We give you the SEO keys so that you can index and position your Shopify virtual online store in Google and other web search engines.
As the eCommerce industry grows, competition becomes more difficult. If you want your Shopify store to reach your audience, you need to optimize its SEO.
Can optimize the SEO of a Shopify store can maximize the SEO of a Shopify store like any web page. Still, there are some peculiarities that you must know to work on this platform, just as it happens when we talk about SEO in Magento, Shopify’s main competitor.
In this article, I explain my experience as an SEO consultant on how to improve SEO in Shopify.
What is SEO web positioning in Shopify?
The most common way to implement an SEO strategy in online stores is through an SEO-optimized and well-worked blog. But the truth is, you can implement SEO even if your store doesn’t have a blog, and Shopify is a great place to do it. And if you already have a blog, there are plenty of reasons to improve your Shopify SEO and include it in your strategy.
To determine which web pages appear on the results page, Google selects the most relevant ones to the user’s search terms. Optimizing a web page for SEO helps Google give it a good position in the ranking.
SEO Marketing efforts go beyond articles. For example, a powerful way to apply SEO on Shopify is in descriptions.
But there are other ways to improve Shopify SEO quickly: by improving your website’s performance and setting up your store structure optimally for SEO, for example.
Why improve the SEO of your Shopify store?
Like any website, your Shopify store should optimize your Shopify store for SEO. Making a page that works is not enough if you want to appear on the Google results page.
For your work to bear fruit, it is necessary to make your page more relevant to search algorithms and your audience.
Here are some of the benefits you’ll get from improving the SEO of your Shopify store:
Increase organic traffic. Search engines are the best place to get traffic; after you do an excellent SEO job, organic traffic won’t stop coming. The key is to use SEO to attract the target audience of your SEO for your store among the millions of people who use Google.
Create an image of expertise. Users will feel the difference a website made by experts such as an SEO company makes. Also, a properly SEO-optimized web page will be more authoritative in the eyes of Google. This is one factor that determines the type of changes that Google makes to its algorithms.
Long-term results: The benefits of SEO last over time. You will have to make an initial investment, but the results you get will continue to give you organic traffic for a long time without the need for extra spending on advertising.
Improve the user experience: Optimizing SEO in Shopify also means paying attention to various details that improve the background of your users. Loading speed, good descriptions, correct tags, attractive images, security… All these things help users feel more comfortable on your website.
How to do SEO in a Shopify online store?
Understand what SEO is on Shopify
SEO on Shopify follows the same general guidelines as regular SEO. We can divide it into three parts:
Technical SEO: These are the technical factors that help your Shopify website get indexed by search engines. It includes improving load times and the structure of web data.
SEO On-page: It covers all the optimizations you do to your content to make it more relevant to your audience and to search algorithms, known as SEO Copywriting. This includes creating content with your target audience in mind and optimizing your tags, headings, and links.
Off-page SEO: Here are all the SEO activities that are done outside of the website, such as link building, social media, and reviews.
Set up your store in Google Search Console
This procedure will help your website to be indexed by search engines.
To add your Shopify store to Google Search Console, you first need to get the sitemap.
Then you must create an account for your domain or URL in Google Search Console. This process varies depending on your hosting service.
Once this is done, Google will give you the option to add the sitemap of your website.
Once done, Google will regularly update and display the new content published on your website.
Add Google Analytics to your Shopify store
Google Analytics gives you access to accurate measurements of your Shopify store’s traffic and purchases. Therefore, it is an essential tool to measure the performance of your SEO campaign.
The first thing you need to do is create a new account for your website in Google Analytics. You will receive a tracking code that you need to add to your Shopify store. To do this, you must log into your Shopify account and click on “Preferences,” where you will see a box where you can paste the code.
Once this is done, you will start receiving SEO metrics about your website in your Google Analytics account.
Use only SEO-optimized Shopify templates
When choosing a theme for your Shopify store, the most obvious thing to do is select one with a lot of functionality and design elements that best match your brand.
However, there are a couple of even more important things to keep in mind.
First, ensure it’s from a reputable developer and regularly updated. This way, you provide that it is up to date with changes from Google and Shopify.
Second, choose a theme that works well on mobile. Google algorithms favor web pages that are optimized for mobile browsing.
Although a theme (template) of this quality indeed increases the prices for creating an online store on Shopify, it is well worth that investment.
Install a secure certificate and publish your website under HTTPS
Search algorithms prefer pages that work under secure connections (HTTPS) over insecure pages that work under HTTP. This is because HTTPS pages use the SSL certificate to ensure the security of your data, and there is a clear relationship between HTTPS and SEO.
Browsers often display security warnings when users enter an unsecured web page. This could negatively affect user trust in your Shopify store.
Naturally, having SSL on your Shopify store is something you can’t ignore. Creating a new domain in Shopify is as easy as activating it in your preferences since this service is included in the Shopify subscription plans. If you’re moving your store from another platform to Shopify, you’ll need to do some extra technical work.
Optimize the SEO of your online store structure
If users don’t quickly understand your web page’s structure, you risk leaving it and increasing the dreaded bounce rate, which will negatively affect your SEO. Also, if users don’t feel comfortable on your website, they are less likely to make a purchase.
Ensure you create an intuitive and straightforward structure that makes a seamless shopping experience.
Offer product collections on Shopify
Collections in Shopify are groups of products usually distributed in different categories. Creating collections can increase conversions because you reduce users’ journey to find relevant products.
But collections also have many benefits for your SEO. Search algorithms look at semantic connections to create a clear picture of your product listing. Using relevant keywords in your groups helps algorithms understand your web page more quickly. Thanks to the internal traffic that this generates, you will increase your chances of increasing your ranking on the results pages.
Remove duplicate pages and optimize canonical links
One of the most critical issues facing Spotify SEO is page duplication. Shopify can duplicate your product and pagination pages.
Reducing these duplications is crucial to improving SEO on Shopify. When indexing a page, the search algorithms must determine which is the canonical version (that is, the one that will be indexed). If there are duplications, you risk the search engine indexing the wrong version and making it harder for algorithms to understand your page structure.
To mitigate this issue, your Shopify store developer should work with canonical URL web addresses and optimize the structure of web page URLs.
Speed up the loading of your Shopify store
A few seconds too many can make customers leave. Slow loading times increase bounce rates and negatively affect search algorithm indicators. Well, Google takes into account the results that a web page obtains in the dreaded Core Web Vitals, do not take your eyes off them and improve the results as much as possible!
