Complete SEO guide for your Shopify store

Have you created an attractive shopify ecommerce website but still troubling to reach your potential customer! 

Currently there are over 5.12 million shopify stores which are used by 175 countries. As a shopify store owners you should understand the importance of Search engine Optimisation (SEO) in the success of your Shopify Store. SEO helps you by ensuring that your target audience can find you easily through the search engine. In this blog we will guide you through some important beginners SEO strategies to optimise your shopify store to improve visibility on search engine, attract more traffic that can lead to improve your sales. However, other SEO strategies require time and expertise, which is where a SEO Agency can help.

Understanding Shopify SEO

Shopify SEO is an SEO strategy tailored specifically to a Shopify Website to help it reach more people. This strategy could include best practices and policies unique to your Shopify website.  

Shopify also provides you with some SEO tools that you can use in your ecommerce site as well. These include: 

• To prevent duplication, it allows you to add automatically generated canonical tags.
• You can also generate sitemap.xml and robots.txt files automatically.
• Shopify also allows you to create title tags for your store theme.

Shopify SEO Checklist – How to improve ranking on SERP

Keyword research

This step involves identifying the keywords that potential customers are using to search for products and services that are similar to yours. For this purpose, Keyword research tools tools like Google Keyword Planner, Ahref, SemRush can be used to search for high-ranking keyword ideas.

Points to consider while selecting a keyword: 

• Search volume: It refers to the number of people searching for the keyword. 

• Relevance: How closely the keyword is related to your product or service. 

• Competition: No of competitors that are using the same keyword. 

SEO should be focused on a mixed approach of short-tail keywords that are general and long-tail keyword that are more specific to your services. As compared to short-tail keywords long-tail keyword are easier to rank due to their low search volume and they also have a higher conversion rate. 

Optimise your store structure for shopify

A well-structured website improves user experience as well as SEO. With Shopify you can easily create a logical structure for your ecommerce store such as:

To maintain a good structure, you should be able to access important pages within 3 clicks from the homepage. This kind of structure helps search engines to understand the page linking, internal linking and distribute link equity accordingly. 

ON-Page SEO

Till now your website is in good structure and you have all the keyword that you need to rank. Now you need to optimise individual pages for better reach.

Title Tag: You need create unique titles that describes the content of each page and keep the target keyword at the start of each title. The length of the Title should be under 60 characters as if it is more than that it will be deleted. 

Meta Descriptions: The meta description and meta title should be concise, compelling and summarise the content of the page. It should also include a Call-to-Action. While Meta-descriptions and meta titles is not a direct factor for ranking, but it could increase the chances of user clicking on the result. 

Header Tag: Proper usage of H1 to H6 tag while ensuring these heading also include relevant keywords. 

URL Structure: In Shopify a URL is automatically generated based on the page title. You need to ensure that these URLs are concise and contain the relevant keyword. 

Image Optimisation: For images that are inserted in your pages make sure to use a keyword rich name and ensure that you are using alt text for every image. It helps the search engines understand the concept of the image.

Creating SEO-Friendly Product Description 

Product description is the most important part of SEO. Write a unique and detailed product description that includes relevant keywords. Avoid using duplicate content from manufacturer or other websites as it can lead to plagiarism issue. 

Things to insert in the product description: 

• Key features and benefits
• Materials and dimensions
• Care instruction
• Styling tips and use cases

Always keep in mind, while it is important to use keywords in your content, but your primary focus should be on providing value to your customers and answer any question that could arise in their mind.

Using Blogs to build your Content 

By writing blog posts related to your Shopify website, you can easily target long-tail keywords and provide the best SEO content or valuable information provide your potential customers. Publishing blogs at regular intervals also helps in keeping the website updated. You can easily publish regular content using Shopify’s blogging engine. 

You can also consider creating content on following: 

• Create How-to guides that are related to your product
• Updates about industry trends and news
• How your business works behind the scenes
• Customer testimonials and case studies

Always optimise your blogs same as other pages by including relevant keywords, tile tags, meta description and header tags.

Technical SEO

Most of the aspects of technical SEO is taken care by shopify but there are still some areas where you can pay attention to improve the Search ranking.

Site Speed: With the help of Shopify’s built-in speed report or by using any other tools such as Google PageSpeed Insights to identify the areas which are slowing down your site speed such as image optimisation, or an app that is slowing down your website. For faster load time of your website, you can also use Shopify’s content delivery network (CDN). 

Mobile Optimisation: Now with the development of smartphone most the users using search engine are using it through mobile phones, so it becomes necessary for your website to be mobile friendly. Generally, the themes provided by shopify are mobile optimised but be sure to test it. 

Structured data: Ensure Schema Markup is implemented properly using rich snippets as it will increase your chances of ranking in search engine and click-through rate. 

SSL Certificate: Shopify also provides you with a free SSL certificate which makes sure that you website is secure. It not only helps in improving the ranking as it is factor considered by google but also helps in building trust.

High-Quality Backlinks 

Till now you have completed most of the things regarding on-page SEO, Now Let’s look at Off-page SEO particularly backlinks that plays an essential role in search engine ranking. There are numerous strategies that can be used to obtain high quality backlink: 

• Contacting influencer and bloggers from the same industries to review your product or services.
• Creating quality content than will attract other to link to your Shopify website.
• Join online communities and forums that are relevant to your website.
• Perform guest post only on reputable sites of your industry.

Note: Quality of the backlinks is more important as compared to the Quantity.

Local SEO For your Shopify  

Local SEO plays an important role if you want to sell your service in a specific area or to attract customers to your physical store. 

• Create and optimise Google My Business Listing.
• Ensure your Name, Address, Phone number information is consistent across the web
• Encourage you clients to put customer reviews on google and other websites.
• If the physical stores are present at multiple locations, Multiple location specific pages can be created

Analyse your SEO performance 

SEO is an ongoing process, so it becomes important to track your performance and change the SEO strategy accordingly. Shopify’s built-in analytics capabilities only basic analytics can be checked but integrating Shopify with Google search console and Google Analytics can provide in-depth analytics to track the SEO performance. 

Key Metrics for tracking SEO Performance: 

• Organic traffic 
• Keyword rankings
• Conversion rates
• Bounce rates
• Page load times

Make sure to review these key metrics on regular basis to make changes in your SEO strategy. 

Stay Up to Date with SEO Trends 

Due to search engines frequently updating there algorithms, the SEO industry is always keeps changing. Make sure you read reputable SEO blogs and articles, attend webinars or conferences to stay up to date on the most recent trends and best practices for SEO. 

Among the recent trends are: 

• Optimisation of voice search
• Video files and optimisations
• Artificial Intelligence and machine learning

Hiring experienced SEO service providers 

Though you can manage several SEO-related activities in your organisation, there comes a time when it would become important to invest in professional services for niches that are very competitive. A professional SEO Agency will help to improve your google ranking with its specialised services. 

Some of the services offered by a professional SEO Agency include: 

• A detailed report on the SEO audit
• Tailored strategies for search engine optimisation
• Creation and optimisation of content
• Technical aspects of SEO
• CRM and ongoing reporting of SEO activities.

Conclusion 

It is a continuous process which needs constant attention and effort to keep your Shopify store in sight within any search engine. The strategies outlined in this guide will help you improve the visibility of your store in search results, create more organic traffic and finally increase your sales. 

Keep in mind that SEO is a game of endurance. Significant results don’t come overnight but if you have patience and commitment, you can position your online store in a high place within the SERPs. 

Our SEO Agency can help you to become an expert in ecommerce or even enhance your existing knowledge. They are assisted by our experts Shopify Developers. We are ready to connect with you and discuss how we might facilitate the rise of your Shopify store higher up on search engine ranking pages (SERPs).