Rank #1 on Google in 2024: 7 Simple Shopify SEO Steps
Struggling to get your Shopify store noticed? Facing tough competition and not achieving the results you want?
The key is mastering Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
Imagine your Shopify store standing out from the crowd, attracting customers with compelling product listings, and topping search engine results for the right keywords. SEO can make this a reality. By optimizing your site speed, ensuring mobile-friendliness, and providing secure payment options, you can turn casual visitors into loyal buyers.
Get ready to outshine your competitors, draw in eager shoppers, and become a powerful player in online retail. With SEO, success is just a few clicks away. Let’s transform your Shopify store and make your business dreams come true.
What is SEO for Shopify?
SEO for Shopify refers to the implementation of Search Engine Optimization strategies and techniques specifically tailored for Shopify websites. Shopify is a popular e-commerce platform that enables businesses to create and manage their online stores.
Did you know that 39% of all global e-commerce traffic comes from search engines?
That’s where SEO for Shopify comes in. The main goal of SEO for Shopify is to improve the visibility and search engine rankings of your Shopify store. By implementing effective SEO strategies, the aim is to drive organic traffic to your store, increase brand exposure, and ultimately boost sales and conversions.
If your Shopify store hasn’t been optimized yet, I strongly suggest following this guide step by step. If you’ve previously optimized your store, feel free to incorporate my recommendations as needed.
Are you ready? Let’s dive into the strategies to enhance your store’s visibility.
1. Improve Your Shopify Site’s Structure
Website structure refers to the organization and interconnection of your Shopify store’s pages. It’s a crucial part of technical SEO for any online business.
Why Optimize Your Site Structure?
Here are two compelling reasons:
1. Enhanced User Experience: A well-structured Shopify site allows visitors to easily find what they’re searching for, typically within a few clicks.
2. Improved Search Engine Visibility: A clear site structure enables search engines like Google to efficiently navigate and index your pages by following internal links.
By establishing a solid site structure from the outset, you can avoid the hassle of restructuring your Shopify website later on.
Let’s Examine a Well-Optimized Site Structure
From the diagram, it’s clear that products are just a few clicks away from the homepage, ensuring quick access for shoppers and easy navigation for search engines.
Not only does this benefit SEO, but it also enhances user experience. A straightforward, linear structure simplifies product discovery for shoppers on your Shopify store.
Shopify makes organizing your content straightforward with these structures:
Homepage » Category Pages » Product Pages
Homepage » Category Pages » Sub-Category Pages » Product Pages
Bear in mind, your website should prioritize customers above all else.
2. Conduct Keyword Research
When performing keyword research for your Shopify store, it’s essential to go beyond just popular industry keywords. Pay close attention to buyer intent.
Buyer intent refers to the reason behind a search query. To understand it better, analyze the specific phrases and terms people use when searching online.
There are two main types of keyword intent:
Informational keyword intent:
These searches often involve questions or seeking information. Searchers are looking for additional details about a topic.
Commercial keyword intent:
These searches occur when users know what they want to buy but may not know where to find it. They might use phrases like “buy smartphone” or “find London hotel deals.” Users using commercial keywords usually have a higher intent to make a purchase.
For Shopify, finding SEO keywords demands a systematic approach to pinpointing relevant and lucrative terms.
Here are several steps you can follow:
- Understand User Intent: Understand why users search for Shopify-related topics—whether for information, products, or solutions.
- Brainstorming: Generate a list of relevant keywords by brainstorming terms and phrases that potential customers might use when searching for Shopify-related information, products, or services.
- Competitor Analysis: Study the keywords your Shopify competitors target to identify effective terms and discover new opportunities.
The table below displays the competitor’s keywords and the corresponding amount of traffic they receive from these keywords.
4. Keyword Research Tools: Utilize keyword research tools like Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush, Ahrefs, or Moz to gather data on search volumes, competition levels, and related terms suggestions. These tools offer valuable insights that can guide your term selection process.
Below is the sample table that shows the Competitor’s comparison table with the use of keyword research tools.
Let’s explore key ‘Kylie Cosmetics’ keywords and their search frequencies to understand what consumers seek in Kylie Jenner’s cosmetic brand.
| Search Queries | Query Frequency |
| Kylie Cosmetics website | 14,000 |
| Kylie Cosmetics lipstick | 10,500 |
| Kylie Cosmetics sale | 8,200 |
| Kylie Cosmetics eyeshadow | 7,800 |
| Kylie Cosmetics lip kit | 6,700 |
| Kylie Jenner cosmetics | 5,900 |
| Kylie Cosmetics store | 4,500 |
| Kylie Cosmetics reviews | 4,200 |
| Kylie Cosmetics collection | 3,600 |
| Kylie Cosmetics promo code | 3,100 |
3. Optimize On-Page SEO for Shopify
Once you’ve completed your keyword research and finalized your site structure, it’s crucial to optimize the content on your two primary page types:
- Product category pages
- Product pages
Let’s look at an example of a “perfectly optimized” page from an ecommerce site.
Content Basics for Shopify
Shopify stores come with automatic SEO features like canonical tags, sitemap.xml, and robots.txt file generation, as well as themes that generate title tags with your store name. However, manual optimization is needed for certain elements:
- Edit title tags, meta tags, and meta descriptions to include relevant keywords.
- Ensure the alt text of product images accurately describes visuals.
- Incorporate keywords into file names.Craft URLs thoughtfully for various pages and collections.
When optimizing title tags and descriptions, remember they are aimed at ranking on the first page of search results and convincing users to click through to your site.
Including modifiers like “Deals,” “25% Off,” “Free Shipping,” and “Wide Selection” can enhance visibility and target long-tail keywords.
Source: kyliecosmetics.com
Optimize Product Pages to Improve Ranking
To attract and convert more customers, focus on optimizing key areas of your Shopify site, such as product descriptions, images, and reviews.
Consider these questions before diving into optimization:
- What are the most critical elements on the page?
- How can you maximize their visibility and impact?
- How can this information enhance the effectiveness of your product descriptions?
How to Improve Product Descriptions for Your Shopify Store
Those people are on your site to buy the product you sell. You just need to convince them that you’re the store to buy it from.
Ensure that you:
✔ Adding high-quality unique images.
✔ Incorporating relevant keywords into descriptions.
✔Including persuasive CTAs.
✔ Integrating testimonials or reviews.
✔ Adding a clear “buy it now” or “add to basket” button.
✔ Organizing products into categories, such as face, eyes, lips, and skincare.
Source: kyliecosmetics.com
By implementing these strategies, you can create compelling product pages that attract customers and drive sales.
Create Internal Links
The more time visitors spend engaging with your content, the greater the likelihood of converting them into customers. Relevant internal links to other pages on your site help potential customers browse and discover information or products.
Ensure that the anchor text of your internal links includes the target keyword. This practice effectively directs users to relevant product pages, category pages, and educational content.
Avoid excessive internal linking. One or two links every few hundred words are sufficient.
By focusing on these strategies, you can enhance your Shopify store’s visibility, improve user experience, and boost conversions.
4. Enhance Your Backlink Profile
Exceptional content is vital for your Shopify store, but achieving visibility requires more than that alone. Quality backlinks serve as endorsements from reputable sources, validating the reliability of your content and boosting your ranking on search engine results pages.
Statistics and Findings on Backlinks for Shopify SEO
Backlinks Influence Search Rankings: Studies show backlinks are a key ranking factor, contributing to around 30% of Google’s ranking algorithm (Moz).
Quality Over Quantity: Focus on acquiring high-quality backlinks from authoritative sites. A few relevant backlinks have a more significant impact on your store’s search rankings than many low-quality ones.
Diversity Matters: Backlinks from a variety of sources, like industry blogs, online publications, social media, and influencer websites, boost your store’s authority and visibility in search results.
In the competitive landscape of Shopify stores, effective off-page SEO and link building are crucial for securing top positions in search engine rankings.
Here are the five most important strategies to achieve this:
Business Directory Submissions: Submit your Shopify store to relevant business directories catering to your industry or niche. For example, list your shop on directories like “Shopify Experts” or “Ecommerce Platforms.” This can boost your visibility and attract potential customers.
Supplier/Manufacturer Links: Reach out to established companies whose products you sell and inquire about their policy for authorized retailers to obtain a link to your store. Simply email them to ask if they would be willing to link to your store.
Contribute Guest Posts: Write for authoritative websites in your industry to gain exposure and earn valuable backlinks.
Share Valuable Content: Regularly share informative and engaging content across your social media channels to attract traffic and encourage sharing.
Distribute Press Releases: Reach out to relevant media outlets with press releases to generate buzz and earn backlinks from reputable sources.
Claim Unlinked Mentions: Regularly monitor online mentions of your brand or products. If you find any unlinked mentions, reach out to the website owner or author and kindly request that they add a hyperlink to your Shopify site. This proactive approach can help you reclaim lost backlink opportunities and strengthen your backlink profile.
The Impact of Top-Quality Links on Shopify SEO
Top-quality linked pages play a significant role in Shopify’s SEO. When a website receives backlinks from reputable and relevant sources, it enhances credibility and trust. This boosts search engine rankings, leading to increased visibility and organic traffic. These links also attract targeted visitors, potentially converting them into customers. Building a strong network of top-quality links is crucial for staying competitive and reinforcing Shopify’s reliability in e-commerce.
5. Identify and Resolve Technical SEO Issues
Technical SEO is crucial for refining your Shopify store and server to streamline the crawling and indexing process for search engines. Addressing technical issues enhances your store’s organic rankings and increases its online visibility.
Common technical issues to address include:
- 404 errors and broken links
- Poor URL structure
- Inadequate internal linking
- Suboptimal site architecture
- Missing metadata like page titles and meta descriptions
- Absence of H1 tags
Ignoring these technical errors can undermine your SEO efforts, making your content invisible to search engines. Proper indexing is essential for your Shopify store to appear in relevant search results, boosting its online presence.
Key areas to focus on in technical SEO for Shopify:
Site Speed Optimization:
Page speed refers to how quickly your web pages load. Improving your Shopify store’s speed enhances the user experience and boosts your search rankings. Aim for a load time of 2-3 seconds to enhance user experience and improve your search rankings.
To increase your Shopify store’s speed:
✔ Use the right image formats: Shopify recommends JPG or PNG files.
✔ Compress images: Reduce image sizes to speed up load times.
✔ Minimize your code: Simplify HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to improve page speed.
Mobile-Friendly Design:
Ensure your Shopify store is responsive across different screen sizes to cater to mobile users and align with Google’s mobile-first indexing.
Address Duplicate Content
Shopify stores often face challenges with duplicate content, which needs to be managed effectively.
Duplicate content refers to having multiple versions of the same page on your site with different URLs. This creates confusion for search engines, which then struggle to determine which page should be ranked.
This issue frequently arises in product pages and tags on Shopify stores. To ensure better SEO performance, it’s crucial to identify and resolve duplicate content issues.
Secure HTTPS Protocol with an SSL Certificate:
Protect your Shopify store with an SSL certificate to encrypt user data and build trust. Websites using HTTPS are favored by search engines, leading to better SEO rankings and enhanced site credibility.
Structured Data and Schema Markup:
Integrate structured data and schema markup into your Shopify store to provide search engines with additional context about your content. This can lead to the creation of rich snippets in search results, amplifying visibility and click-through rates.
Rich snippets display extra information below your website’s title and description in search results, making your site more noticeable and potentially boosting your click-through rate (CTR).
By focusing on these technical SEO aspects, Shopify stores can improve their performance and attract more customers in the competitive online marketplace.
6. Leverage Top Shopify SEO Apps and Tools
Elevate your Shopify store’s visibility and rankings with cutting-edge SEO apps and tools. Let’s explore these five tools that can propel your Shopify store to new heights of success.
Plugin SEO
✔ Multilingual support
✔ Constant updates to align with search engine changes
✔ Automated checks and email alerts for issues
Plugin SEO identifies key SEO problems worth fixing, saving time and money while improving your site’s optimization. It regularly checks page titles, headings, meta descriptions, speed, content, and more to ensure your store is fully optimized.
Smart SEO
✔ Reduces time spent on site optimization
✔ Automates meta tags and alt tags
✔ Provides structured data for search engines
Smart SEO generates meta tags for product, collection, blog, and article pages in your Shopify store, and alt tags for product images automatically. It uses JSON-LD data to supply search engines with the information they need.
Booster SEO & Image Optimizer
✔ Increases traffic from Google image search
✔ Optimizes images quickly and easily
✔ No coding required
Since images are crucial for selling products but can slow down your site, this app optimizes images to maintain fast loading speeds.
Yoast
✔ Analyzes SEO strength of pages and posts
✔ Allows bulk editing
✔ Keeps up with Google’s algorithm updates
Yoast simplifies the process of optimizing your site with your chosen keywords.
SEMRush
✔ Identifies competitors’ top keywords
✔ Reveals which keywords competitors rank for
✔ Shows which competitor pages get the most organic search traffic
SEMRush helps you discover overlooked and underutilized keywords to boost traffic and conversions.
CONCLUSION
As we wrap up our discussion on Shopify SEO, it’s crucial to acknowledge the profound impact that optimizing your online presence can have on your business.
With the right strategies and SEO practices, you can ensure that your Shopify store stands out in the digital realm. By reaching a wider audience and attracting more customers, you can elevate your business to new levels of success.
However, it’s important to recognize that SEO is an ongoing journey. Keeping abreast of the latest trends and adapting to changes in search engine algorithms are essential for sustaining your achievements.
So, what’s the next step? It’s time to take action and give your Shopify store the digital boost it deserves! Reach out to one of our consultants at JetTrinet today to explore how we can assist you in implementing customized SEO strategies to propel your business into the future.