Search Engine Optimization on Shopify

Make use of search tools to maintain the updates

Search engines generally do not note your Shopify site’s SEO changes immediately. For this reason well-known search engines such as Google offer you a broad spectrum of search instruments to help you uplevel your website’s performance on search. Because of that, whenever you change anything on a Shopify website you’d better request search engines to re-index your website’s content. It can be done by making use of services like Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. 

Shopify has a number of built-in SEO tools. They are incorporated into Shopify online stores, and there are options to assist you optimize your content. Some SEO is handled automatically: auto-generated canonical tags are added to pages to avoid duplicate material from showing up in search results, your website's sitemap.xml and robots.txt files are produced automatically, and themes generate title tags that contain your shop name automatically. Social media connection and sharing capabilities are also necessary in themes to make it easier to advertise your shop.

Using Shopify's built-in tools, you may optimize your content:

• For blog posts, websites, goods, and collections, you may change the title tags, meta descriptions, and URLs.
• For pictures, you may change the alt text.

Customize your web pages and site titles

It's tough to do anything about the first three criteria when you're new to selling online. Building a brand's reputation and getting other websites to connect to yours takes time. In terms of content strategy, you may think long term.

In the near term, the most straightforward method to increase traffic to your online store is to optimize your content so that search engines perceive it as relevant to product-related inquiries. This is what we mean when we say "search engine optimization."

The Shopify App Store has tools that can help you assess your online store's search engine optimization.

Search engines tend to grade the Shopify site content we’ve listed below in this order: 

• Site title
• SEO title
• Page title
• Blog post title
• Heading

How to find best keywords for SEO

When you write text content for your site, you can integrate phrases and words that coincide with the search terms the audience uses to search for sites similar to yours as a part of your optimization strategy. The keywords tend to help search engines see your website as relevant for people who are using those keywords. 

Your SEO keyword marketing program will depend on your website goals and your target audience. Still it’s really important to apply keywords for optimization in a clear and natural way so that it would make sense to your visitors. 

Researching keywords for your SEO strategy

Let’s learn more about the keyword research process in order to find a list of applicable words you should focus on. Utilizing the below hints, you’ll be able to compile a continuous and comprehensive SEO strategy that will help you achieve the goals and strengthen the place of your Shopify site in search results. 

Form a list of topics that are relevant to what you know about your business sphere

First of all, think over the topics you wish the Shopify website to take a good position in terms of generic buckets. As a result, you’ll acquire a catalog of 5-10 topic buckets that may be somewhat relevant to your company’s business field and after that you'll use those lists to choose some definite keyphrases and keywords. 

If you already have a blog, you may already have some topics you’re writing about, an experience in content creating or blogging experience. Try to target your visitors while working with optimization and think what kinds of topics they could search. 

Find the matching keywords for your topics lists

After you’ve found some topic buckets, it’s time to search for the keywords that are related to them. Usually, they are expressions you consider to be important to rank for on the search results as your target market may look for those keywords. The main focus here is to suggest a full list of the keyword expressions you’ll use for your Shopify website. 

Another great optimization strategy here is to check which key phrases your site gets noted for. If you wish to do it, you’ll just use some special instruments like Google Analytics. Study your site’s traffic sources to identify which keywords people are using to discover your site. Repeat it as many times as the amount of topic buckets you’ve got. 

Try to understand the user intent

User intent is one of the most important factors affecting positions of your website in search results and affecting SEO programs as well. These days, it’s more significant that your website fixes the problem that a visitor was intended to solve rather than simply carrying the keyphrases the user typed in. 

Keyphrases bear plenty of interpretations hidden. And for the intent behind the search is of the top importance for your Shopify site SEO strategy, you should be really attentive with decoding the keywords you target for. 

To understand what a visitor wanted to find in search results, type into the keywords and keyphrases he could have used in the search box, and glance over what types of results will come up. 

Find related search terms

If you find it difficult to look for more keywords your potential consumers are searching for, you can glance over the corresponding search terms that show up when you enter a keyphrase in the search box. If you input your keyword and then scroll down to the bottom of the first search result page, you’ll find the recommendations related to your original input. You also have an opportunity to take advantage of these ideas in further work on your optimization program. 

Take advantage of keyword research tools

You can find a lot of instruments that will offer you an option of keyword or phrase research, for instance, Google Keyword Explorer or Ahrefs. They will help you find more keyphrase or word recommendations based on phrase match keywords and exact match keywords that are based on the suggestions you’ve produced for your website’s optimization. 

Structure your content

An important element of a consequent SEO program for any Shopify website is correctly structuring the content. You need to take advantage of heading text formatting to assemble pages. Search engines typically give headings a maximum priority, much like titles. That’s why clear and easy to understand headings describing the content on the page genuinely facilitate the process of detecting the main topics of your site for browsers. Also, they facilitate your site users quickly looking through the page and discovering the details they were searching for. 

Consider the following things while working on your SEO strategy: 

• Make sure the sizes of headings are used consistently within your pages and across your site as a whole. 
• Do not use the same text in different headings. 
• It’s ok to utilize a single kind of heading within a page as far as your headings are structured and persistent. 
• Try to avoid using headings to create formatting, such as pull quotes, for instance. 
• Insert keyphrases and keywords to your headings. 

Of course, organizing the text on the website depends on the kind of content you create. 

How to write meta tags for SEO

Meta title tag is a page title that is shown in blue in search results. Shopify recommends adding meta titles to every page of your website and this is among best SEO practices. As stated by Google, titles are major tags in delivering customers a rapid awareness of the content that a page offers. More than that, this piece of info is utilized to choose which particular result to tap into. Because of this you have to look through the guide below to generate a truly striking and an uncommon title that will draw new website visitors to your Shopify site: 

• Make an uncommon meta title for every page of your site. 
• Be laconic, but insightful. 
• Try not to make vague and generic titles. 
• Try not to clickbait.
• Make an effort to correspond to search intent of users
• Include the target keywords if required

As reported in Google recommendations, the meta description should generally tell about and offer a brief outline of a specific page of the website. But you should also know that meta descriptions are not reviewed as a ranking factor by Google. Below you’ll find best SEO practices you may want to use to write a description that will work: 

• Try to preserve your meta description under 160 symbols
• Do not apply clickbait. 
• Do not use general descriptions. 
• Offer a summary of your content precisely. 
• You should write an uncommon meta description for each page of your Shopify website. 
• Include your target keyphrases if necessary. 
• Make an effort to match users’ search intent. 

Keep in mind that descriptions help visitors to decide whether your website is relevant for them. Because of that you should pay a lot of attention to them when working on your optimization strategy. 

What is local SEO

You might also want to optimize your site for a particular. It’s particularly needed for those who have some sort of local business like a shop, restaurant, or agency. Applying local SEO best practices would be a good solution for them. 

Optimizing the website of your local business is all about showing it to people who live in the same district and wish to find some particular new brick-and-mortar locations. Applying a local SEO program you must aim at letting Google know that your business is located on some particular territory and you wish to be discovered by visitors in that area. 

The main rule here is that you have to give the right address in a region. If you fulfill this condition, you will have a chance to create a local landing page. Additionally, your website has to have the accurate Local Business markup. It will help you to show Google the fact that your business is situated in some certain area. Aside from SEO and technical optimization, generating the content that is meant for local users can be a brilliant idea. 

On your Shopify site, there are plenty of places where a website owner might add his location. For example: 

• Text blocks on the Contacts page
• Display Google Reviews Shopify app
• Business info settings
• Text blocks in the footer
• Map blocks

Also, you might want to sign up for Google My Business for it will help you enhance your local SEO strategy and rankings. Create and manage online listings in Google My Business as a component of your optimization program. 

Enable SSL on your Shopify site

As soon as you enable SSL on your site, the URL begins with https. This means that each page of your site can be accessed with a secure connection. Google regards https as a ranking sign and websites are still using http may be punished. If you have no clue if SSL is switched on your site, go to the SSL panel and set it to the Secure setting. 

What are backlinks in SEO

incoming links, also known as backlinks or inbound links, are links from one website to some other site. Google and other principal search engines regard backlinks as some sort of votes for a page these links lead to. Pages with a bigger number of incoming links are granted with higher organic search engine rankings as the more backlinks you have, the higher the site will rank in Google and other search engines. For this reason backlinks should be included in the most important parts of the optimization plan. 

Incoming links form the basis of Google algorithm PageRank. Google has performed thousands of modifications to the first PageRank, but inbound links are constantly at its kernel, remaining a key ranking sign. 

Look through the checklist on the sorts of backlinks that are valued the most: 

• Comprising target keyphrases in the link anchor text. Anchor in this case is the visible part of the text link. But remember that these links should not be overboard with keyword-rich texts. 
• From a website that hasn't been linked to you previously. In the context of SEO, you should better have less links from diverse domains than tons of links from just one domain. 
• Coming from trustworthy sites. It is also recognised as the principle of “Domain authority”. The more authority a site that is linking to you has, the more authority it can pass to you. 
• From the site that is thematically relevant to yours. When one site links to another, Google waits to see that these two are thematically related to each other. 

Don’t forget about these things while starting to work on your backlink program. 

Reduce your page loading time

Loading page time is one of the most important factors for your Shopify website’s rankings in SERP. If your pages are too slow, it might hurt your SEO, so you’d better think about decreasing the amount of content on a page for faster loading. Here are some practices you might want to consider: 

1. If the page covers more than one topic, it’s better to break it into multiple pages. This will enhance your SEO by offering more structured content to your visitors. 
2. If your blog pages load lazily, try to use blog extracts instead of demonstrating the full text of the post. 
3. It’s better not to use more than 60 blocks per page. 
4. Try to reduce the amount of videos. Dynamic content like YouTube or Vimeo videos can influence page load time. 

If you suppose that pages load lazily, use particular tools that will help you evaluate the web page loading speed. 

More SEO help

Keep in mind that your SEO plan is your duty and as search engine technologies transform day by day. Moreover, every Shopify website has special marketing requirements and there is no common solution which might be applied by everyone. So if you’re stumbled upon something or have any problems, try to follow popular SEO professionals and look for help in the virtual community.