20 Tips for Shopify SEO
When it comes to Shopify, creating a nice-looking website, with recommendations on the same to be found over at runrex.com, is the easy part, delivering traffic to it through SEO is usually the hard part. This is why this article should be an excellent resource as it will look to highlight 20 tips for Shopify SEO.
Use Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools to register your account
According to the gurus over at guttulus.com, if you are serious about Shopify SEO, then you should register your site with Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. This is because, by so doing, you will be telling all the major search engines that website exists, which will ensure that it gets crawled.
Use SSL
As is highlighted over at runrex.com, search engines rank websites that use SSL higher than those that don’t as these sites are more secure. On top of that, if your website is non-secure, users will stay away, and will even warn other users to stay away from your site, which will damage your rankings even further. To avoid this, ensure that you get an SSL certificate for your Shopify site.
Increase dwell times
Dwell time, as explained over at guttulus.com, is the length of time a user spends on a website before they return to their search results. The longer your dwell time, the better your Shopify site will perform in search results, as this indicates to search engines that your site is satisfying user queries. To increase dwell times, you should create engaging and amazing content, use internal linking, embed videos on your pages, use a simple navigation structure, among other strategies.
Make sure that you get your page titles right
Search engines consider the web page titles as a key ranking factor, which means that if you are to be successful with your Shopify SEO efforts, you will need to get your page titles right. Make sure your page titles start with your focus keyword, which is the phrase you want to rank for in search, and that they are never vague.
Don’t forget about your meta descriptions
Meta descriptions usually appear underneath the blue clickable links in SERPs and provide short summaries of web pages. Even though according to Google, they are not a ranking factor, a good meta description will lead to more clickthroughs to your website, increasing the CTR, which is a ranking factor. Make sure that your meta descriptions contain our focus keyword, are accurate, and are concise, that is, are under 300 characters.
Make sure that your site is indexed quickly and accurately
After registering your Shopify site with Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools as pointed out above, and covered over at runrex.com, you should also make sure that you submit an XML sitemap to both these services to ensure that your site is quickly and accurately indexed.
Focus on speeds
Search engines view speed as a crucial signal to rank websites, which is why you must make sure that your Shopify store is loading as fast as possible. To ensure this is the case, as is explained over at guttulus.com, you should compress the size of your photos to ensure they load quickly, remove any Shopify apps which you are not using, avoid using too many web fonts on your site, among many other tactics.
Don’t forget to do your keyword research
If your Shopify SEO efforts are to bear fruit, you will have to ensure that you are using relevant keywords on your site and to get these relevant keywords, you will have to perform keyword research. According to the gurus over at runrex.com, you can use tools like SEMrush to perform your research so that you can target the right keywords for your Shopify store.
Get your headings right
You should also apply headings correctly to your text, and avoid the common mistake most people make where they add bold or capitalized text as their headings to break their content. Not only is this not that aesthetically pleasing and makes it more difficult for visually impaired visitors to understand your text, but it also makes it difficult for search engines to index your content correctly, damaging your rankings. Make sure that your H1 contains your focus keyword, and that you also include a couple of H2s with related keywords as well.
Don’t forget ALT text
On top of looking at the words on your website, search engines also look at your images, which they can do by looking at your images’ alt text and file names. You should, therefore, not ignore these two bits of data if you are to do well with Shopify SEO. Make sure that your alt text works for both search engines and screen readers.
Use short, simple, and understandable URLs
Your URLs should be simple, short, and understandable if your Shopify SEO efforts are to bear fruit. For example, if you sell leather shoes, your URLs should be something like www.yourdomain.com/leather-shoes and not www.yourdomain.com/prxt/nd/j947.php?ref=84494leathershs. Make sure that whatever comes after the prefix Shopify adds to your page and products, is as understandable as possible, and contains your focus keyword, as is covered over at guttulus.com.
Your content is just as important as your products
Also, don’t fall into the trap many fall into where you focus so much on your product catalogs and forget about creating amazing content. Remember, as per the gurus over at runrex.com, great content is a crucial part of SEO, and you should, therefore, make sure that your site features informative and engaging posts and content.
Don’t forget about backlinks
Other than sites that feature informative and in-depth posts and content, other Shopify sites that tend to do extremely well in search are those that have backlinks pointing to them. As is explained in detail over at guttulus.com, it is, therefore, important that you build or get as many high-quality backlinks pointing to your site as possible, as this will improve your rankings no end.
Try and add rich and valuable snippets to your content
These rich snippets should be added to your content to help both search engines and searchers understand what your page is all about. These include visual clues such as star rankings, prices, and many others. These will help you rank higher and will increase the chances of searchers clicking on your link.
Make sure that your on-page SEO is on point
When you talk about on-page SEO, it encompasses all the steps taken to ensure that as many ranking signals as possible are present on a particular individual page. To achieve this, you should make sure you use headings properly, position your target keywords early on your content, your images are optimized correctly, and so forth. On-page SEO is crucial to your overall Shopify SEO success.
Get your site structure right
Your site structure will also determine how successful you will be with your Shopify SEO efforts, according to the folks over at runrex.com. Get the hierarchy of your site right, with your main categories at the top followed by subcategories and then your products in that order.
Make sure that get your descriptions right
As is explained over at guttulus.com, Shopify gives users the option to write a description when they are creating products or collections pages. These descriptions as extremely important as search engines use them to understand more about a given page and decide how to rank the said page. Good product descriptions will also tempt visitors to make a purchase this is why it is important to ensure that your product descriptions are unique and engaging.
Eliminate duplicate content
As is also discussed over at runrex.com, Shopify allows for the indexing of two versions of your domain: your custom domain and the MyShopify version of your domain. This might lead to duplicate issues as the content on both of these domains is usually the same. To fix this make sure that traffic is automatically redirected to your primary domain when you add these domains to prevent Google from indexing both versions which may affect your rankings.
Redirect dead pages
It is also important to make sure that any old URLs, ones that you have removed, are being redirected to the correct new pages. To achieve this, you should use the in-built Shopify URL redirect tool which will help you redirect old or dead pages.
Optimize for mobile
With the majority of people out there using mobile devices to open websites, it is also crucial to optimize your Shopify store for mobile, and rank as high as possible for mobile search engine results. Some of the things you can do include using a mobile-ready Shopify theme, large and clear calls-to-action, text that is visible and readable, and of course, using Accelerated Mobile Pages, AMP, format for your Shopify pages and posts.
If you are looking for more information on this and other related topics, then look no further than the highly-rated runrex.com and guttulus.com.