CEO, Bloggle
As a Shopify store owner you already know that optimizing your website for search engines is critical for increasing traffic and sales. However, with limited time and budget, it can be challenging to prioritize SEO efforts.
Fortunately, there are simple yet effective SEO tactics that can make a significant impact on your store's visibility and search engine rankings.
In this article we'll share practical Shopify SEO tips that won't break the bank or take up all your time. Here are the 15 best Shopify SEO tips to try out in 2023.
Keep your Shopify store SEO-friendly with these 15 tips:
If you need to brush up on how SEO on Shopify works, check out our Shopify SEO checklist for a more detailed guide on the topic.
Blogging on Shopify is arguably the most versatile SEO technique at your disposal. Whereas other forms of SEO are limited in terms of content length and structure, you can do pretty much anything with your blog. Long-tail keywords and links are a natural fit for blogging. We will be discussing the use of links later in this article.
Blog posts are an excellent way to provide value to customers, an important facet of conversion rate optimization. SEO Apps like Bloggle allow you to embed products directly in your posts, so you can seamlessly go from one conversion stage to another.
Bloggle helps your SEO by providing scores and suggestions.
Shopify blog SEO is a vast topic, so here is an easily digestible guide of what you need to do to make it work for you:
To reach customers via search engines, you need to find relevant SEO keywords. In Shopify ecommerce, you’re typically looking for informational and transactional keywords related to your products. You’re also looking for long-tail keywords that express buying intent.
SEO tools can be of great help when researching keywords. Here are 3 free keyword research tools for 2023:
While these tools are powerful and feature-rich, they’re not really suited for beginners due to their steep learning curve. If you want to do quick keyword research without relying on tools, we recommend you try out the following two tricks:
If you want to learn more about keyword research, check out Ahrefs’ extensive guide on how to do keyword research for SEO.
Once you have your keywords ready, the next step is to add them throughout your store. Shopify provides a handy interface for adding keywords to product pages, collections, and blog posts. Let’s say you want to add a title and meta-description to a blog post. Do this:
Here are a few tips to keep in mind when writing titles and meta-descriptions:
URL optimization is another quick and easy way to bump your SEO. Your URLs should be consistent with titles, meta-descriptions and other on-page content. This means they should include keywords and long-tail keyword variations where possible. Fortunately, Shopify does most of the work for you – your page title is used as the basis for the URL by default. If you want to customize the URL, you can do so via the Search engine listing preview section, applicable to product pages, collections, and blog posts.
Here are two additional rules of thumb to remember when creating URLs:
Category and product descriptions provide another easy opportunity for adding SEO keywords. The character limits are higher as well, so you can add long-tail variations, secondary keywords and phrases more in line with buyers’ search intent. Keep your writing topical, concise, and filler-free.
One thing to keep in mind here is content duplication. Sometimes you have similar categories of products (i.e. color or size variations), so it’s often expedient to use the same description across multiple pages. This is not good for SEO, so you have two options:
Rich snippets are special sections on search engine result pages. They’re used to highlight things such as availability, price, or user reviews when users search for particular products.
To make your products eligible for rich snippets, you must ensure that your on-page content is marked up using a schema. Luckily, Shopify does this automatically whenever you add products to your store. Just make sure to fill out all the requested fields, including Pricing, Inventory, and Shipping, with up-to-date information.
It’s common knowledge that quality product images help drive sales. They can also help your Shopify store rank better with a bit of optimization. Here are three things you can do to boost the SEO potential of your product images:
When you break it down, a website is just a collection of pages connected by links. When search engines crawl your website, they follow links to get a sense of how your content is structured. If there is no clear hierarchy to the way links are organized, your site gets deranked, simple as that.
Fortunately, by choosing Shopify as your ecommerce platform, you’ve already solved this issue. Your pages are automatically organized according to a predefined structure, i.e. product pages go into collections, blog posts into blogs, blogs into categories, etc.
Additionally, Shopify automatically generates two important files, sitemap.xml and robots.txt. Search engines use these files to verify your website’s structure, as well as determine which pages to crawl.
Another easy way to improve your Shopify SEO is by using a responsive store theme. Search engines have been favoring mobile-first websites for a while now, and using a responsive theme ensures your website scales to different screen types out of the box.
We’ve mentioned compressing images as a factor that determines how fast your site loads. There are similar optimization tricks you can do with other website assets.
If you use custom JavaScript to expand the functionality of your website, make sure to compress and minify your script files. If you’re using tools such as Webpack, these optimizations are carried out automatically.
Another way to optimize load speed is by reducing the number of Shopify plugins you use. An excessive number of plugins can slow your website down to a crawl, and chances are there are more than a couple that you don’t use or need.
One of the key aspects of SEO is tracking how your site performs over time. This helps you detect SEO issues and optimize your Shopify store over time. The best tools for keeping track of site performance are Google Analytics and Google Search Console.
Let’s quickly cover what you must do to start using these services.
If you have a brick-and-mortar store in addition to your ecommerce website, local SEO can help customers in your area discover your business. The easiest way to improve your local SEO is by registering with Google My Business. The sign-up process is quick and intuitive. All you have to do is provide all the necessary information and then verify your business using one of the available methods.
Another way to optimize for local SEO is by using location-specific keywords in your Shopify content. The easiest way to do this is by blogging about your local community, events in your area, etc.
User-generated content is an important component of Shopify SEO. They include any content your customers create, such as reviews, comments, and social media posts. These types of content provide valuable information to potential customers, helping to build trust and encourage sales.
Product reviews are especially important for SEO because they provide more content for search engines to crawl and index. Encourage customers to leave reviews by offering incentives such as discounts, store points, or freebies. Additionally, make it easy for customers to leave reviews by providing clear instructions and easy-to-use forms. Finally, you should respond promptly to negative reviews to show that you care about your customers' feedback and are committed to resolving issues.
Internal linking involves linking from one page to another within your own Shopify store. Linking pages with similar topics helps organize your content into clusters, which in turn helps search engines crawl, index, and rank your content.
Another key aspect of internal linking is dealing with redirects and dead links. Redirects ensure your content remains linked as your website changes over time and pages get displaced in the shuffle. The same goes for dead or orphaned links, which point to content that is no longer available.
Some good internal linking opportunities are:
When other authoritative websites link to yours, search engines take this as a signal that your website is relevant in a certain domain. This in turn builds your domain authority, which helps you rank for keywords.
The best way to build backlinks is to focus on partnerships with industry news sites, social media influencers, bloggers, and even other merchants. Once you establish content with eligible partners, you can work out a mutually-beneficial link-building scheme.
Guest posting is the most common strategy for building links. It works by reaching out to other websites and asking permission to publish a post containing links to your Shopify store on their platform. Naturally, you can return the favor by hosting a guest author on your own Shopify blog.
Another good strategy for building external links is to create linkable assets. A linkable asset is a form of evergreen content that others can use as a reference when publishing their own content. Examples include research studies, templates, ebooks, white papers, etc.
Optimizing your Shopify store for search engines is crucial to improve its visibility, drive traffic, and increase sales. By following these Shopify SEO tips, including conducting keyword research, optimizing content, implementing technical SEO best practices, and developing a strong link portfolio, you can improve your website's ranking and ultimately drive more revenue.
We would also argue that blogging plays a unique role in Shopify because it allows you to continuously publish new SEO content, giving you an edge over competitors that neglect blogging. Bloggle makes it easy to maintain your Shopify blog with features such as templates, layout customization, and ecommerce integration. It also comes with a nifty SEO Analyzer tool to help you create blog posts in line with current SEO best practices.
Sign up for a free 10-day trial today and take your Shopify blogging to the next level with Bloggle.
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