The Ultimate Shopify SEO Guide Best Practices?

Edwin Anthony

Founder & Business Strategist


Shopify is an easy-to-use platform that offers several useful features. If you want your Shopify store to rank high in search results, you’ll need to implement the right search engine optimization (SEO) strategy. Using these Shopify SEO tips can maximize your store’s visibility in search engine results, which increases your website’s chance of receiving visitors and converting those visitors into customers.

Use Commercial Keywords
Content-heavy websites and blogs use informational keywords to target their customers. Restaurants might use the keyword “dinner dates near me” within their content to entice customers looking for upscale meals near them.

You can use informational keywords to attract visitors to your Shopify store, but you should be ranking higher for product-related target keywords that indicate buyer intent. If someone searches for a keyword like “kids t-shirts” in Google, then this shows they need that product.

Shopify SEO services use tools like SEMrush and Ahrefs to research target keywords for your niche and determine how competitive your keywords are in search results. They can choose keywords based on a high number of people searching for your product and a low number of competitors using the same keywords.

Your keywords should have a low difficulty, which is the measurement of how hard it will be to rank high in Google. A lower keyword difficulty percentage means you’re more likely to get your content ranked highly.

Improve Your Shopify Site Structure

A site’s structure refers to how its pages are arranged and organized. Customers are more inclined to buy from a website they can easily navigate, giving them a better user experience. A better experience on a website can translate to higher ranks in the search results. According to Google, usability is one of the top deciding factors for search results

With Shopify, it’s easy to organize your product pages under collections pages. You can even organize your products into subcollections pages if you have any holiday sales or seasonal sales. Use the automatic collection option if you have a lot of things to sell in your store. It is important to add About Us and Contact Us pages to establish trust with your visitors. They need to be able to contact you if they have questions or concerns.

Optimize the On-Page SEO on Your Site

On Shopify, you can easily edit on-page SEO, such as page names, meta descriptions, and URLs. You can do this on a product or collection page. Adding your keywords to these pages can improve your search ranking, making it easier for visitors to find your site. 

  • Title tags and meta descriptions

A product page’s title tag and meta description should contain keywords related to the page’s content. The unique page meta data helps search engines to understand the content. Title tags should contain 60 characters, while descriptions must have a maximum of 160 characters.

Write meta descriptions consistent with the information on the webpage and ensure the tone reflects your brand. If appropriate, add your commercial target keywords to the title tag and description. Having an engaging meta description should encourage potential buyers to click on your listing and buy your products.

  • Images

Alt text for your images should contain the commercial target keywords. An image of blue sweatpants with alt text that provides a strong description is more likely to appear in the search results. Those with visual impairment rely on screen readers to navigate online. Well-written alt-text tells consumers more about your products and encourages them to buy.

  • URLs

eCommerce websites need to have short URLs with a high keyword density. You can indicate URLs in two ways:

  • There can be a 1- to 2-word description on the collection and sub-collection pages such as https://yourdomain.com/mug. 
  • On product pages, separate your target keyword by dashes (“-”) like  https://yourdomain.com/mug/ceramic-tea-mug.
  • Internal links

Although Shopify automatically creates internal links when you set up your navigation, you should take the time to strategically connect popular product and collection pages with authoritative sites. Adding a link from a high-ranking product page to a blog post with a lot of backlinks can boost search engine rankings.

Delete Duplicate Content

Duplicate content is text that matches another web page exactly. While search engines tolerate duplicate content between pages on your site, duplicate content from other sources may hurt your ranking. 

A plagiarism tool such as Copyscape is a valuable source for quickly detecting external duplicate content. Also, you should not copy and paste manufacturer’s descriptions when selling third-party products. Put your unique spin on product descriptions, even if this means rewriting every product and collection page. 

Add Canonical Tags

According to Google, search engine rankings can detect non-malicious duplicate content such as store products displayed or linked by multiple URLs and printer-only versions of web pages. To avoid duplicate content issues, a canonical tag tells search engines that they should include a particular URL in the search results. 

It takes some basic coding knowledge to add a canonical tag to the URLs you want to rank high in the search engine results. Shopify also allows you to add canonical tags to your product pages with a code.

Shopify SEO services can work with you on choosing where you want to add canonical tags on your product or collection pages.

Create High-Quality Backlinks to Your Shopify Store

Obtaining links from credible sites is an important step in building your site’s authority and ranking high in search results. When search engines see a backlink from a reputable site, they consider your website to avoid duplicate content issues in that niche.

You can set up a profile on Amazon, Yelp, and other sites similar to those. As a result, you will get high-quality backlinks and more visitors to your Shopify store. 

On the other hand, sites that contain links to other websites that have nothing to do with their products are ignored by search engines. These links on your site cause your SEO to suffer because search engines label your website untrustworthy. 

The search engines also view building an excessive number of links in a short period as spam. When too many low-quality links are redirected to a company’s website, its performance worsens rather than improves. For this reason, be careful about how you build your links.

Set Up a Blog on Shopify

Including a blog on Shopify is a fantastic way to grow your audience, gain more exposure, and increase organic traffic and revenue for your eCommerce store. It is highly recommended to post regular, high-quality content for a few reasons. 

  • If you publish a post and include your target commercial and informative keywords, it has the potential to rank in the search engine results. It shows search engines that your site has authority on a specific topic. 
  • Good content makes your site more useful to visitors. They want to visit sites that can help answer their questions, so search engines want to direct them to these sources.
  • The more consistent and high-quality your blog content is, the easier it will be to get backlinks. Visitors may share your blog posts through social media and with friends or family if they find your posts helpful. With external links directed to your Shopify store, you boost your domain authority, traffic, and customer trust.

Discover How Shopify SEO Services Can Help You

Getting your Shopify store to rank on the first page of Google search results is the key to gaining more customers and making a profit. The more you work at optimizing your eCommerce store, the higher up in search engine rankings you’ll climb.

Rezolutions Design can help you with all your Shopify-related questions and concerns. We provide website design and search engine optimization services to help any business who wants their Shopify site to succeed online. 

Get in touch with us today to find out how to best optimize your Shopify store to drive sales.  

 

 

 

Edwin Anthony

Founder & Business Strategist

Presently, Edwin is the Founder and Lead Design and Development Director of Rezolutions Design, a full-service digital agency based on Aventura Florida which works with fortune 500 companies.

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