Ecommerce and RetailSearch Marketing

7 Best Practices For Improving The SEO Of Your Shopify Store

Shopify is one the most sought-after eCommerce content management and shopping cart platforms with built-in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) features. It is easy to use with no coding skills required and simple backend administration, helping users save ample time and money.

While Shopify makes certain things quick and easy, there is still a lot of effort to put in to improve your site ranking. From site structure to organized data and keyword optimization, paying close attention to how SEO factors work is highly imperative. 

Leveraging some best Shopify SEO practices can boost your chances of getting traffic and sales to your website from search engines like Google. That’s why we have curated actionable tips to help master SEO for your Shopify store. Let’s get started!

At least 43% of all e-commerce traffic comes from Google’s organic search. 37.5% of all traffic to e-commerce sites come from search engines. 23.6% of e-commerce orders are directly linked to organic traffic. 51% of people using the internet have found out about a new product or company online.

Reboot

1. Optimize Your Shopify Site Structure

It is important to organize content on your page in the right manner so that shoppers are able to find products quickly. When shoppers easily find what they are looking for, they are likely to spend more time on your site and explore more pages, which in turn boosts search engine rankings.

But how can you make your site easy to navigate? Firstly, don’t go overboard with categories and subcategories. Keep the structure simple to let search engines crawl your site and rank your products.

A simple, SEO-friendly site structure might look like this:

Shopify Site Structure and Navigation

Organize your content with Shopify, using any of these structures:

  • Homepage > Category Pages > Product Pages
  • Homepage > Category Pages > Sub-category Pages > Product Pages

In addition, include the About Page and Contact Page to showcase your site’s trustworthiness and credibility.

2. Enhance Your User Experience

There are many ways to improve user experience on your site, which include:

Site Speed – It always comes down to users quickly accessing the information they need. When your site is easy to find and everything runs quickly, visitors tend to spend more time on your store. To boost your Shopify site speed, you can:

  • Use a fast, mobile-friendly theme
  • Remove apps you are not using
  • Avoid using sliders
  • Use small, well-optimized images

Use a Responsive Design Responsive design is about making your site look professional on any device, including desktops, smartphones, and tablets. Responsive themes can incredibly enhance user experience and usability, which results in repeat visitors and increased conversions.

3. Focus on the Right Target Keywords

Shopify SEO guide seems incomplete without keyword research – a solid foundation of SEO success. But how do you find the right keywords to drive traffic to your store?

The best way is to consult with an SEO expert and ask them to make a list of the main topics that your target audience is using when searching for products like yours. You can also find inspiration from topics like these:

  • Your buyer personas
  • Searching forums and subreddits related to your products
  • Look at titles, meta descriptions, and image alt-text used on competitors’ sites
  • Social media hashtags related to your products

4. Optimize Your Shopify Product Pages

If you’re starting a brand-new store, optimize your homepage, main product collections, and top-selling product pages. To decide which pages to optimize, follow these ways:

  • Product pages that created the most buzz when launching your store
  • Product pages with the most searched keywords you found

Now that you know what pages to optimize first, let’s see how you can name pages across the site. Use this simple formula: 

Keyword 1 – Shop for Keyword 2 – Store Name

For example:

Custom T-shirts – Shop for Custom T-shirts Online – The Store

Next, write titles and meta descriptions for your products and categories. You can look through competitors’ sites, but the audience will appreciate original content. Remember, the meta description is your opportunity to get the search engine user to click through… so it must be compelling.

ThinkGeek did just that with a description of a simple LED flashlight that begins with the line:

You know what’s sucky about regular flashlights? They only come in two colors: white or that yellowish-white that reminds us of the teeth of an avid coffee drinker. What fun is that kind of flashlight?

ThinkGeek

If you have a very large site, you can also programmatically optimize your Shopify title and meta descriptions.

5. Request Product Reviews

When you invite customers to leave reviews, you’re creating a platform to both enhance your search engine result page (SERP) entry as well as help increase your ranking. Review data is encoded in the page utilizing rich snippets so search engines optionally display it, differentiating your entry from your competitors:

serp with reviews

Relevant reviews also add verbiage to the product pages so search engines will keep coming back to re-index the pages. And of course, reviews have a significant impact on the purchase decision.

90% of participants are influenced by positive online reviews.

Zendesk

Other studies have indicated similar findings: on average, most people trust online reviewers just as much as they trust word-of-mouth recommendations. It’s important that not only are these reviews on review platforms but on your product pages as well.

There are several ways to convince customers to review your business; weigh your options, and figure out which method is suited for your business.

6. Integrate Your Shopify Site With Google Merchant Center

Many people don’t realize that publishing your feed on Google Merchant Center is required to get your product visible in Google Shopping results. And virtually every product search on Google has Google Shopping results integrated into the SERP:

Google Shopping panel in organic SERPs

This requires that you add Google as a channel in your Shopify Store. Once you have it integrated, you can even enhance product descriptions for increased targeting on Google Search Results.

7. Use Shopify SEO Apps and Other SEO Tools

Shopify apps help you target SEO issues that are valuable to fix and save time and money while improving your SEO. It gives an automated check of page titles, headings, meta descriptions, speed, content, and more. You can use Shopify tools like TinyIMG Image Compressor and Semrush to provide structured data to search engines to improve search results. And, of course, don’t forget to register your site with Google Search Console so you can identify and correct issues that Google reports.

Wrapping Up

All the above-mentioned pointers may not include everything you should know about Shopify SEO but will surely drive significant traffic from search engines. It is best to approach professionals for eCommerce SEO services to stand ahead of your competitors and increase sales of your products.

If your store doesn’t appear higher in rankings, you could miss out on a sale — even if your products are more high quality. SEO has the power to either siphon customers with the intent to purchase.. or take them to a competitor.

Disclosure: Martech Zone has updated this article and is including affiliate links.

Itisha Govil

Itisha is a digital marketing expert specializing in SEO as well as a content marketer. Itisha has been working in this industry for more than a couple of years now and enjoys blogging and exploring informative blogs that help add to her knowledge of digital marketing.

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