Although of all the digital marketing tools at your disposal, no other digital marketing approach is as cost-effective or practical as Shopify SEO for delivering motivated visitors to your Shopify store. However, nothing leaves novice store owners perplexed quite like search engine optimization. To ensure that your Shopify store is fully optimized for search engines, it’s important to follow a comprehensive Shopify SEO checklist.
Yes, choosing an eCommerce platform that works for you is crucial, but what happens when you’ve built the site and are ready to go? How will you approach potential customers? How are you going to persuade them to buy from you instead of your competitor?
More than an aesthetically appealing eCommerce site is required to boost organic search traffic and sales.
Taking the effort to ensure your web pages are correctly optimized will not only make it simpler for potential consumers to discover you, but it can also assist improve your organic traffic, which naturally leads to more sales.
Shopify is fantastic, but there is so much more you can do to advance in the ranks. While SEO is based on keywords, getting your site to rank higher needs more than just sprinkling some keywords throughout your site’s content.
What is Shopify SEO Checklist?
The technique of improving a Shopify website to rank better in search engine results is known as Shopify SEO. Although SEO can be applied to any website, Shopify SEO is geared toward assisting e-commerce companies using the Shopify CMS to gain more search ranks and organic traffic.
Although Shopify SEO Checklist includes some SEO-friendly tools, such as a blog and the option to redirect, it can also cause optimization concerns, such as duplicate content.
Common SEO Challenges For E-Commerce Websites
In general, e-commerce websites are more prone to encounter issues that might harm search engine performance.
- Thin Content: Google adores long-form, in-depth content. Because product pages tend to have little content, it might be tough to improve their search ranks.
- Duplicate Content: Many e-commerce websites have duplicate content concerns due to several product pages that are so identical or auto-generated.
- Poor Site Architecture: Google likes to see a site structure that is optimized for user navigation. E-commerce merchants who have a large number of pages on their websites are vulnerable to bad site architecture signals.
- Not Utilizing Schema: Product schema assists Google crawlers in understanding your items and promoting them appropriately. For Shopify merchants, failing to use schema is a significant error.
Shopify provides a few automatic SEO tools that are a wonderful place to start to ensure that your website does not suffer from these frequent setbacks experienced by e-commerce firms.
Automated SEO Features for Shopify SEO Checklist
Shopify online stores have SEO capabilities built in to alleviate part of the SEO strain for site owners.
Some SEO is handled automatically:
- Auto-generated canonical tags are added to pages to prevent duplicate material from showing in search results
- Auto-generated XML and robots.txt files for your website.
- Auto-generated theme title tags include your store name.
Shopify SEO Checklist:
Remember that SEO is not a one-and-done activity; it will necessitate work both when you first set up your shop and during its lifespan. The following pointers will assist you in achieving some rapid victories for a faster ranking and initial results.
1. Invest In Custom Domain
It is typically preferable to get a custom domain and remove the “myshopify” prefix from your URLs.
Why? Because the buyer can always see the URL route. Custom domains appear more professional and appealing to consumers, resulting in more CTRs and, as a result, better SEO performance.
Custom domains may be purchased through Shopify or any other domain supplier, such as GoDaddy.
2. Choose A Fast And Responsive Theme
With Google’s page experience upgrade last year, quick page performance and load times are no longer negotiable if you want to rank highly.
Although flashier themes may be more appealing, it is preferable to use a theme that is optimized for speed and performance.
Your theme should also be responsive on mobile devices, as Google will index mobile versions of your web pages.
In your dashboard or through your PageSpeed Insights report, you can see how quickly your existing Shopify store is in comparison to others. If your scores are poor, they will most likely affect your potential to rank in the top ranks.
3. Set up your essential tool kit
While your Shopify Analytics dashboard provides a rudimentary overview of site traffic, it is insufficient to encourage organic development.
Additional tools must be installed to better understand where your website traffic is coming from and how people act once they arrive at your website via search. To do so, you must have Google Analytics and Google Search Console, which are not only useful for businesses but are also free to use.
Google Analytics is an analytical tool that not only assists you in measuring the performance of SEO optimization and compiling sales data, but it also identifies popular pages and goods on your website.
Google Search Console delivers data on the performance of your website in organic search results. It assists you in determining which search phrases people use to find your website as well as the click-through rate (CTR) on search platforms.
Following the creation of your accounts, are some important procedures you should take:
- Submit a sitemap: Shopify will produce one for you and save it in your Google Search Console account.
- Add the tracking code for Google Analytics to your Shopify store.
4. Do an SEO Keyword Research
The purpose of keyword research is to discover what your target audience is searching for online, so before you begin optimizing your content, you must determine which keywords are highly relevant to your items and will drive qualified visitors to your website.
But how can you identify the best keywords to drive visitors to your store?
Users may search for items like yours in hundreds or thousands of different ways. A keyword tool can help you uncover what visitors are looking for.
You may use keyword tools to:
- Evaluate your rivals’ top pages and keywords to identify content gaps.
- Discover similar terms, search volumes, keyword ideas, and keyword difficulty.
- Examine a website’s authority, backlinks, broken links, etc
Consider the following matrix:
- Search Volume: You want your keyword objectives to receive a fair amount of monthly searches, otherwise you’ll be optimizing for no one.
- Cost per click (CPC): Higher CPCs indicate a higher conversion potential. Commercial and transactional keywords often have higher CPCs.
- Keyword Difficulty: Higher scores indicate that the keywords are more difficult to rank for. Choose keyword objectives where you can rank on page one.
Prevent Keyword Cannibalization:
So far in our Shopify SEO guide, we’ve spoken about Shopify SEO recommendations for keyword research. But this one is more technical and as important to grasp:
Keyword cannibalization occurs when there are too many similar or identical keywords on many URLs or pages of your website vying for the same keyword.
Make sure to use a separate URL to target each keyword and related keyword.
5. Optimize your URL
Several URL-recommended practices are critical to enhancing your Google results.
- Keep it brief and to the point.
- Include your target keywords.
- Avoid using words like and/or/the/etc.
The URL routes in the Search Engine Listing Preview at the bottom of any page in the Shopify CMS may be simply edited.
6. Optimize your Shopify product content
On-page optimization is the foundation of any Shopify SEO strategy. It allows search engines to comprehend what your content is about, allowing you to rank better.
While you’re revising your Search Engine Listing, don’t forget to optimize the other meta tags that appear in your SERP result: the title tag and meta description.
You may optimize your page name and meta description by doing the following:
- Keyword inclusion in the title and meta description
- Using powerful phrases to increase clicks
- Making use of numerals, parentheses, and brackets
- Incorporating a date into the title
- Making certain that your page titles are relevant
Limit the length of your title tag and meta title to 60 characters and 160 characters, respectively, to optimize them.
7. Optimize Image Alt Tags and Filename
Your Shopify website most certainly has a plethora of photos that display your items.
But keep in mind that Google cannot view your photographs. It’s critical that you tell Google what those photos are by using descriptive file names and keyword-rich alt text.
For Example:
Bad filename: img-16354.png
Good filename: mens-white-shirt.png
This also improves the usability of your Shopify website for visitors with visual impairments.
8. Create an SEO-friendly navigation menu
Navigation menus allow your customers to effortlessly navigate your online business. An SEO-friendly navigation menu will not only seem better to Google crawlers, but it will also provide a better user experience.
Here are a few SEO-friendly navigation tips:
- Prioritize clear and simple navigation.
- Ensure your products are properly arranged into a collection
- Keep consistent navigation across the page.
- Use the navigation to assist customers in easily contacting you or your support team.
9. Map out an SEO internal linking strategy
An internal link is created when you use anchor text to construct a link from “Page A” to “Page B” on your website.
Internal links assist with SEO for Shopify Stores and any website since they can:
- Pass some of the SEO value from page to page.
- Make it simple for users to locate relevant content.
- Assist Google to understand the content of a page.
Because your homepage will receive the majority of your Shopify website’s PageRank, the links in your navigation menu should be relevant.
10. Build strong links to your Shopify store
Off-site signals must also be built for Google to trust your online store and rank it in search results.
Because you do not influence whether a website decides to link to yours, this is undoubtedly the most challenging aspect of SEO.
There are, however, several simple ways to begin earning links:
- Create prime content such as blog articles and request other website owners to link to it.
- Get featured in gift guides or product roundups.
- Blog as a guest on relevant websites.
11. Consider adding product reviews to your product pages
Because 95% of customers read reviews before making a purchase, reviews are critical for establishing confidence. To begin using product reviews, install the Product Reviews app in your Shopify store. This program delivers structured data information to Google, which causes the yellow stars to display beside your SERP result.
Product reviews also contribute relevant information to your product pages, helping them rank for long-tail keywords. They may be game changers in terms of increasing CTRs and driving more traffic to your shop.
12. Fix technical SEO Issues
Technical difficulties have a detrimental influence on search engine rankings. This is why you should double-check this element on your Shopify SEO checklist.
- Detect and Fix Crawl Errors Crawl problems impede Google from properly seeing your page, lowering your rating in search results. To discover crawl issues, utilize Google Search Console. They are listed in the Coverage report.
- Fix broken links As your product offering evolves or things sell out, you will most likely unpublish or delete pages from your Shopify website. You will generate a “broken link” if the page was linked to anywhere else on your website. A website with many broken links appears to be out of date, making it unlikely to deliver significant information to searchers. Tools like Ahrefs and Screamingfrog can help you detect broken links on your Shopify site. When you discover broken links on your website, you should either update the link or remove it.
As Shopify usage grows, it will become increasingly crucial to grasp the SEO ramifications of the platform.
Learning the fundamentals of Shopify SEO and completing the essential measures may make or break your ability to outrank and outperform your competition.
Hopefully, this shopify SEO checklist tutorial has provided you with extra information that will assist you in making your Shopify store more visible in search engines.