A Comprehensive Guide to Improve Shopify SEO and Increase Your Store Sales
Shopify SEO is an essential element for anyone using this platform.
Getting your online store to appear in the first search results will not happen by chance, but rather requires some effective practices and strategies.
In this article, we’ll go over the best strategies and practices you need to boost your Shopify SEO, whether you want to increase sales, attract more buyers, or improve the overall quality of your store.
What is Shopify SEO and why is it important?
Shopify SEO is the process of optimizing aspects of your Shopify store to achieve higher search engine rankings and attract more organic traffic.
Although Shopify SEO shares the basic principles with other platforms like WordPress, there are some minor differences due to the different infrastructure of each platform.
Paying attention to Shopify SEO will bring you and your store many positives, the most prominent of which are:
1. Appear in search engines
SEO is basically about improving the ranking of stores and websites in search engines organically without spending any money.
Therefore, by following the steps and strategies that we will mention during the article, you will ensure that you achieve the best results in this regard.
2. Improve user experience
Shopify SEO is not only about getting the buyer to click and visit your store, but also to stay there and come back again to buy again.
Therefore, it will reduce bounce rates and improve the overall user experience on the store.
3. Targeting a specific audience
Targeting all segments of Internet users is very tiring and largely unrealistic, as most likely only a small group will be interested in buying your product, and you, in turn, will have to target that group, which enables you to improve Shopify SEO.
4. Increase sales
Continuing from the previous point, the more you target the categories interested in your product, the more likely they are to make a purchase.
Thus, increasing sales significantly compared to many other marketing methods that can cost you a lot of money in order to do so without achieving any similar results.
5. Building trust
The more organized, smooth and at the top of the search results the site is, the more it will instill reassurance and confidence in the hearts of buyers.
As sites of this type are usually very honest, in addition to that it gives an excellent first impression of the product that they will expect from you after purchasing.
6. Outperform competitors
To be part of the competition in any online market you will have to take care of all the technical aspects of your store and take advantage of any opportunity to stand out among the competitors.
Shopify SEO is one of the best and cheapest ways to do this effectively.
How to develop Shopify SEO
We have mentioned more than once that there are many practices and methods that can positively affect Shopify SEO.
The most important aspects that you should work on in this regard are:
1. Product Pages
Product pages, how they are displayed, and the content on them have a huge impact on Shopify SEO.
Google search engine prefers long content, which you will most likely not be able to apply to product sales pages, so you will have to compensate for it with other points.
The design of the page also greatly affects the buyers’ decision. The more organized and of high quality it is and the more it contains the elements they are looking for, the greater the chance that they will complete the purchase.
The most important elements that you should pay attention to on the page are:
a) Keywords
Keywords are one of the most important elements of SEO for any website or store. There are many tools that help you choose the right keywords, such as Google Keyword Planner and Amazon Keyword Tool.
For example, if you sell athletic apparel, you might search for words like “men’s athletic apparel” or “running shoes.”
Don’t forget to take into account the Google recommendations that appear during your search, they are quite accurate and can be useful.
b) Titles and descriptions
The titles and descriptions you put on your product page have a huge impact on your Shopify SEO.
So try to make it linguistically correct, whatever language you write in, and incorporate the keyword you have chosen and its synonyms to reach the largest possible number of buyers, and of course you must write it in an attractive way as well to encourage them to buy.
c) Pictures
Images are one of the first elements that buyers see when visiting your site, so it is natural that you display all the visual aspects of the product that the buyer will need, and that they be of the highest quality and the smallest possible size so as not to cause the site to slow down.
It is also recommended to put an “Alt Text” for the images and put the keyword in it (in this case it will be the product name), to make it appear in the image search results and increase visits to your store.
d) Reviews and Ratings
To increase the confidence of new customers in the store, you must enable reviews and ratings, so that they can see the opinions of those who have already purchased the product.
This is in addition to encouraging customers after purchasing to leave a rating or review for the product they purchased, even in exchange for gifts and prizes.
2. Links
Links play an important role in improving Shopify SEO and increasing traffic to the site organically, as well as improving your site’s reputation and increasing your reliability.
There are some basic aspects that you need to take care of, which are:
a) Building internal links
It is the process of linking your store pages to each other internally and without the need for any external party to intervene.
This is to improve the user experience within the site and facilitate navigation through it. You can also nominate some similar or complementary products and increase your sales as well.
b) Building external links
External links, also known as backlinks, refer to getting links in other places that point to your store, whether on influential sites in this field or on your own blog to improve Shopify SEO for your store.
There is a lot of work and detail at this point, but you can start with these points:
- Contact blogs related to your store’s products to write articles for you.
- Contact social media influencers to put your store link in their Link tree.
- Follow forums and Q&A sites and try to post your store links in a useful way without being annoying.
c) Repair broken links
Links are constantly being broken, whether due to product deletions or out of stock, which hurts your store’s search engine ranking.
So you should search for them periodically and fix them through some tools such as Google Search Console, SEMrush and Ahrefs.
3. Store speed
Store speed is one of the factors that cannot be neglected during Shopify SEO optimization, as it plays a major role in improving the store’s ranking in search engines and making it spend more time inside the store.
It will also significantly reduce bounce rates which have a very negative impact on your store’s ranking.
You can easily measure your store’s speed and how to improve it with Google PageSpeed Insights.
The most important practices that you should pay attention to while doing this are:
a) Reduce media size
Any type of media that takes up a lot of space, such as images and videos, will slow down your store significantly.
So try to compress it as much as possible and try different formats to get the best result.
b) Remove unwanted applications
Shopify has a huge number of add-ons and applications, but that doesn’t mean you have to use them all. Just try to use the ones you need and remove the rest of the add-ons that you don’t use to speed up your site’s performance.
c) Enable caching
This method stores your store with the user so that it does not reload it from scratch every time he visits it, thus increasing the speed of the site. You can easily activate it through your store settings on the platform.
4. Phone experience
Most users currently shop via phone, so you need to take care of it and improve the user experience on it as well.
If you want to improve Shopify SEO and increase sales on mobile, you will most likely do the same practices we mentioned before, along with some additional things.
Such as choosing a design that works well and quickly on the phone, adjusting the font size so that it is not excessively large, and placing images in the middle of the page to fit the limited phone screen.
The most important point in all of this is to examine your mobile store yourself and see what elements need improvement.
5. Store Blog
In order to increase traffic to your site and create a fertile environment in which to place links to your products, you will have to consider the idea of creating a blog, especially if your field lacks this aspect.
It will improve your Shopify SEO and increase your brand awareness significantly.
In order to get the best results from your blog and achieve the maximum profit from it, you will have to take into account providing the best and most useful information possible to users in a very neutral manner and without insisting on buying your product, but rather placing the purchase order at the end in a smooth manner only.
6. Duplicate content
Duplicate pages and content are one of the most common problems among online stores, as they cause confusion for search engines and make it difficult for them to know which pages to display to the user.
Especially if those pages are very similar in content, rankings and keywords.
This problem can be solved by using “canonical tags” that tell search engines which results to display.
And of course if you can rewrite that page to be more different or delete it if it’s not important then these solutions can also do the job.
7. Competitor Stores
This is not a Shopify SEO method as much as it is a source of information, and like any other marketing method, you should always keep competitors’ stores under study.
And to see what methods they use to improve their Shopify SEO for their stores, whether it’s organizing their product pages, their keywords, or even what they write in their blogs, if any.
8. Store Structure
The site structure should be clear and easy to understand and navigate in order to get the best results and purchases.
To increase the duration of buyers’ stay on the store, which will ultimately contribute to improving Shopify SEO.
The most important elements of improving the store structure are:
a) Store listings
Your store should have clear menus that allow users to easily identify and navigate categories.
This is done by choosing a good Shopify template and customizing it professionally. You also have to make the menu icon clear on the home page, and of course put each product in its correct category.
b) Products Schema
It is a form of structured data that helps search engines better understand your store, by providing more information about your product such as price, rating, and whether it is available or not, and it will definitely improve Shopify SEO.
c) URLs
Search engines prefer consistent and understandable URLs, so avoid relying on automatic titles, and try to keep them short and include the keyword to improve Shopify SEO.
d) Meta Descriptions & Titles
Titles and meta descriptions are some of the most important fields you can use to get users to click and enter your store. They are the title and short description that appears to the user while browsing stores in the search engine.
You should include your keywords in both, and keep in mind that titles should not exceed 55 characters and descriptions should not exceed 145 characters.
9. Social Media
Similar to blogging, social media is also a very good way to improve Shopify SEO, as it has a very large number of users that you can benefit from in many ways.
Where you can make it a channel to place external links, spread awareness of your brand, share some forms of content and interact with the audience.
All of this will definitely generate traffic to your store and improve your position in search engines.
Conclusion
Improving Shopify SEO is an essential element for the success of your online store. By applying the strategies and practices we mentioned in this article, you will be able to:
1. Increase your store’s visibility in search engines: Improving your search ranking will attract more organic traffic.
2. Improve user experience: Providing a smooth and fast browsing experience will encourage customers to stay in your store and come back to buy again.
3. Target an audience interested in your products: Focusing on the right keywords and target audiences will increase your chances of selling.
4. Build trust and outperform competitors: An organized store that appears high in search results leaves a positive impression on customers.
Start implementing these strategies in your Shopify store today and see the difference in traffic and sales. If you need further assistance or have any questions, please feel free to contact us.
