15 Best Shopify SEO Tips for 2023

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.

SEO tips for your Shopify website

Keep your Shopify store SEO-friendly with these 15 tips:

1. Create a Shopify blog
2. Find relevant SEO keywords
3. Optimize titles and meta-descriptions
4. Optimize URLs
5. Improve category and product descriptions
6. Add schema markup for rich snippet eligibility
7. Optimize images
8. Optimize site structure
9. Use a responsive theme
10. Reduce page loading time
11. Register your site with Google Analytics and Search Console
12. Optimize for local SEO
13. Utilize user-generated content
14. Optimize internal links
15. Attract external links

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:

• Write quality content to help customers with their concerns. In terms of format, consider writing tutorials, descriptions of use-case scenarios, troubleshooting guides, feature guides, and other content related to your product and its value proposition.
• Post regularly to keep customers engaged, even when they’re not actively looking to buy something. This helps foster a community around your brand, which increases your up-selling and cross-selling opportunities.
• On the technical side of things, use a consistent heading structure, add keywords and their variations throughout your content, and keep your writing free of fluff. 
• Use multimedia elements such as images and video to make your content more engaging and generate additional SEO opportunities. 
• Add links and CTAs to your posts with a tool like Bloggle. This helps make your posts more interactive, in addition to SEO benefits from content interlinking. 
• Use Shopify’s existing SEO features, such as titles, meta-descriptions, and custom URLs, to make it easier for search engines to crawl and index your blog.

‍

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:

• Ahrefs Free Keyword Generator – To use Ahrefs Free Keyword Generator, simply enter a seed keyword related to your business, select a search engine and location, and the tool will generate a list of keyword ideas along with their search volume and keyword difficulty. You can then analyze and filter the results to identify the most valuable keywords for your SEO strategy. 
• Keywords Everywhere – To use Keywords Everywhere, you need to install the browser extension on Chrome or Firefox. Once installed and configured, you can search for a keyword on Google or another search engine, and the tool will display the keyword's search volume, competition, and other important metrics in your browser. You can also use the tool to get keyword suggestions and analyze keyword data from other websites.
• AnswerThePublic – To use AnswerThePublic, provide keywords related to your business, and the tool will generate a list of questions and queries related to your topic, as well as other suggestions. You can then use this information to create Shopify blog content that addresses these questions and provides valuable information to your customers. 

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:

• Use the auto-complete feature of Google search. Start typing words and phrases related to your brand, such as “vegan cosmetics”, and check what comes out as suggestions.

• Do a Google search, then scroll down to the More searches section near the bottom of the results page.

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:

1. Navigate to Online Store > Blog posts and click Add blog post.
2. Scroll down to the Search engine listing preview section and click Edit website SEO.

3. The title goes in the Page title field, and the meta-description in the Description field.

Here are a few tips to keep in mind when writing titles and meta-descriptions:

• The title should be between 50-60 characters.
• The description should be at most 120 characters.
• Include long-tail variations of the keyword where possible.

‍

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:

• Don’t include random strings of characters in URLs. This makes them unreadable from a UX perspective.
• Always use hyphens to separate words, and never underscores. This ensures compatibility with older browsers, which sometimes interpret the underscore sign differently.

‍

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:

• Setting canonical URLs to tell search engines which version of content to index (requires some technical knowledge).
• Writing different descriptions to remove duplication (takes time if you have many similar products and product categories).

‍

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:

• Compress them to reduce their size. This ensures your pages load faster, which is an important ranking factor.
• Provide alt tags that describe the content of the image. This helps with UX for users with screen readers. It also adds crawlable content to your images, helping them rank for image search.
• Use a consistent, descriptive naming scheme for image files. Much better for SEO than naming images along the lines of “24356436.jpg”.

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.

Registering with Google Analytics

1. To create a Google Analytics account, go to https://analytics.google.com and fill out the sign-up form.
2. Log in to your account, navigate to the Admin tab, click Create Property, then follow the prompts to set up your property.
3. After setting up your property, you'll receive a tracking code. You can find it under the Tracking Info section of your property settings. Copy the code.
4. Log in to your Shopify account and navigate to the Online Store page. 
5. Go to Preferences, then scroll down to the Google Analytics section. Paste the tracking code in the Google Analytics account field.
6. Verify the code is working by navigating to the Real-Time section of your Google Analytics account.

Registering with Google Search Console

1. Go to https://search.google.com/search-console/welcome and sign in with your Google account.
2. Click Add a property and enter your Shopify website's URL. Use the full URL, including "https://" at the beginning.
3. Verify ownership by downloading an HTML verification file and uploading it to your Shopify website's root directory. The file can be found on the Verification Details page. 
4. Submit your sitemap by selecting your property and then navigating to the Sitemaps section. Enter the URL of your sitemap. To generate the URL, simply append sitemap.xml to your Shopify website’s URL (e.g. https://my-site.com/sitemap.xml). Then click Submit.
5. It may take a few days for data to start populating in Google Search Console. Once it does, you'll be able to see information about your website's performance in search results, including the queries that people use to find your site, the most popular pages, and any errors or issues that Google finds.

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:

• Showing related products when customers land on a product page.
• Showing featured items on your homepage and linking them to product pages. 
• Create blog posts about specific products and linking them to other blog posts and product pages. Bloggle’s embedded product functionality makes this extremely easy.

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.

Improve your Shopify SEO with Bloggle

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.

‍