-In Shown above helps you take care of basic on-page optimization, and some of the advanced on-page improvements discussed in the next section.
Shopify On-Page Advanced Enhancements
The basic on-page optimization factors outlined above require your attention every time you create a new product page or post a new blog post. However, most of the advanced on-page SEO improvements described in the following subsections only need to be done once and should work for a while, as long as nothing else changes these settings.
Optimize the structure of the Shopify site
The way your website is organized is extremely important for SEO. A properly structured site will help both shoppers and search engine robots better navigate your store.
From a shopper's perspective, it will be easy and intuitive for them to walk around your store and browse products, increasing the chances of a purchase. A solid site structure results in a great user experience.
Likewise, for search engine robots, it will be easier to explore the different pages of your site, to index them in the database, and to properly rank your various pages for relevant search queries.
So how do you optimize the structure of your Shopify store? It's simple - keep everything simple. Don't have too many sub-collections (product categories are called “Collections” in Shopify) and elaborate hierarchies on your website.
The illustration above shows the simplest and most SEO-friendly site structure. Your products are just a few clicks away from the home page, making it easy for shoppers to find what they're looking for and for search engines to explore all of the content on your site.
Also, include a global search field at the top of every page on your site. This won't directly help search robots, but it will help human visitors with a specific purchase intent easily find what they're looking for. This translates into a better user experience, which indirectly translates into better rankings on Google.
Optimize Shopify page load speed
Page speed, a crucial parameter for the user experience, is an official Google ranking factor for searches on Mobile and desktop. Therefore, having a slow-loading store is simply unaffordable and it will not only frustrate visitors and increase the bounce rate, but it will also destroy your rankings on Google.
There are lots of things you can do to optimize the loading speed of your Shopify store. Let's look at each of them in detail:
Reduce CSS
Comments and spaces in your CSS files may take up too much space and slow down your site. Minification compresses the code by removing extra characters like spaces and comments, and by combining common styles.
This makes it possible to reduce the size of the file. When your files are lighter, they're transferred more quickly, allowing your store to load faster.
Shopify has the ability to auto-minify your CSS by giving it a “scss” suffix and then including it in your site with the suffix.scss.css.
So, if your CSS file is currently named theme.css.liquid and included in your site with {{'theme.css' | asset_url | stylesheet_tag}}:
- Change the name of your CSS file to end with.scss (or.scss.liquid, if the file in question ends with.css.liquid) - so in this case the file becomes theme.scss.liquid.
- Change the file reference to end with.scss.css - so in this case the inclusion becomes {{'theme.scss.css' | asset_url | stylesheet_tag}}. (Note that the.liquid suffix, if it exists, is not included here).
The result will be a minified CSS file built from your non-minified source code. Be sure to back up a copy of your original CSS and css.liquid files so you can quickly restore them if your changes cause problems.
You can also use an application like Plug in Speed Optimizer to compress and reduce theme code automatically. This application will also help you optimize images, as we'll see later...
Optimize images
Besides optimizing your images with an appropriate file name and alt text, you should also ensure that the image file size is small. This is because large product images seriously affect page loading speed and, indeed, search engine rankings.
Here are two things you should do to maintain optimal loading speed:
Compression of images on Shopify
Using the application mentioned above (i.e. Plug in Speed Optimizer), you can set up automatic image compression to reduce the size of all images (blog, product, collection, etc.) while maintaining high quality.
Lazy loading on Shopify
Lazy loading is essentially delaying the construction of an object, such as an image, until it is needed. By default, all page images will be loaded at their maximum size, even if the user is only looking at the top of the site.
But you don't need to load all the images, as they may not be seen by the user if they don't scroll down the page. So, with lazy loading, a low quality image is used as a substitute. When the user scrolls the page and the image appears in the viewport, it is replaced by a higher quality version.
This technique also adds a layer of interactivity to a website, which means that instead of looking at a blank page, waiting for the image to load, you can see it slowly come to life. Here is a Step-by-Step Approach to integrate lazy loading into your store.
Check CSS syntax to ensure automatic CDN updates
A CDN is the abbreviation for Content Delivery Network. It is a way to distribute the content of your website more quickly and more effectively, depending on the geographical location of Internet users.
A CDN consists of a network of servers (“points of presence” or POPs) located around the world. The CDN server that is closest to a user is called an “edge server.” When someone requests content from a website served by a CDN, they are connected to the nearest edge server, ensuring the best possible online experience.
So your content, such as images, is cached on a CDN, so it gets delivered from the edge to your end users much more quickly than if it had to be delivered from the origin.
So, you don't need to do anything because Shopify provides merchants with a world-class CDN powered by Fastly. When you make changes to your images, Shopify notifies the CDN using the “asset_url” filter, which automatically adds version numbers to any URLs it generates.
However, if you refer to an image directly in your CSS, the URL will be static and won't include the version of the asset that Shopify automatically updates. To ensure that your images are automatically updated, change your CSS syntax to include the filter “asset_url”.
That's it, it's done!
RECOMMENDED READING: Top CDN providers
Choosing the right Shopify theme
Choosing the right theme is essential not only to ensure the aesthetics of the store and a pleasant user experience, but also for the loading speed of your store.
Whether you're updating your Shopify theme for new features or to create a more modern look, you should examine the theme for its appetite for resources. In other words, if the new theme makes too much use of your users' Internet connections due to bloated code or unnecessary features, you might want to ignore it.
To test a theme's resource requests before changing themes, simply run a performance tool like GTmetrix On the themes considered. Of course, your own resources will change the exact numbers, but testing the theme will at least give you an idea of what kind of loads the theme itself imposes on your site.
Add AMP to your Shopify store
Today, more than half of your store's visitors (and conversions) come from mobile devices, and that number is growing every day. It is therefore particularly important to reduce the loading time of your store pages on mobile devices.
Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), is an open source framework developed by Google in collaboration with Twitter, that enables better and faster experiences on mobile devices. Simply put, it's a framework that allows you to create lightweight mobile experiences by simplifying HTML and following streamlined CSS rules.
For some searches, Google shows AMP content in a special location above the organic results. So, activating AMP can make all the difference in getting the best rankings in mobile search results. Using a proven application like AMP by Shop Sheriff, you can easily and quickly improve the speed of your mobile website and get that lightning bolt next to your mobile search results list.
Finally, move your site to PageSpeed Insights for a list of changes recommended by Google to improve the speed of your store.
Responsive design
As we have just seen above, the choice of the Shopify theme is decisive for the loading speed of your store and, indirectly, for its success. Furthermore, once again, the majority of your visitors shop from a mobile device such as a smartphone or a tablet.
So your store should be flawless and work perfectly on mobile devices. A responsive design means that your site will automatically adapt to the size of the screen it's loaded on. Although all the themes of the Shopify theme store Are mobile-friendly and responsive, even minor errors on mobile devices can seriously damage the user experience and rankings.
It is therefore important to review all of your pages to ensure that they are as readable and attractive on mobile as they are on desktop.
Structured data on Shopify
If you want your store to really stand out in the SERPs, adding structured data tags to your website is a must. Once you've provided Google with a set of data in a specific, structured format (therefore the name “structured data”), your product pages, for example, might look like this:
Such a list is much more convincing than purely textual results. And if the number of clicks to your website increases over time, Google will understand that your ad deserves to be ranked higher and higher in the SERPs.
Essentially, structured data markup gives search engines more information about your website and its content. In the context of e-commerce, structured data (or schema markup) can provide Google with valuable information about your products (such as price, availability, rating, number of reviews, etc.), which Google can then display in SERPs in the form of rich snippets.
There are three structured data formats you can use:
- JSON-LD
- RDFa
- Microdata
The use of JSON-LD is recommended by Google because it is the easiest to add and update, and it is compatible with dynamic data.
There are several types of schemas that you can create and add to your store to generate different types of rich snippets. Here are three of the most important ones:
Shopify Product Diagram
For e-commerce sites, the Product diagram Is the most priority structured data, as it helps attract interested buyers to search results by displaying important information such as reviews and prices.
Les best Shopify themes for SEO Contain ready-to-use product markup, but your store can benefit from extending the product schema to collection pages as well. This means adding structured product data markup to define each individual product link on a product listing page.
To effectively create and add all of these product drawings to your site, install JSON-LD for SEO. With this application, you don't need to be a seasoned coder and you can start integrating structured data instantly.
Breadcrumbs Schema on Shopify
Ariane's Sons are essential for any online store because they provide users with easy to use internal links that show where they are in the site hierarchy. Additionally, these breadcrumbs can help Google better understand the structure of the site's internal links.
Shopify article diagram
If your store blog is active and articles are published regularly, you should use the “Article” structured data. This diagram allows Google to know that the content of your blog is more editorial in nature.
Google often draws content with structured “Article” data into platforms such as Google Discover, and ensuring that your content contains this structured data can increase the chances that your site's content will be included in these sections.
Others Types of schemes exists:
Add an application such as Rich Snippets for SEO To add all of these types of structured data to your website in minutes without any technical issues and quickly create rich snippets for your store.
Use redirects when needed
Having broken links (“404 not found” error) on your store is an impediment to both the user experience and SEO. So, when a page on your site becomes inactive - for example, when you remove a product that was on sale - you need to redirect that page to another relevant, existing page on your site, giving visitors (and crawlers) a new destination instead of a disappointing error.
Don't just redirect removed/inactive pages to the home page or to an unrelated page. Redirect only to a product collection page or to a page related to the deleted page.
Also, whenever you change a URL after it goes live, remember to set up a 301 redirect from the old URL to the new one, otherwise you will generate a 404 error on your site.
To set up a redirect, go to “Sales Channels,” then “Online Store,” and finally, “Navigation.” At the top left, you'll see a “URL Redirections” button. Its interface for setting up 301 redirects is quite intuitive.
Use the Canonical tag for pages with duplicate content on Shopify
Like broken links, duplicate content is another priority issue that frequently affects e-commerce sites.
Duplicate content is when identical or similar content exists on two distinct URLs on the same website. This creates a problem for search robots, as they may not be able to determine which of the two pages should be considered the “preferred” or canonical version.
For those who don't know, a canonical URL is the URL of the page that Google considers to be the most representative among a set of duplicate pages on your site.
Simply put, Google wants to determine the main version of your page. You can use rel="canonical” tags to help point search robots in the right direction.
Keep in mind that when creating links on your site, you should always link to the canonical URL. By systematically linking to the URL that you consider canonical, you help Google understand your preference.
Page speed optimization tool - Persistent connection check tool for SEO
3. Shopify Off-Page SEO improvements
Off-page SEO refers to all the activities you can do outside of your own website to improve your SERP rankings. These activities are intended to make your site more credible in the eyes of Google.
Here are the two main ways to conquer off-page SEO for your Shopify store:
Create backlinks to your store
Backlinks are external links from other websites that point to your store. Google uses the number, quality, and relevance of backlinks as a ranking factor. In fact, the quantity and quality of backlinks are one of the most important and direct factors that determine how your store ranks on Google.
In other words, Google views links as indicators of trust and authority. Without a good link building strategy, your store won't be able to reach the first page of the SERPs.
So here's what you should do systematically as part of your marketing strategy to create high-quality links to your store:
Guest posting
A classic, proven way to get quality backlinks and improve online brand awareness for your store is by publishing articles.
It's about creating and contributing quality content, like blog posts, to authoritative websites and publications. Besides improving rankings on Google, publishing articles also helps attract new audiences, gain their trust, and establish thought leadership as a brand.
Raising awareness among bloggers
As you know, every niche (fashion, fitness, etc.) has blogs that are followed by a large number of people. The content posted by these bloggers enjoys the trust of a huge community of like-minded people.
Blogger Outreach is a technique where you work with bloggers to create authentic content that promotes your products or brand. In this way, you take advantage of their influence to increase the visibility of your store.
In short, blogger awareness is about identifying authoritative bloggers in your sector. Then, you present them in a personalized way and let them know what they stand to gain (for example, free access to your products or remuneration for sponsorship) and what you want them to do for your brand. Finally, once the content is published, you and the blogger promote it on your respective channels, reaching new audiences, both for the blog and for your brand.
The content they create for your brand can range from a product review to a giveaway contest. You can work with the blogger to create content that is winning for both parties while being loyal to the audience.
Promote linkable assets
Another good way to create links to your store is to create and publish shareable content, such as detailed how-to guides, entertaining articles, or interactive infographics, on your own website, and then offer it to blogs and media publications with high authority in your industry.
Not everyone will be interested in republishing and/or promoting your content on their own website, but if your content is really good, you will surely find a few (if not many) who are happy to help you.
Recovering Links and Building Broken Links
Link building isn't always about creating new content. Your store may already be mentioned in several places without being linked. Use tools like Thesis To find these unrelated mentions, then contact these publishers and ask them to create a link to your site along with the mention. This is called link retrieval.
Finally, you can also look for broken links on websites in your niche. When you find a broken link for products/content similar to what you're offering, contact the owner of the site posting the broken link to replace it with a valid link to your site.
Since broken links hurt SEO, it's a mutually beneficial activity for both parties: they can fix a broken link and you get a free backlink.
In general, when it comes to backlinks, the more you laugh, but keep in mind that the quality of the links to your website is just as important, if not more important. In other words, a few natural backlinks from high-authority websites far outweigh twenty links from low-authority websites or spammy sites.
Get Brand Mentions and Social Signals
Backlinks add SEO juice directly to your store, but even unrelated brand mentions in high-authority publications (like Forbes) carry considerable weight.
So, you can analyze backlinks and mentions in the media of your competitors using a tool like Ahrefs Site Explorer, and adapt your content strategy in order to get mentions for your own brand in the press.
Furthermore, establishing a solid and authoritative presence on various social media platforms is an absolute necessity. While this doesn't directly improve SEO on Shopify, a strong social media presence means that your social profiles will also be ranked in the SERPs, and those profiles ultimately lead people to your store.
Social media makes your brand more “human.” They allow you to have informal conversations with your fans, provide customer support, and boost brand engagement — things that are extremely important for your store's credibility and long-term success.
Additionally, take advantage of user-generated content (UGC) on social media by organizing hashtag contests, giveaways, and surveys. You can encourage existing customers to write honest product reviews on social media. This reinforces your social proof and motivates potential customers who are hesitant to take the plunge with your brand.
Add an application like Yotpo To collect more and more customer reviews and display them on your storefront. With this app, you can also curate customer-generated content on Instagram and engage with your customers in the form of community questions and answers.
In addition to building brand awareness and loyalty, all of these social signals contribute indirectly, but substantially, to your store's SEO.
4. Shopify SEO problems and how do you fix them?
While Shopify stands out as an e-commerce platform, it is not perfect for SEO. There are issues that need to be addressed.
In fact, some SEO limitations in Shopify don't really have a solution.
For example, users can start editing the robots.txt file, URL customization options are limited, and you need to write the image lot individually for each image (even if you use the same image across the site).
But there are other common SEO issues with Shopify that you can fix, like:
A character count similar to that of Twitter for titles
Shopify has a character counter similar to Twitter for the number of characters you can use in title tags. And the limit is 70 characters, which is deceptive.
Indeed, Google determines the width of the title in the SERPs by measuring pixels, and research shows that it is generally 600 pixels, which corresponds to around 60 characters.
A quick solution to find out if your title tag is too long (in terms of pixels) is to go to Google and place a site: command (for example, site:mystore.com), or if you want to see how a specific URL appears in Google, use the exact URL after the site operator:.
Forced URL structure
Shopify requires you to have a particular URL structure that is long and not suitable for SEO.
Ideally, URLs should be short and simple, with the product as close to the root domain as possible, for example:
>mystore.com/boots
But with Shopify's forced URL structure, the same domain will actually look like this:
A) mystore.com/products/boots
And when it comes to recovery, it's even worse:
B) mystore.com/collections/collection-abc/products/boots
As you can see, the URL is getting longer and longer. While this has minimal impact on SEO and you can't change anything about it, it's not that big of a deal.
Indeed, even though there is no control over the URL structure and products can take multiple URL forms, Shopify returns the product to the “root” of the product, so in the example above, B refers to A, and A is self-referenced. So there is no problem with duplicate content, which can be very annoying for e-commerce sites.
Access to Robots.txt nēoi_TSUK authorized
July 01, 2021 update: Removed the block that contained instructions on a workaround for editing the robots.txt file, as this feature is now available natively on Shopify.
You can use Liquid to add or remove directives from the robots.txt.liquid model. This method preserves Shopify's ability to keep the file updated automatically in the future, and is recommended. For a complete guide on editing this file, refer to the Shopify developers page. Customize robots.txt.liquid.
- In your Shopify admin, go to Online Store > Themes.
- Click Actions, then click Edit Code.
- Click Add a new model, then select the robots.
- Click on Create a template.
- Make the changes you want to make to the default template. For more information about liquid variables and common use cases, see the Shopify developer page called Customize robots.txt.liquid.
- Save changes to the robots.txt.liquid file in your published theme.
5. Shopify SEO Quick Tips and Tools
Let's take a quick look at some practical tips that will improve the usability of the various pages in your store for search engines:
Shopify homepage SEO tips
Your homepage is the window of your online store, not only for human visitors but also for search engine robots. So it's just as important to optimize your homepage to be robot-friendly as it is to make it pleasant for customers to look at. Here's how to do it:
- Use only one H1 tag that is optimized for the most important keyword in your business.
- Write a paragraph under the title and a meta description describing your business using keyword-rich text.
- Include all general and related keywords in your home page content.
SEO tips for Shopify collection pages
Collections are ideal for grouping similar products into their own categories or groups. This can be extremely useful for SEO, as you can target different types of keywords on these pages compared to individual product pages.
To create a collection, click “Products” and “Collections,” then click “Create a Collection.” Define the criteria for selecting the page, then click “Save Collection.”
In addition to optimizing their titles and meta descriptions, here's what you can do to get your collection pages ranked optimally:
- Personalize each page to give it a unique touch so that the problem of duplicate content never arises.
- Include long-tail keyword phrases for each product on your collection page.
- Write a detailed description to improve each page's uniqueness score. To avoid creating boring text, use bullets and bold important keywords.
SEO tips for Shopify product pages
Ranking your product pages on the first page of the SERPs can skyrocket your sales. Keep the following guidelines in mind for creating search-friendly product pages:
- Use a clear structure and hierarchy - use titles, subheadings, and bullets that will make it easier for visitors to navigate the site.
- Don't write sloppy product copy—incorporate your brand's unique tone and stay sharp.
- Focus on your unique value proposition - what are the unique benefits and characteristics of your product or brand that customers cannot find anywhere else?
- Eliminate jargon - write content that is easy to read with succinct sentences and paragraphs.
- Optimize your site for top keywords and long-reach keywords, but don't use them just to rank higher. Once again, readability is essential.
- Anticipate and respond to questions or doubts that may arise.
- Add the Structured data Product and FAQ.
- Use Shopify product tags for SEO.
SEO tips for the Shopify blog
Ranking your product pages on the first page of the SERPs can skyrocket your sales. Keep the following guidelines in mind for creating search-friendly product pages:
- Focus on the quality of each article instead of producing lots of useless messages that no one wants to read or share.
- That said, be consistent with your publishing schedule and aim for at least two long, comprehensive articles per month.
- Your content should educate, inform, entertain, and delight readers, which will help them identify with your brand. Additionally, it should be original, well-documented, and grammatically correct.
- In each article, target informative keywords to create internal links to your product and collection pages.
- Include a call to action (AAC) at the end of each article to encourage the reader to take a desired action, such as viewing your product catalog or subscribing to your newsletter.
6. Migrating to Shopify
Your store might currently be running on another e-commerce platform, like Volusion or Magento, but seeing that these platforms are lagging behind in terms of usability, performance, security, and customer support, you decided to switch to Shopify.
You're not alone — lots of brands have made the change.
For example, after a costly Black Friday crash in 2015, the popular sportswear brand Gymshark moved from Magento to Shopify, and has enjoyed considerable success ever since. Another example is that of Bohemia, a contemporary brand of handmade fashion accessories and homeware that moved from Magento to Shopify and saw sales increase fourfold.
If the Migration process itself Is well defined and should not be a major obstacle, maintaining your website's ranking on Google when changing platforms is a challenge.
It's almost inevitable to see a temporary drop in rankings, even if everything goes well and you check all the SEO best practices boxes. Indeed, every time Google sees a significant change, it takes a step back from the site to reindex and reanalyze everything. So, whether it's a platform migration or a domain change, this usually results in a temporary drop in rankings.
However, you can significantly reduce the time your rankings fluctuate and stabilize again by taking the following steps:
- The most important factor in any migration is the implementation of URL redirects. Shopify takes care of URL redirects, so ensure that a 301 redirect is in place for each page whose URL is changed.
- Pay attention to changes to the website's robots.txt file and to generate an XML sitemap to ensure that unnecessary pages aren't indexed and don't hinder crawling efficiency.
- Be sure to submit a new site map via Google Search Console as soon as you launch the new version of your store.
- Reflect the structure of the website - ensuring that all collections and even all non-primary pages receiving traffic are maintained on the new platform.
- Check for duplicate content issues carefully and use canonical URLs (the most authoritative URL you want search engines to see) to direct search engines to original content.
- Identify and fix all 404 errors on your site.
Again, setting up URL redirects properly is critical. Because of Shopify's specific collections and subcollections system, URLs cannot be transferred without changing them. And it's crucial to organize redirects for links to your products and collections that will appear in search engine results.
Consider using an application like Cart2Cart When importing data to Shopify to ensure appropriate 301 redirects for links to your new store.
7. Shopify SEO checklist
As you can see, there are a lot of things you can do to improve the visibility of your website in search engines. If you're dizzy trying to sort through all the SEO tasks that need to be done, here's a handy checklist that you can check off as you progress:
On-page SEO:
- Use only one H1 tag on each page
- Write compelling page titles (under 60 characters) and meta descriptions (under 155 characters).
- Optimize all URLs
- Define alt text and descriptive file names for all images
- Create more content, like how-to guides, feature articles, and blog posts.
- Optimize all content (titles, meta, URLs, images, and text) for the right keywords.
Off-page SEO:
- Create backlinks to your store
- Get media mentions and social proof
Advanced SEO:
- Submit the site map to Google
- Optimize the structure of the site
- Optimize page load speed
- Use AMP
- Ensuring a responsive design
- Verify and remove duplicate content
- Incorporate structured data
- Use redirects when needed
And here's a list of all of the recommended apps (free and paid) mentioned in this guide for various SEO goals that you can add to your store to improve SEO on Shopify:
- SEO Image Optimizer
- Yotpo
- JSON-LD for SEO
- Rich Snippets for SEO
- Schema generator FAQ
- MPAS
- SEO plugin
- Cart2Cart
In addition to these applications, an important free application that you need to add is Google Shopping.
Since hundreds of millions of people check Google for their purchases, the Google Shopping tab is an attractive place for online businesses that want to list their products.
Previously, the Google Shopping tab only included paid ads, but Since at the end of April 2020, free ads now appear alongside paid ads in relevant search results. In fact, Shopify has partnered with Google to allow merchants to Synchronize, Submit, and Optimize Easily their products for these free listings via the Shopify Google Shopping app. So be sure to add this application to try to get your products for free in the Google Shopping tab.
8. Shopify and other CMS platforms for SEO
You might be wondering how Shopify compares to other website builders and CMS, such as:
On-page SEO:
- Shopify or WordPress SEO?
- Shopify SEO and WooCommerce?
- Squarespace SEO vs Shopify?
- Shopify SEO and BigCommerce?
The common answer is that all of these platforms are robust enough to bring your online store to the top of the search results, so there is no single winner. They all have an impressive set of built-in SEO features, with advanced features and add-ons that improve your store's SEO performance.
Shopify is distinguished by the fact that it is simple and easy to use. You can personalize SEO more easily than on other platforms. But WooCommerce (WordPress) offers greater flexibility with numerous integrations. So in terms of scalability for businesses, WooCommerce may be a better option, although Shopify isn't left behind either.
All things considered, Shopify is a top choice for SEO.
9. The Last Word
Finally, it's important to only add applications that serve a purpose. Of course, you won't add paid apps that aren't useful to you to your store, but just because an app is free doesn't mean it needs to be installed.
Indeed, if you add too many applications to your store, it will be slowed down, which will have a negative impact on your ranking. Therefore, only add apps that are useful for your store.
So there you have it. Now you know how to reference Shopify. Start with basic on-page optimization techniques, try to be consistent with off-page optimization (building backlinks, getting media mentions, and social proof), then take it to the next level using structured data, AMP, CDN, and other advanced techniques.
Remember, building a successful business is a marathon, not a sprint. The same goes for SEO - it will take a few months to get noticeable results, but with consistent effort and a bit of patience, the results will be worth it!
Need help with Shopify SEO? Contact a freelancer on Fiverr To help you with your SEO efforts at a low cost.
If you want to explore other e-commerce store options, you can check out our comprehensive guides on BigCommerce SEO, tea Magento SEO And the WooCommerce SEO.
