One of the eCommerce systems that online merchants most frequently suggest using to launch their online retail operations is Shopify. It speeds up and simplifies things, but if you want your Shopify store to perform at its peak in search results, you still need to put in some Search Engine Optimization (SEO) effort.
Let us quickly go over what SEO is and why it is essential for your eCommerce business. This SEO guide will direct you to recommendations that are essential for preserving or improving your Shopify eCommerce store's search exposure.
What Is Shopify SEO?
Search engine optimization helps raise the caliber and volume of visitors from natural search engines like Google and Bing to your Shopify shop. Your Shopify website's SEO makes it easier for search engines to comprehend what you sell and gauge the reliability of your website.
Is It Wise To Target SEO For Shopify Lead Generation?
It seems unclear if investment in Shopify SEO is suitable for your company as a whole. To help you with that riddle, here are the three key advantages of performing SEO for Shopify:
Aids In Positioning You In Related Searches
You may rank in relevant search results, which is one of the main benefits of SEO for Shopify stores. People use search engines to find the proper business when they want to see your goods or services.
More than 80% of consumers conduct product research online, and many use search engines as a starting point.
People will reach your rivals' websites before yours if your website needs to be optimized for relevant queries. You lose out on relevant traffic for your business as a result, which can be dealt with by SEO.
Brings Organic Traffic To Your Website
Using technical SEO for Shopify, you can assist your company with increasing website traffic. How? As SEO calls for the optimization of relevant keywords, it helps your company seek better traffic by ranking better in the search results.
People who use those search phrases are interested in what you offer. Therefore, they will go to your website. Consequently, you attract more relevant leads to convert into sales and attract website visitors interested in what you offer.
Enables You To Boost Sales And Income
Did you realize that more than 40% of sales are generated by organic traffic? SEO is an effective tactic for assisting you in obtaining qualified leads that result in sales. If someone stumbles over your website in a search and visits it, they could be interested in what you have to offer. As a result, customers frequently interact with your company to learn more about your goods or services.
SEO Challenges That eCommerce Websites Face Frequently
Generally speaking, eCommerce websites are more prone to experience specific difficulties that might harm search engine performance.
- Thin Content: Google favors lengthy, in-depth articles. It might be challenging to raise the ranks of product pages in search since they sometimes have little information.
- Duplicate Content: Many eCommerce websites struggle with duplicate content since their product pages are sometimes identical or automatically created.
- Bad Site Architecture: Google likes to view sites with user-friendly, optimized site architecture.
- Failing to use product schema: It enables Google crawlers to comprehend and advertise your items. Schema omission is a big problem for Shopify merchants.
Next, let us check how we can use some smart techniques to get on with lead generation on Shopify:
It is important to note that improving SEO for Shopify businesses requires more than just knowing and using SEO best practices. Although this is an essential part of any marketing plan, the most outstanding outcomes depend on using the appropriate SEO tools. Additionally, you can try these techniques without wasting time and energy.
1. Improvise The Site Structure
The layout of your page's content is crucial to the effectiveness of your Shopify website SEO. Customers are more likely to spend more time on your website and see more pages when they discover what they're searching for quickly and simply. This can benefit your search engine rankings.
How can you make it simpler to explore your website?
Simplify. Avoid using too many categories and subcategories. For search engines to scan Shopify and rank your items, it helps to have a more straightforward site layout. Organize your content using a structure like:
- Homepage » Category Pages » Product Pages
- Homepage » Category Pages » Sub-Category Page » Product Pages
In addition to an efficient structure like this, you can add an "About Us" and "Contact Us" page along with a "Search Box".
2. Offer A Great User Experience
A high-end online experience keeps your consumers returning for more and raises your average ticket. Good user engagement metrics are crucial for long-term SEO growth and organic exposure, which is a little-known truth.
One of the metrics used by Google to gauge and assess the efficacy of the search results is dwell time, which measures how long a user spends on a search result before returning to the search engine results page. The average session duration and lowering your website's bounce rate are incredibly efficient approaches to longer dwell time. The steps are the same to do that. Consider your target audience's needs, search strategies, and expectations for your offerings on the website and your products and services.
Read More: Accelerate Brand Growth With Conversion-Focused Web Design
3. Make Use Of Data-Driven Keyword Research
You can optimize your sites for the actual search phrases users are entering by putting keyword research into practice. This brings in customers ready to make a purchase and informs Google of your store's focus. Write down a list of relevant keywords for each product to start, then use these strategies to add more:
- Consider looking at Google's "People Also Search For" and "People Also Asked" boxes.
- View Google's autofill recommendations
- Perform competition analysis to discover the terms they are utilizing.
Finally, use a keyword research tool to run your expanded list of keywords to see which ones perform the best and have many searches but little competition. You can also use a Shopify-specific tool as suggested by an experienced Shopify SEO services agency.
4. Optimize The Website’s Speed
79% of customers who see delayed loading times won't return to a website to make another purchase. Even more unexpectedly, 47% of online buyers anticipate a website loading in two seconds or less. You don't have much time to make an impression with it.
Customers will only hang around if your store is active. This will let Google know that your site isn't relevant to the search phrases used, which will cause it to drop in the search results. You can improve the speed of your website by doing the following:
- Opt for a quick Shopify theme
- Reduce the size of photos
- Download the applications you require.
5. Add Rich Product Images And Videos & Optimize Store images
Your SEO will benefit significantly from adding high-quality product photos and videos to your product pages. It helps customers understand the purposes and fundamentals of your goods. How? Well, many shoppers browse the products they want to buy online. They want to be able to quickly comprehend the features and costs of each product.
So, to make their life easier, offer detailed product photographs and videos on your product pages. Your product pages can link to these videos if you publish them to your YouTube channel as well. As a result, more people will see your videos and learn about your products.
6. Optimize URLs
To raise your Google results, you must follow some URL best practices as followed by Shopify eCommerce SEO experts as well:
- Be succinct and to the point.
- Specify your intended keyword.
- Avoid using words like and, or, the, etc.
You can edit the URL routes by clicking on the Shopify CMS's Search Engine Listing Preview located at the bottom of every page.
7. Focus On Quality Content
It is true that search engines will take some time to rank your content, even if it is of excellent quality. However, content strategy ROI is among the finest you will ever receive over time. Start easy. Write valuable and relevant content by considering your target audience and their problems relating to your offering. Don't be silent about anything.
Do not restrict yourself to blogging! You may create podcasts, films, and content on social media if you have the chance. Your reach will be increased, and more prospective customers will be attracted.
8. Optimize Your Product Page
It is important to ensure the offering of complete information on the product pages. In general, they will get better the more you add. However, never copy and paste the product title and description from the website or catalog of the product maker onto your product pages. Additionally, ensure you're producing your product videos and, if feasible, photographs.
Linking back to blog posts on your website that include relevant or useful info is another effective technique to improve your product page. This will increase the visibility of your product pages in search engine results and offer more context for potential consumers. Make it simple for your consumer to comprehend the characteristics and advantages of your product. Since humans are highly visual beings, incorporating visual aids will be quite beneficial.
9. Optimize Your Category Pages
Category pages provide a fantastic opportunity more extensive organically for more significant product phrases and keywords. Optimized category pages are a powerful tool for businesses looking to reduce bounce rates, boost session durations, or improve any other measure indicating how well they retain website visitors.
The majority of your rivals will continue to use the default Shopify category pages, so this is where you can distinguish. Add a succinct summary of the product or service category itself to the top of your category pages. Additionally, provide even more (longer description) details about the product or service category at the bottom of the category page. This will improve the semantic value of your product category. Additionally, as the category pages connect to the items, the semantic equity of the products will also rise.
10. Remove Duplicate Content
In general, the term "duplicate content" refers to text that exactly duplicates a copy on another web page even if it is on your website or other people’s. Not just that, even identical pages are considered duplicate pages and can act as a barrier to your brand’s success.
Duplicate content may be disastrous for any Shopify website if a search engine like Google finds it, Bing, Yahoo, or another. Although search engines tolerate internal duplication very well, exterior repetition could hurt search engine results and subject your business to a penalty. So, you should add a canonical tag if your site has duplicate content.
11. Write Catchy And Compelling Meta titles & Descriptions
It is a crucial Shopify SEO tip. How your items are presented in search results can be significantly influenced by the metadata on your Shopify product pages. Here are three suggestions for improving the SEO of your product pages:
- Ensure that the product title, description, and picture alt-text contain your most crucial keywords.
- Aim for a well-balanced product description that is thorough enough to be persuasive but not overly wordy or sales-disrupting.
- Be careful not to over-add tags and categories. Offering search engines an excessive number of alternatives for how to show your items might harm your SEO.
Additionally, try to limit the length of your product descriptions to 350 words or fewer. Short descriptions typically rank higher on Google than lengthy ones.
12. Work On Mobile-Friendliness
By 2024, Shopify SEO specialists predict that mobile commerce will account for 44% of all eCommerce. Over a Black Friday weekend, 69% of sales were made on mobile devices, according to Shopify. It's your responsibility to ensure your store is mobile-ready as customers depend more and more on their phones. This is possible by:
- Picking a Shopify theme that's mobile-friendly
- Streamlining your design and removing any pointless gimmicks
- Making call-to-action buttons noticeable and huge
- Establishing a seamless mobile checkout process
You can immediately determine in your Shopify Analytics under "Online shop sessions by device type" what proportion of visitors to your store are now using mobile devices instead of desktops.
13. Provide A Product Description
The purpose of product descriptions is to present your product, emphasize its advantages, and encourage buyers to make a purchase. By default, Shopify uses a simple "short product description" containing only a few phrases describing the item.
You can write as much as you like while crafting a comprehensive product description. You also have the choice to concentrate on additional Shopify SEO recommendations and best practices, such as adding H1 and H2 headings, employing bullet points, and distributing links to your other content throughout your product description. Remember that search engines will only read your web pages. Therefore, you need to include extensive product descriptions on your website to gain fully from them.
14. Build High-Quality Backlinks
Backlinks are connections between websites. Because they inform Google and other search engines that your site has domain authority, they are significant. As a result, when many other websites link to your website, your website's domain authority with search engines rises, improving SEO on Shopify.
You can utilize the following techniques for link-building:
- Guest posting
- Become a source for reporters
- Write great content
- Infographics
However, not all backlinks are equal in importance. Backlinks from websites with high domain authority are what you want to have.
Bonus Content
1. Showcase Popular Products
The most excellent strain proven to increase traffic to your Shopify store is to highlight your top-performing items. By doing so, you may raise your organic traffic and sales.
You may change the product details and select "Add to page" to add goods to your homepage or individual product pages. The goods can also be modified directly from the Shopify admin. Select "Edit homepage elements" or "Edit product page elements" when making changes to the product information. From there, choose the items you wish to include before clicking "Save."
2. Online Communication With Your Target Market
You can describe how companies use certain products or services if you are a business-to-business (B2B) vendor. Business-to-consumer (B2C) marketing allows you to converse directly with customers about their consumption preferences.
Ensure that the organization of your information is structured. Include headers and subheadings for the various product categories on category pages so that they can quickly scan and determine which parts are practical.
Conclusion
You must manage your Shopify store for SEO if you want to attract more clients to your eCommerce site. To achieve this, you must choose your product listing titles carefully. Make your product pages simple to navigate and add a blog to boost traffic to your store and SEO. You can also add high-quality product images and videos along with maximizing the URL structure of your store.
In addition, you may experiment with further suggestions like optimizing your photos, adding a site-wide offer, and more. You can increase your search engine traffic and conversions using these practical Shopify SEO strategies.
