Shopify SEO optimization takes your online store from a well-kept secret to the talk of the town. The more optimized your store is, the more search engines like Google will show your store in search results, sending more customers to your products.
With quality keyword research, you’re focusing on the very terms your potential shoppers are using, making sure your products show up when it matters the most in relevant searches.
On-page SEO, such as optimizing product descriptions and titles, ensures that your store is easy for search engines to crawl and understand. A logical site hierarchy and quick loading performance are equally important to user experience, which increases search rank.
I’m here to help businesses like yours maximize their potential on Shopify with expert Shopify SEO optimization. I develop customized SEO strategies that address your individual goals.
Read on for all the details, and find out how you can start using these tactics to increase your own sales.
Shopify SEO: What You Need to Know
Shopify SEO optimization is essential for increasing your store’s visibility, attracting more traffic, and generating sales. Careful, methodical SEO implementation can do wonders for your Shopify store, helping to boost your ranking on search engines and e-commerce success overall. Knowing what SEO requires and wielding proven practices is the best way to make sure your Shopify store succeeds.
When it comes to SEO on your Shopify store, it pays to start with the basics. That’s because it requires understanding technical SEO, on-page SEO, off-page SEO, and content strategy. Each of these factors is incredibly important for determining how well your entire store ranks in organic search engine results.
For instance, you can begin by improving your metadata. Use your primary target keyword in page titles, especially for collection and landing pages. You should generate a sitemap and submit it to Google Search Console. This will aid search engines in understanding how to navigate your store internally while improving its crawl ability.
Technical SEO covers a lot of ground and is often seen as the domain of developers. A page’s title and meta description are essential for telling both users and search engines what your page is about. To rank well in Google’s organic search results, make sure your store’s content aligns with what people are searching for online.
Shopify Analytics or Google Analytics should be your go-to tools for tracking user behavior and understanding how people interact with your store. You can start taking action today by building new product pages or updating the titles of your existing products.
Customize product names and page titles to align with what people are searching for most on Google. Google’s autocomplete and related searches are excellent tools for identifying the relevant phrases and topics that should be used to optimize your store’s content. To test your structured data for mistakes, simply use Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool.
Initial Shopify Store Setup
New Shopify stores have very fundamental SEO requirements that can’t be overlooked. Setting up key SEO aspects from the beginning helps you rank higher and gain more organic search traffic. Shopify’s built-in SEO features provide a great foundation on which to establish your store’s SEO strategy. If you want your store to truly maximize traffic, sales, and success, SEO for your Shopify store is the way to do it.
Acquire a Custom Domain Name
A unique domain name will help your brand stand out and will give more trust to search engines and customers. It’s better for your SEO rankings, too, as opposed to having a subdomain.
Pick a domain name that gives your store a web address that’s easy for customers to remember and reflects what you sell. Having your own custom domain name helps you establish a trustworthy and professional online presence.
Install Google Analytics
Google Analytics provides invaluable information on who your store visitors are, how they interact with your store, and where your traffic is coming from. Get it configured to track important SEO metrics and evaluate the effectiveness of your SEO strategy.
Analyzing this data gives you insight into where you should be focusing to improve your website optimization and your overall SEO strategy. These actionable insights enable you to make intelligent data-driven decisions that yield powerful positive implications for your site’s SEO performance.
Connect Google Search Console
Google Search Console is an invaluable tool in helping you monitor your website’s indexing status as well as troubleshoot any technical SEO or crawling issues. Link your Shopify store to Google Search Console to receive notifications if there are any crawl errors or security problems that need to be addressed.
By optimizing your website with Google Search Console, you’ll improve how your website appears in Google’s search results. Verify your domain in Google Search Console. This proactive step will help your store get the attention it deserves from search engines right off the bat.
It provides you with advanced information on search queries and keyword success.
Select a Mobile-Responsive Theme
Choosing a mobile-responsive theme ensures that your mobile visitors enjoy a seamless shopping experience. This means that mobile-friendliness is one of the largest contributing factors to search engine rankings.
Pick an appropriate Shopify theme. Shopify themes should be designed for mobile devices as a key focus and intention of the design process. A mobile-responsive theme is crucial for website speed and bounce rate.
Ensure Store Visibility
Ensuring your store is accessible ensures that search engines can crawl and index your website without issue. Review your robots.txt file to ensure no important pages are accidentally blocked from search engine crawlers.
Submitting your sitemap to Google Search Console lets search engines discover and index all of your pages more quickly. Shopify’s platform handles your sitemap automatically.
Shopify’s platform handles all the page speed stuff for you. By indexing things properly, you can earn higher positions in search results and increase your organic search visibility. After all, as much as 35% of online traffic is driven by organic search.
Technical SEO: Optimize Store Structure
To optimize your store structure, concentrate on improving user experience on your site. Further, make sure your site is fast and works smoothly with mobile commerce. Technical SEO is about making it as easy as possible for search engines to crawl and index your website.
This is especially critical as the majority of online traffic starts with organic search. In reality, online stores get as much as 35% of their traffic from search engine results.
1. Build Logical Navigation and Internal Links
Intuitive navigation allows your shoppers and search engines learn how your store is organized. Develop a simple, intuitive navigation that allows visitors to effortlessly locate what they’re looking for. Your website’s navigation contains all of the crucial links that guide visitors throughout your online store.
Internal links help spread link equity throughout your site, increasing the SEO power of your most important pages. Internal linking is one of those things that’s really easy to neglect—for one, when you are initially creating your store.
2. Submit Sitemap to Search Console
By submitting a sitemap to Google Search Console, you can ensure that all search engines are able to find and index your pages quickly and efficiently. Make sure to generate your Shopify store a sitemap.xml file and submit it to search engines.
A sitemap provides important information to Google and other search engines about your site’s hierarchy, helping all critical pages get indexed. Just make sure to claim your domain so Google can verify that you own the website before it starts serving it.
Upload your sitemap to Webmaster Tools/Search Console accounts.
3. Optimize Images for Speed and SEO
Image optimization doesn’t just optimize your website’s speed, it helps your store’s SEO. Resize and compress images to save file size without sacrificing quality.
Remember to include descriptive alt text to let search engines know what the images are conveying.
4. Improve Website Speed Performance
Website speed is one of the most important ranking factors for search engines, as well as user experience. Utilize tools such as PageSpeed Insights, GTmetrix, or WebPageTest to identify and address speed optimization opportunities.
Image optimization, browser caching, and minimizing HTTP requests will all contribute to a faster site.
5. Ensure Mobile-Friendliness
With more people shopping on their phones these days, mobile-friendliness is key to a positive shopping experience. You can run your entire website through Google’s free Mobile-Friendly Test tool to identify problematic pages.
A mobile-responsive design automatically adjusts to whatever screen size a visitor uses, creating a better experience across all devices. If Google sees slow loading pages or a site that isn’t mobile responsive, it’s less likely to recommend your website.
On-Page SEO: Drive Targeted Traffic
On-page SEO focuses on optimizing the value of each individual page in your Shopify store. That’s what allows them to rank higher in the search engine results pages. Most importantly, it leads the most relevant type of visitors to your website.
Keyword research, content optimization, and meta description optimization are crucial components. When you optimize for these, you set up a clear experience for users and search engines to follow.
1. Conduct In-Depth Keyword Research
By doing keyword research, you can get a better idea of what terms people are using when they search for products or services similar to yours. With the help of tools, you can identify keywords with high search volume while being less competitive.
Targeting the right keywords helps move your website’s rank from high to low. Not only does this research inform your content strategy, but it also helps you understand how to create content that’s relevant, useful, and valuable to the people you want to reach the most.
2. Understand and Satisfy Search Intent
Search intent is the ultimate goal of users when they enter their search query. Your content needs to speak right to them and have the information they’re looking for.
When you meet search intent, users spend more time on your website. This increases dwell time and lowers bounce rates. Search engines are smart enough to know that and will increase your rankings to reflect your popularity.
3. Optimize Titles and Meta Descriptions
Optimizing your titles and meta descriptions will help to increase the click-through rate from search to your website. A clear, concise meta description sets the perfect hook.
Indeed, compelling meta descriptions have been shown to boost click-through rates by as much as 33%. Instead, you need to write unique titles and descriptions for each page that explain exactly what the page is all about.
Make sure you have your target keywords included so you can rank higher in the search engines.
4. Use Keywords in Headings and Content
Using keywords in headings and content establishes relevancy, which helps signal search engines what your page should rank for. Include your target keywords in a natural way in your content.
Place them in H1s, H2s, H3s and the body copy. Remember, it’s always best to just create the stuff that’s really engaging and helpful for your visitors. Proper on-page SEO tactics, like strategic keyword placement, can get your business ranked higher in SERPs.
5. Craft SEO-Friendly URLs
SEO-friendly URLs are human- and crawler-readable. Use short, descriptive URLs that contain your target keywords.
Do not include special characters or other extra characters in this field. SEO-friendly URLs help your ranking in search engines and make it easier for people to share your content.
6. Implement Structured Data Markup
Structured data markup helps search engines understand what kind of content you have. It helps them serve you better by letting them show rich snippets like this in search results.
Use schema.org vocabulary in your structured data to help search engines understand and represent the details of your product pages. Better click-through rates are known to improve click-through rates. They further ensure you’re bringing in the right kind of traffic to your website.
Off-Page SEO: Build Authority and Trust
Off-page SEO is the collateral work done to build your website’s authority and trust. This includes efforts such as link building, public relations (PR), and social media outreach. Every backlink from a credible, trusted website is a vote of confidence.
This is how search engines decide if your site is worth ranking high or not. When you produce useful information that people want to link to, you earn these backlinks organically. All of this combined results in enhanced search engine rankings and increased organic traffic.
It is arguably the most vital part of SEO as it contributes to 75% of SEO performance.
Cultivate Active Link Building Strategies
Proactive link building is simply when you identify relevant websites and proactively go out and ask for a link to your amazing content. Find applicable sites in your industry.
After that, reach out to them with a well-thought-out custom pitch. Having something genuinely valuable to offer, such as original data worth a mention or an interactive free tool, will give you far better chances of securing that backlink.
Leverage PR and Outreach Campaigns
PR and influencer outreach campaigns are extremely helpful to not only earn you backlinks but boost your brand awareness exponentially. Develop content that is intriguing enough for the press to write about, then pitch it to industry-focused journalists and bloggers.
Getting linked to from trusted sites and notable publications will help establish your website’s authority and trustworthiness.
Employ the Skyscraper Technique
Using the skyscraper technique, you just have to make content that’s simply better than what’s currently getting all the love in your industry. Identify a topic that did really well for someone else and create a new, better, more in-depth version of it.
After that, get it in front of everyone who has linked to the original.
Contribute Through Guest Blogging
Guest blogging, or guest posting, is the practice of writing content for other blogs within your niche or industry. Identify authoritative, high-quality sites that accept guest posts and then pitch them on your best content ideas.
Always include a link back to your company’s website in your author bio to help you build valuable backlinks.
Capitalize on Unlinked Brand Mentions
Unlinked brand mentions are examples where your brand is cited on the web without a corresponding link. Monitor unlinked brand mentions with tools like SEMrush and Buzzsumo to identify these mentions and then request the website owner to include a link.
Converting these brand mentions into backlinks further establishes your website’s authority.
Foster Passive Link Building
Passive link building is the practice of creating valuable, highly shareable content and naturally earning backlinks. Create sharable content.
Prioritize blog posts, infographics, and videos that inform and entertain—in other words, content that people organically want to link to. Share what you’re creating on social platforms to give it life and get links.
Maintain Active Social Media Presence
A robust social media presence boosts your website’s traffic and builds brand awareness. Promote your content on all of your social media channels, and be active and responsive with your followers.
Social media helps you build relationships with potential customers and influencers.
Deliver Exceptional Customer Service
Providing exceptional customer service greatly enhances customer loyalty and leads to positive review generation. Address customer questions quickly and find a way to solve their problems.
Having a positive collection of reviews builds your website’s authority and trustworthiness while enticing more customers to your business.
Engage with Your Community
Building that engagement not only fosters brand loyalty but also provides insight from your community. Engage in industry-related online discussions and communities.
Brand awareness sponsoring or participating in local events heightens brand awareness and creates positive publicity.
Develop Remarkable Products
Creating awesome products creates word-of-mouth for you and earns links to your content organically. Put more emphasis on producing unique, high-value products that serve a purpose for your ideal customers.
Content Strategy: Avoid Scaled Content Abuse
That’s why a smart content strategy is so important for attracting and engaging the right audience. When you create content that’s valuable and unique, you get rewarded by search engines, and you receive more traffic.
It’s easy to forget sometimes, don’t commit content abuse by writing a ton of junk content just because you can. Google ultimately does want to show the best stuff to its users, so quality really needs to be the primary focus.
Create Valuable, Unique Product Descriptions
Well-written product descriptions make both search engines and shoppers happy. Develop eye-popping descriptions that evoke excitement and desire and give buyers compelling arguments for what your products do and why they’re incredible.
The best practice is to use keywords where it matter, but do not simply backfill content by reaping and sowing from other websites. Instead of telling them how wonderful your shirt is, be specific with an approach like this: “This lightweight, breathable cotton tee helps you stay cool and comfortable from work to play all day long.
Transform Categories into Informative Pages
Transforming your category pages into comprehensive resource hubs is a win-win, providing more value for your visitors while improving your SEO. Provide a short description of what is contained in each bucket, and include relevant, high-volume keywords that you think users may search for.
If you sell shoes, your “Running Shoes” category page could talk about the different types of running shoes and what to look for when buying them.
Develop Helpful Sub-Category Pages
Not only do sub-category pages allow users to quickly navigate and find what they’re looking for, but they boost your SEO. Design each page around one target keyword/phrase and provide valuable content to the user.
For example, if you have a “Running Shoes” category, you might have sub-categories for “Trail Running Shoes” and “Road Running Shoes.” This makes it possible for people to zero in on precisely what they seek within moments.
Address Common Customer Questions
Answering the questions your audience is asking not only serves your visitors but strengthens your SEO. Create a product FAQ page, or implement FAQ schema on your product pages.
By answering questions, you establish trust and reduce the volume of customer service inquiries. If customers frequently inquire about the size, include a comprehensive sizing chart on the product page.
User Experience (UX) and Conversion Optimization
User experience and conversion optimization best practices are at the heart of maximizing your website’s potential and turning those visitors into paying customers. By paying special attention to these points, you’ll be delivering a better, more efficient shopping experience to your consumers. The outcome of this attention to detail leads to more online sales and stronger customer loyalty.
While not every UX improvement will have a direct, immediate impact on conversions, every UX improvement works toward that aim. So, as a UX expert, I would urge some major revisions to improve the customer experience. Help them understand what’s new as they browse your shop.
Improve Site Navigation for Better UX
Intuitive site navigation helps users quickly locate what they want during each visit. Make your primary navigation simple, intuitive, and consistent across all devices. Navigational user interface (UI) issues are often attributed to inundating menus, disorganized layouts, and products that are difficult to find.
Breadcrumbs and internal links help users navigate your site and can boost your SEO. Your overall user experience improves with easy site navigation, which increases online sales. For this installment, I’m recommending MooseDesk, a free support, FAQ, & Helpdesk App.
Optimize Product Pages for Conversions
Highly optimized product pages improve conversion rate and make you more money. Utilize detailed product photography, engaging copy on your products, and direct CTAs. Include plenty of positive customer reviews and testimonials to help establish trust and increase conversions.
By creatively designing and strategically positioning your CTA buttons, you’ll set your website up to meet your audience where they are. Incorporate clear action-oriented CTAs such as “Buy Now” or “Shop Now.” Use arrows, hands, or other iconography to capture attention and lead users’ eyes. This is how to make your CTA buttons stand out!
Enhance Mobile Experience
Well, over 75% of all retail site visits in the U.S. are now on mobile. Which is what makes mobile-friendliness so vital to reaching new customers. Work off a mobile-responsive theme and make sure your site is optimized for mobile devices.
As more users continue to browse primarily on mobile, your CTA buttons need to be highly mobile-friendly. This means that improving website speed and simplifying the checkout process makes the mobile experience better for all. Improving the mobile experience translates to more sales online and more loyalty from your customers.
Monitor, Analyze, and Refine
Monitoring, evaluating, and optimizing your SEO is crucial to long-term success. Monitor important SEO metrics and analyze user behavior on your site. Be prepared to evolve with continual changes in search engine guidelines to improve your website’s search engine ranking.
Continually testing and optimizing your site is the best way to set your site up for long-term success and visibility in search results. This all equals improved SEO and increased sales.
Track Key SEO Metrics
Monitoring core SEO metrics will give you an indication of how successful your SEO efforts are. Learn how to use tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console to monitor changes to traffic on your website.
Track your rankings for pertinent keywords and monitor how many visitors to your website become paying customers. Monitor your site-wide SEO score with an auditing tool like Semrush to see where your site can improve these areas.
This will help your website rank higher in search results. For instance, holding a first-place ranking can generate up to 31% additional daily traffic. Create a Google Analytics account and register your website.
This will allow you to monitor your site’s performance and know how to pivot based on the data.
Analyze User Behavior
By monitoring how users navigate your website, you’ll get a clear picture of how they’re using it. Heatmaps and session recordings allow you to see how users navigate through your site.
Pinpoint the places where users leave your site. Continue to monitor, analyze, and refine. Making targeted changes to improve the user experience and increase conversions should be ongoing.
Adapt to Algorithm Updates
Since search engine rules are constantly in flux, keeping abreast with them is vital. Tools like Moz’s Link Explorer and Ahrefs Site Explorer can help you find the sites that link to your competitors.
Then you can apply that priceless intel to develop more effective link-building tactics of your own. You can use free tools like Surfer SEO, Keyword.io, and Screaming Frog to start with SEO and improve as you go.
Conclusion
With these resources, you’re equipped to improve your Shopify store’s SEO and organic search rank. Last month, I walked you through how to optimize your store from the start. In the last two posts, you mastered how to solve tech problems and optimize keywords. In it, I outlined how to build links and produce amazing content that delights users. Best of all, you’ll learn how to measure what’s working and continue optimizing your store for long-term success.
Most importantly, you can get ahead of your competition and increase your revenue by following this beginner’s guide to Shopify SEO. It can require quite a bit of work, but in turn, it’s well worth it.
Looking to maximize your store with expert Shopify SEO optimization? So start using these Shopify SEO tips right now and see your business soar!
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Shopify SEO and why is it important?
Shopify SEO, simply put, is the practice of optimizing your Shopify store to earn higher visibility on the search engine results page (SERP). Better rankings lead to better visibility, increased traffic, and in the end, higher sales. It’s extremely important for attracting organic traffic and growing your business.
How do I optimize my Shopify store’s structure for technical SEO?
Plan for a simple and intuitive site structure. Optimize your URLs, set up comprehensive internal linking, and make sure you have a responsive mobile design. The more organized your site is, the easier it is for search engines to crawl and understand.
What are the key elements of On-Page SEO for Shopify?
The good news is that you can optimize your product titles, descriptions, and product image alt text with Shopify SEO keywords. Produce entertaining, informative content that answers your customers’ questions, satisfies their intent, and aligns with their search queries.
How can I build authority and trust through Off-Page SEO?
Backlink building efforts should emphasize acquiring links from relevant, authoritative sources. Effective social media marketing will increase your brand awareness, drive more traffic to your store, and earn you loyal advocates. Citations and positive reviews mentioning your name and address have an immense power to increase your dominance.
Why is user experience (UX) important for Shopify SEO?
When users know what to expect, they’ll spend more time on your site, view more products and pages, and most importantly, convert. Since Google has stated that UX is one of the ranking factors, prioritize fast site speed, intuitive navigation, and clear CTAs.
How often should I monitor and analyze my Shopify SEO performance?
Continuously track your website traffic, keyword rankings, and conversion rates through Google Analytics and Google Search Console. Continue to analyze the data to recognize what needs improvement and further hone your SEO strategy. Shoot for once a month as a bare minimum.
