You’ve got a decent shopify store.
You know how to optimize it.
But do you really know what Shopify SEO is in 2024?
Do you know what Google’s algorithm is like right now?
No, and neither does anyone else, which means that your shopify store is probably not getting the results you want.
This guide will show you what Shopify SEO is, why it matters, and how to get started optimizing your Shopify store for search engines.
Let’s get start-
What is Shopify SEO?
Shopify SEO, or Search Engine Optimization for your shopify store, can be a tricky thing to get right.
If you’re not careful with the way you optimize your site and how it’s structured then search engines like Google might think that what they see on your website isn’t really relevant to them.
They’ll ignore all of the work you’ve done up for your shopify seo until this point and leave your page as-is so that they don’t have to index it at all!
Why Should You Care About Shopify SEO?
Well , first of all, Shopify is a huge e-commerce platform that powers over 1 million shops.
That’s right – if you’ve ever shopped on outside of Amazon or eBay then chances are it was powered by Shopify!
If you’re selling anything online, whether it be physical products like clothing and shoes, digital goods like apps and games or even services such as web design and hosting then chances are your business has been using the same website for years now.
That means there are millions of people out there who have already bought from your store without you knowing about them.
That’s a lot of people who you can reach through search engine optimization and make money from them.
But that doesn’t mean they’re all going to buy again!
If your website isn’t optimized for search engines then it will be very difficult for them to find you.
Which means that not only are they missing out on the sales but also on the potential customer leads who might have found their way onto your site through Google or Bing.
So if someone is searching online looking specifically for what your shopify site sell this could actually turn into a negative experience where they land in an error page instead of finding what they’re looking for.
That’s a lot of lost business and money!
Step By Step Guide To Shopify SEO
Shopify SEO can be a daunting task for some people.
It’s not as simple as just changing the title tag and your site will magically rank higher, but it is possible to improve your search engine rankings using Shopify SEO.
Let’s look on the steps which can improve your ranking and boost up sales-
Step-1 : Optimize Your Shopify Store Structure
The first step to optimizing your shopify store structure is to determine the most effective way to organize and display your products.
There are a few different ways to organize and display products on your shopify site.
You can use the collections and tags.
Collections are a great way to organize your products by category.
For example, if you sell clothing then you can use collection for men’s clothes, women’s clothes and kids’ clothes.
You can also create sub collections under these main categories like tops or t-shirts in the top level of your store.
Tagging is another useful method that allows customers to find what they want easily based on their search query terms used while browsing through the site.
For example- I would tag my jeans with “jeans” as this will allow me to show them only those products which have the tag “jeans” in their titles.
Tagging is a great way to organize products visually and it also gives you more control over your store layout, but remember that too many tags can be an indication of poor organization.
So always keep this tip in mind while tagging your products for SEO success purposes.
Step-2 : Improve The User Experience
The second step to improving your SEO success is to improve the user experience.
If you have an online store then it is essential that your customers are able to find what they need, when they need and in the way they want.
For example, if I am searching for “jeans” on my mobile phone while I’m sitting at home browsing through my facebook feed then it would be easier for me to search only those products which are tagged with the keyword “jeans”.
This will help improve user experience and make sure that people clicking on tags get exactly what he/she wants.
Not only this but improving the experience includes the good readability, attractive images and fast loading speed.
Read – How To Select The Best Fonts For Your Store
Google actually track the visitors behaviour through google tracking script and it understand if users are bouncing back from your store then it won’t support your store in getting good ranking in search results.
Step-3 : Keyword Research of Products
Keyword research is a very important aspect while building your store.
If you have set up the keywords properly then it will help you to rank high in search results as well as increase sales of your products.
A good keyword research helps create an effective content strategy for your website and also helps to improve user experience by making sure that people clicking on tags get exactly what they want.
To do this, I would suggest starting with researching through Google Keywords tool or some other tools like SEMrush which can be used for free version but if paid version is preferred then there are lots of paid tools available.
After doing keyword research, it is important to create a content strategy for your store which will help you in creating an effective and attractive content that can be used as the source of attracting customers towards your store from search results.
Step-4 : Optimize The Title
Page titles are the most important part of your website to get attention in search results.
It must be catchy, easy to remember and meaningful for customers as well as search engine spiders.
Good page titles should be relevant to the content of your page.
For example, if you are selling a product which is related with fashion then it would be better for you to include “fashion” in your title rather than other things like “trendy clothing”, etc.
If people type these keywords into Google search box and see that there isn’t any results from their keyword/tag then they will not bother visiting your store as well as may even leave bad reviews about how unorganized or non-responsive website owner is towards them (which can affect sales).
You also need to make sure that the title of your page is not too long as well.
As a rule, it should be between 70-100 characters in length and also have maximum 4 keywords which are related to the content of your page.
Step-5 : Add Engaging Meta Description
Meta description is one of the most important parts on any page including Shopify website pages, especially when it comes to search engine results pages or SERPs as it helps search engine spiders to understand the content of your page as well.
It is recommended that you include a description between 130-150 characters in length and also it should be relevant to what people will see on the first screen when they visit your website or store.
You can use keywords which are related with your product/service, shipping information (if applicable), price, etc.,
But make sure that these words have high relevance level so that customers don’t get confused while reading through long descriptions written by you.
Also keep in mind not all users will read all those details about products before they decide to buy something.
So make sure that you write the meta description in a way which will be easy to read and also it should have keywords related with your product/service.
Step-6 : SEO Friendly URL Structure
The URL of your website is a very important factor when it comes to search engine rankings.
Your Shopify store pages should be fully optimized and also have SEO friendly URL structure so that they can rank well on SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).
You need to make sure that the length of your page’s URL is between 50-80 characters in length, but don’t forget about the .com at the end as this will help you get better ranking on Google Search Engine results pages.
So for example, if you have a website with Shopify store pages and the URL is “www.yourstore.com”, then make sure that your page’s URL should be something like “shop/product-name” or also it can be something similar to this:
https://www.yourstore.com/products/product-name
And in this URL, “product-name” should not including a lot of words.
Keep it short and meaningful include your primary keyword to that page of your store.
Remember, google search bot loves short URL but it doesn’t mean you will put some random text to keep it short.
Step-7 : Unique Content on Info Pages
When creating your Shopify site pages, you should create some unique content on each and every product page of your website.
The content on product page should be highly relevant with the page title to keep low bounce rate.
You can use the same product description or images for all the products in a category but it’s not good practice because customers will get bored after reading through those descriptions over and over again.
So make sure to avoid writing duplicate content so that they don’t get bored while visiting different pages of your store.
You also need to keep in mind about how much time visitors spend on each page when they are browsing through them?
If most people visit only one particular page then why would you want them to spend extra time on another page of your store?
So make sure that you keep unique content for each and every product page.
Because duplicate content issues can harm your entire store and business.
Tip : Create informative blog posts relevant to the products you listed on your shopify store.
Include all the releted keywords to the products when you create content.
It will help to expand the visibility to get organic traffic and this content marketing strategy can help you achieve shopify store rank and get a lot of sales too.
Step-8 : Engaging Product Description
When people are looking for products on your store, they will be able to find the product description of that particular item first.
So you must write a good and engaging product description so that it can help in converting more visitors into buyers.
Product descriptions should contain all the information about what is included in an item with its features as well as benefits of using those items.
The better way to describe each and every single feature or benefit of a specific type/category of products is by listing them out one by one along with their images.
If possible which will make it easier for customers to understand the features of your products.
Also, you must make sure that your product descriptions are written (including related keywords) in a way which is understandable for all type of customers and it should help them to easily pick up what they want from each and every item on your store.
So keep this point in mind while writing those product description so that people can find their desired items quickly without any hassle or confusion.
You also need to include some relevant keywords related with the specific category/type of products as well as its benefits too.
Because if you don’t then there will be no traffic coming into your shop ify store and this can lead to low sales.
Step-9 : Optimize Image Names And Alt Text
Images are the most important part of your product pages because they can help you to convert more visitors into buyers.
So make sure that you include a good and engaging image name along with image alt text so that people will be able to understand what it is all about without any hassle or confusion.
You should also mention those images which have been used in your store for some time.
Because if there are no images then customers may not know exactly how everything looks like when using them on their stores, especially online shops where products usually look different from real life ones as well as other differences too .
So keep this point in mind while writing those alt text descriptions too so that people can find their desired items quickly without any hassle or confusion.
Remember, the correct name and alt text of the images helps to get traffic from google image search by potential customers.
Step-10 : Robot.txt
Robot.txt is a file which contains instructions for web crawlers to follow when indexing your site or any other website too.
It gives visibility to search engine robots on which parts of the page they should and shouldn’t index.
So that their users won’t be able to find those pages through searches on google as well as other major search engines .
Make sure that you have included this file in all of your product pages because it will help you to get traffic from Google by potential customers who are looking for information about products online.
Most of the shopify store owners ignore this step to check robot.txt in google search console because it looks a very small task but this is the most important task for doing SEO.
If you won’t do it properly, it may cause a lot of seo issues.
Because if google crawlers can read read the content of your ecommerce store then your store won’t appear in search engine result pages on google.
It may drop massive traffic and you can clearly notice the almost zero organic traffic in your google analytics.
Step-11 : Update The Sitemap
The sitemap is a list of all the pages on your shopify store which contains information about each and every page as well as its content.
It helps search engines to know what kind of content you have in your store so that they can crawl it correctly and index them properly.
This step is very important for getting traffic from Google because if google crawlers will be able to get this info then seo issues are sure not going happen.
If you are running a big ecommerce store then make sure that your sitemap is updated regularly.
It will help to get more traffic from Google and other search engines as well.
Step-12 : Check Broken Links
Make sure that you have included a sitemap of your site in all the pages and also make sure that there are no broken links on those pages.
If any page has some broken link then it will be removed from search engine indexing.
It may cause seo issues if it is not taken care properly so make sure to check this step regularly.
Because if you don’t do anything about these links than they can cost you lot of money when Google crawlers remove them from their indexes permanently due to which your ranking drops drastically.
Step-13 : Redirection
Make sure that you have set up a 301 redirect rule in your site.
This is very important for getting traffic from Google.
Because if google crawlers will be able to visit the old URL of your page then they can easily find out which pages are being linked by other sites or blog posts.
And this information may help them to get better ranking on search engine result pages.
So make sure that all the links pointing towards old URLs are redirected to new ones so that google crawlers can easily reach these pages without any problem at all.
If you don’t do anything about these broken links and redirections then your ranking will be affected badly and you may even lose the traffic completely.
Make sure that all these broken links are redirected to new ones so that google crawlers can easily reach those pages without any problem at all.
Step-14 : Articles Related To Your Products
Frequent publishing articles or blog posts is the best way to make google happy for your ecommerce store.
You can prepare article ideas based on the products you have listed.
Example- If you have listed 8-10 products of fishing niche then the title could be “10 Best Fishing Accessories You Should Not Miss”.
And in this title, you can write amazing article of at least 2000 words including your fishing products.
Not only this but you can publish the content on fishing tips, fishing precautions and many more topics.
It will attract the organic traffic on your blog post and if the content is impressive, you can make your visitors to buy your products easily.
Keep posting content regularly but relevant to your products and it will help a lot to improve your shopify SEO.
Step-15 : Avoid Useless Shopify Apps
Shopify is a powerful platform for ecommerce store owners and it has many apps that you can use to improve the performance of your shop.
But if these are not useful, then they should be avoided as much as possible.
You should also avoid installing the apps for small tweaks.
Rather than installing one app for small tweaks on your shopify store, I would recommend to hire a freelancer from fiverr who can do the job in $5 or $10.
Installing multiple apps will load a lot of javascripts and it will decrease the page loading performance of your store.
It may impact the decrease in your rankings on google.
But if you are not sure about ecommerce seo then you can install any good shopify seo apps to understand and do it effectively.
Step-16 : Internal Linking
Internal linking is a very important part of ecommerce SEO and it will help to improve your store’s performance.
Internal links are the backlinks that you can create on your website from other pages.
Using internal link in each page helps search engines to understand the importance of each page for google ranking algorithm.
If there are no relevant internal links, then Google may not consider these pages as an authority source for its indexing purpose.
Internal linking has many benefits like- It increases user engagement with site by creating more depth between different parts of content (similarly in case if external linking ).
It helps to improve the user experience by creating a sense of continuity.
Internal linking is an important part of ecommerce SEO and it will help to increase your store’s performance as well.
So, you should create internal links on all pages that are relevant for google search results in order to make them authority sources which can be indexed easily by Google bots and improve search ranking.
How To Make Sure Your Shopify SEO is Perfect
There is no ideal way which can tell you if your shopify seo is done perfectly.
But you can prepare a checklist based on the steps I mentioned already and whenever you update any product page, then make sure to follow the checklist.
And you can check the performance of search ranking in google search console.
It will show you how many impressions your shopify store is getting in google search with CTR and keywords.
If something is weird and your shopify store links are not appearing in organic search on google then you may consider taking help from any professional.
To hire a profession either you can go to freelancing platforms such as upwork, freelancer or can contact to digital marketing agency with proven records like Inquivix.
Remember, in most of the cases, seo issues appear due to duplicate content on product pages of the ecommerce site.
So always try to attract customers with fresh and unique content.
Final Thoughts
I tried to cover everything I can include here along with all the best practices I do for my own shopify stores to get better visibility in organic search for my target keyword.
You must apply all the steps from these seo resources carefully to improve your search engine ranking and it will extend the visibility of your shopify seo to sell online.
I hope this article will help you to understand the importance of SEO in your shopify store.
You can follow the steps mentioned in this article to make your shopify store SEO friendly.
If you have any questions then please leave it below and I will try my best to answer them as soon as possible.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Shopify good for SEO?
Shopify is a great platform for starting and running an online store. It has many features that make it easy to set up and manage your business. One of the benefits of using Shopify is that it is a very popular platform for SEO. This means that you can easily optimize your website for search engine visibility.
Why does your Shopify store need SEO?
There are many reasons why a Shopify store may need SEO. A Shopify store that sells products could benefit from SEO if it is not ranking well for specific keywords in Google or other search engines. Additionally, a poorly performing Shopify store may need SEO to improve its visibility and potential customer acquisition rates (CVRs).