Shopify has quickly risen to become a top online shopping platform, offering an effective alternative to Amazon for retailers of all sizes. While Shopify simplifies many aspects of running an online store, there are still various ways to enhance your shop’s SEO. This comprehensive guide will provide essential tips, recommend the best SEO app for Shopify, and include a practical SEO checklist.
The growing popularity of online stores is driven by economic and technological changes. The e-commerce sector has expanded steadily, providing entrepreneurs with the ability to reach a global audience from virtually anywhere. The low cost of launching and managing an online store has lowered the barriers to entry for small business owners and start-ups.
E-commerce platforms like Shopify, WooCommerce, and Adobe Commerce have made it easier to start and manage online stores. These platforms streamline store operations and facilitate digital marketing efforts. The global pandemic further accelerated the shift towards online shopping, a trend that continues as e-commerce adapts to evolving consumer behaviors and technologies.
Shopify’s success in the online shopping boom highlights its effectiveness. By applying the SEO tips outlined in this guide, you can leverage this growth and improve your store’s visibility.
What is Shopify?
Shopify is an online platform designed to help you set up and manage an online store easily. It’s a managed service, meaning the software is hosted on Shopify’s servers, so you don’t need to arrange separate hosting. To use Shopify, you subscribe to one of its plans.
The available plans are:
– Basic Shopify: $39 per month
– Shopify: $105 per month
– Advanced Shopify: $399 per month
– Shopify Plus: For enterprise use
Each plan offers different features and pricing options. Higher-tier plans provide benefits such as better shipping rates, lower payment processing fees, and support for international domains and pricing. The Basic plan lacks advanced reporting options.
Opting for an annual subscription can save you 25% on the total cost.
What is Shopify SEO?
While Shopify sets up many features for you, optimizing your store for SEO is crucial for good performance. Like any content management system, you need to fine-tune your Shopify store to work well for both customers and search engines.
Effective Shopify SEO involves creating a technically sound store that meets potential customers’ needs better than your competitors. This means using research to understand what customers are looking for and leveraging high-quality content to attract them.
Shopify SEO also includes marketing your store both online and offline. At Yoast, we recommend a comprehensive approach to SEO for long-term success.
Does Shopify have good SEO?
Shopify makes it easy to set up your store so that both customers and search engines can access it. The platform includes some basic SEO features, and you can enhance your store’s SEO with apps like Yoast SEO for Shopify. However, since Shopify is a closed system, your SEO options are limited to what the platform supports.
For example, Shopify’s built-in URL structure and product management through collections can sometimes lead to issues like duplicate content. In the following sections, we’ll cover essential SEO practices and explain how both Shopify and Yoast SEO for Shopify can assist you.
What are the biggest SEO issues with Shopify?
Shopify is a top e-commerce platform known for its efficiency. It generally performs well, and with some adjustments, it can be a strong choice for building your online store.
Common SEO issues with Shopify often involve how it manages products and their variants. Products can appear in multiple URLs, which may confuse search engines. Shopify uses canonical URLs to indicate the primary product page, but your control over this is limited.
Another challenge is Shopify’s fixed URL structure, which uses subfolders and can result in longer URLs. For example, a contact page on a typical website might be found at example.com/contact/, but on Shopify, it would be example.com/pages/contact. This structure is inflexible and cannot be changed.
Shopify is improving based on user feedback, making it a more appealing e-commerce option. Meanwhile, tools like Yoast SEO for Shopify and guides like this one can help address some of these SEO challenges.
What is the best SEO app for Shopify?
Shopify offers a range of apps to enhance your store, covering areas like shipping, design, and customer service. With so many options available, it can be overwhelming to choose.
There are several SEO apps to consider as well. Some focus on image optimization, others on Schema structured data, and there are also all-in-one SEO solutions. Among these, Yoast SEO for Shopify is highly recommended and stands out in the market.
Yoast SEO for Shopify: Your Shopify SEO expert
Yoast SEO has been a top choice for WordPress users for over a decade due to its expertise and popularity. Designed for both SEO experts and beginners, Yoast SEO makes it easy for anyone to improve their search rankings. Trusted by over 13 million websites, it has received more than 25,000 five-star reviews on WordPress.org. Now, Yoast SEO is available for Shopify, offering similar benefits to store owners.
Yoast SEO for Shopify enhances your store’s technical SEO and provides detailed analysis for both SEO and readability. The app offers suggestions to improve your product descriptions and ensures they are optimised effectively.
Additionally, Yoast SEO for Shopify aids in content marketing by improving the quality and readability of your blog posts. This helps your store gain visibility on Google and attract potential customers with well-crafted content.
The best structured data for your Shopify store
To boost your Shopify store’s organic traffic, it’s important to use rich results that enhance search visibility and give you an edge over competitors. Yoast SEO offers rich structured data in JSON-LD format, including types like Product, Organization, WebSite, WebPage, BreadcrumbList, Article, and Offer. This structured data is combined into a single graph, which helps search engines understand your store better.
Yoast SEO integrates with popular Shopify review apps like Judge.me, Loox, Ali Review, and Opinew to generate the AggregateRating schema, allowing your reviews to appear in Google search results. Additionally, the Yoast SEO breadcrumb block can be added to Shopify themes v2.0 to improve your store’s structured data and enhance its organic traffic.
This is just one aspect of what the SEO app offers. For more details, visit the Yoast SEO for Shopify product page or the Shopify SEO app store listing. The app, along with our SEO content, provides the knowledge and tips you need to optimise your Shopify store effectively.
Shopify SEO Basics
Shopify is a great platform for hosting your online store, but there are ways to enhance its performance through SEO. Optimising your store can increase its visibility on Google and attract more customers. This guide provides tips and a checklist to help you improve your Shopify store’s SEO.
Define Your Brand
Start by defining your store’s mission. Understand why your business exists and what sets you apart from competitors. A clear mission statement helps guide your SEO and marketing strategies. For example, the Shopify store Death Wish Coffee has a strong mission: “Rebellious by nature: live with a death wish.” Having a mission and clear branding can significantly impact your store’s success.
Keyword Research
Effective SEO begins with keyword research. Identify the terms customers use to search for products similar to yours. This research provides insights into what your audience is looking for and how they behave. Tools like Google Trends, Answer the Public, Ahrefs, and Semrush can help with this. Yoast SEO for Shopify integrates with Semrush to streamline keyword research. Focus on long-tail keywords as well as popular terms to attract relevant traffic. Consider the buyer’s journey and create content for each stage.
Analyze Competitors
When conducting keyword research, also examine your competitors. Identify who they are, their offerings, pricing, and how they position themselves. Look for any weaknesses in their approach or strategies that you can adopt or improve upon. Assess their content quality and see if you can offer something better or different.
Create Unique Product Descriptions
High-quality product descriptions are crucial for your online store. They help customers understand what they are buying without seeing the product in person. Avoid using manufacturer-provided descriptions as they often lead to duplicate content issues. Write your own descriptions based on keyword research and incorporate details from the manufacturer, but present them in your own words. This approach helps build trust and sets you apart from competitors.
7 Tips for Better Product Descriptions
Effective product descriptions are key to driving sales in online stores. Here are seven tips to help you write compelling descriptions that attract customers:
- Understand Your Audience: Before writing, get to know your target audience. Answer these questions: “What problem does the product solve?” “How does it solve this problem?” and “What benefits does the customer gain?”
- Highlight Benefits: Focus on the benefits of the product rather than just listing features. Benefits show customers how the product will improve their lives, while features explain its functions.
- Use Sensory Language: Describe what the product looks, feels, smells, or tastes like. Sensory language helps customers envision the product, increasing their likelihood of purchasing.
- Keep It Concise and Readable: Online shoppers often skim through content. Write short, informative descriptions that are easy to scan, but ensure they provide enough detail to be useful.
- Optimize for SEO: Use relevant keywords, headlines, and subheadings to improve search engine visibility. Include descriptive terms to help potential customers find your product.
- Address Pain Points: Identify and mention common issues that your product can resolve. This makes your description more relevant to customers’ needs.
- Include Social Proof: Add reviews or testimonials from satisfied customers to enhance credibility and encourage purchases.
Applying these tips will help you create effective product descriptions that boost conversions and sales. For further guidance, Yoast SEO for Shopify can assist with writing better descriptions and improving both readability and SEO.
Craft Effective Titles and Meta Descriptions
Your product descriptions aren’t the only thing that needs attention—your titles and meta descriptions are crucial too. These elements play a significant role in improving SEO for your Shopify store. Use relevant keywords and write compelling content that encourages clicks from potential customers.
Shopify generates titles and meta descriptions using a basic template, but you can customise them for individual products, blog posts, pages, collections, and overall site settings.
To update these, navigate to the specific page and open the search engine listing preview in Shopify. Here, you can set titles and meta descriptions specifically for search engine results, which might differ from what appears on your actual site.
Editing these details is straightforward in Shopify, but Yoast SEO for Shopify simplifies the process even further. The app uses variables to automatically generate parts of your titles and meta descriptions based on your settings. While manually crafting these elements is ideal, automating some aspects can save time, especially when managing a large inventory.
How to Create SEO-Friendly URLs in Shopify
SEO-friendly URLs are easy to read, concise, and consistent. Unfortunately, Shopify has limited flexibility when it comes to URL structure. For example, if you sell ugly Christmas sweaters, your Shopify collection URL will look like this:
`https://example.com/collections/ugly-christmas-sweaters`
The only part you can customise is the final segment of the URL. Many users wish Shopify offered more control over the URL structure.
Improve Your Site Structure with Internal Linking and Navigation
A well-organised site structure is crucial for both SEO and user experience. Ensure your site is easy to navigate for both customers and search engines like Google.
Your site structure should be logical and straightforward. Use collections as categories to help customers find products easily without sifting through numerous items. Each collection overview page should have a clear description to guide users.
The Importance of Internal Links
Internal linking helps prioritise important pages by linking to them from various parts of your site. This informs search engines about the significance of these pages. Use descriptive anchor texts to clarify the content of the linked pages.
For navigation, use clear and descriptive terms. Labels like “Contact Us” are more intuitive than vague phrases like “Touch Base.” Make sure your most important pages are easily accessible without requiring extensive searching.
Use an XML Sitemap to Enhance Findability
XML sitemaps provide search engines with a map of your site’s structure, helping them discover and index new and updated content. Shopify automatically generates an XML sitemap, including product pages, collections, blog posts, and other pages.
You can find your sitemap at:
`https://example.com/sitemap.xml`
XML sitemaps have a limit of 50,000 URLs. Shopify’s sitemap can contain up to 5,000 URLs before breaking into smaller sub-sitemaps, which improves loading times.
Yoast SEO for Shopify allows some control over your XML sitemap, such as adding a noindex tag to exclude specific pages from search results or managing which archive pages appear. Generally, the default settings are sufficient, but you can customise them as needed.
Avoid Overloading Your Shopify Store with Unused Apps
While it might be tempting to add every Shopify app available, it’s important to be selective. Many apps add extra code to your store, which can slow down performance. Focus on the apps that are essential for your store’s needs, and remove any that you do not use to keep your site running smoothly.
Optimising Images for Better Shopify SEO
Images are crucial for any online store as they help customers understand your products. Proper image optimisation can significantly enhance your Shopify store’s SEO.
Why Good Product Images Matter
High-quality product images are vital as they provide a clear view of your products, aiding in conversions. Good images can also attract attention in visual search engines like Google Images or Pinterest. Here’s how to ensure your images are effective:
– Use High-Resolution Images: Clear, high-quality images highlight your products and draw customers in.
– Maintain Consistent Image Sizes: Consistent image sizes give your site a professional look and help customers compare products easily.
– Include Multiple Angles: Provide various images of the product from different angles and close-ups of key features to help customers get a full understanding.
– Add Lifestyle Images: Show the product in use to help customers visualise how it fits into their lives.
– Optimise for Speed: Ensure images load quickly to prevent customers from leaving. Shopify automatically optimises images, but you should still ensure they are compressed before uploading.
– Consider Professional Photography: High-quality images from a professional photographer can make a big difference.
Managing Image File Sizes
Large image files can slow down page loading times. Aim to keep file sizes small by compressing images before uploading. Shopify compresses images automatically but doesn’t always reduce them enough. Use tools from the Shopify App Store, such as Crush.pics, to optimise your images further.
Implement Lazy Loading
Lazy loading improves page speed by loading images only when they come into view. Shopify supports lazy loading, but ensure your theme is set up for it. Native lazy loading is supported by most major browsers and is a simple way to enhance performance.
Avoiding Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)
Ensure your theme includes width and height attributes for images to prevent CLS, which occurs when elements shift during page load. This can negatively impact user experience and SEO. Check your site’s performance using Google’s page quality checks and adjust image attributes as needed.
Adding Alt Text and Descriptive File Names
Alt text is important for SEO and accessibility. Describe the image clearly and concisely, including relevant keywords without overstuffing. Ensure the alt text helps screen readers convey the image’s content to visually impaired users.
By following these practices, you can improve your store’s SEO and user experience, helping to attract and retain customers.
Can You Create a Blog on Shopify?
Yes, you can easily create a blog on Shopify. While Shopify’s blogging feature is more basic compared to WordPress, it’s straightforward to use and can be effective for boosting your SEO and engaging customers.
To start a blog on Shopify, go to your store’s admin panel and select “Blog Posts” from the sidebar. Click the green button to add a new blog post. Shopify includes a default blog named “News,” but you can rename it or create additional blogs as needed. For a detailed guide on setting up your blog, check out our full tutorial.
If you use Yoast SEO for Shopify, you can further enhance your blog posts. Navigate to Apps > Yoast SEO to see an overview of your products, collections, pages, and blog posts. Here, you can optimize your posts with Yoast’s readability and SEO analysis, manage crawling directives, and define article structure.
Is Blogging Beneficial for My Shopify Store?
Blogging can be a valuable part of your Shopify SEO strategy. For new stores, paid ads often drive initial growth, but blogging can help expand your reach and connect with customers. A well-planned blog strategy can enhance your store’s visibility and engagement.
Start by defining your blog’s goals. Are you aiming to attract new customers, build your brand, or engage existing ones? Determine the type of content that resonates with your audience and consider their journey to finding your store. Conduct keyword research to inform your content strategy.
Develop cornerstone content for your blog and create related articles to cover topics comprehensively. Use internal linking to connect related content and ensure your posts are high-quality and authoritative.
Blogging on WordPress vs. Shopify
WordPress is known for its powerful blogging capabilities, but Shopify’s built-in blogging feature is adequate for many users. Using WordPress in combination with Shopify can be complex and might not be worth the effort. If you have specific needs, integrating Shopify with WordPress via a subdomain might be an option, but it’s generally easier to use Shopify’s native blogging tools.
If you prefer WordPress for blogging, you can still integrate it with Shopify using the Shopify Buy Button feature. This allows you to sell products on your WordPress site for a monthly fee of $5.
Yoast SEO for Shopify
Enhance your store’s SEO by creating high-quality blog content and optimising your products. Yoast SEO for Shopify offers features like rich results for Google and access to SEO courses and support. Start your trial today to improve your store’s visibility and performance.
Choosing a Good Shopify Theme
Your Shopify theme impacts your store’s branding, user experience, and conversion rates. Here’s how to choose the right theme:
– Determine Your Needs: Decide if you need a theme for a single product or a large catalogue. Shopify offers themes suited for various store sizes and types.
– Set Your Budget: Themes range from free to several hundred dollars. Free themes may offer limited support, while paid themes often come with more features and better support.
– Explore the Theme Store: Shopify’s theme store categorises themes by features and industries. Browse and filter to find a theme that fits your requirements.
– Read Reviews: Check reviews from other users to gauge the theme’s performance and support.
– Evaluate Developer Support: Review the documentation and support provided by the theme developer. Good support can be crucial for troubleshooting.
– Choose a Lightweight Theme: Select a theme that is efficient and fast-loading. Avoid themes with unnecessary features that may slow down your site.
– Try Demos and Examples: Test theme demos and look at live examples to see how they perform. Use tools like web.dev/Measure to assess performance.
– Check Mobile Compatibility: Ensure the theme works well on mobile devices, as many users shop via smartphones.
– Test User Experience: Navigate through the theme to evaluate layout, image loading, and menu structure. Try the theme on your store to get a feel for its functionality.
– Assess the Shopping Cart: Ensure the cart facilitates a smooth checkout process without distractions. Consider features like upsells and promotions to reduce cart abandonment.
By following these tips, you can select a theme that enhances your store’s functionality and customer experience.
Technical SEO for Shopify
When managing Shopify SEO, most of your focus will be on content, like product descriptions and content marketing. However, there are key technical SEO aspects you should address to improve your store’s performance.
Optimize Your Shopify Store for Speed
Shopify prioritises speed to enhance user experience. A slow-loading store can drive customers away, so it’s important to keep your site fast. Shopify uses a content delivery network (CDN) to host content on servers close to your customers, and it provides performance reports using Lighthouse to monitor loading speeds.
To further improve speed, choose a lightweight, optimised theme, properly optimise your images, and avoid unnecessary apps and sliders. Regularly run Lighthouse tests to track your store’s performance.
Prevent Duplicate Content
Duplicate content occurs when the same product or content appears on multiple URLs, which can confuse search engines and harm your SEO. Shopify automatically canonicalises URLs for collections to avoid this issue. For example, a product in a collection will appear on multiple URLs, but Shopify directs search engines to the primary URL.
Handling Product Variants
Shopify supports product variants like sizes and colours, but it can be challenging to get these variants indexed by search engines. If you want each variant to be listed separately, consider creating individual product pages with unique descriptions for each variant.
Faceted Navigation and Filters
Shopify offers limited filtering options, but you can enhance this with custom filters or apps. Custom filters are suitable for Online Store 2.0 themes, while apps provide more advanced filtering options. Ensure that parameters from faceted navigation don’t appear in search results by blocking them in the robots.txt file.
Editing robots.txt
Shopify now allows you to edit the robots.txt file, giving you more control over how search engines crawl your site. This file lets you prevent search engines from indexing less important pages. You can find the robots.txt file at [yourstore.com/robots.txt](https://example.com/robots.txt) and edit it by going to your Online Store admin page, selecting Actions > Edit Code, and creating a new robots.txt template.
Structured Data for Products
Structured data helps search engines understand your site better. It describes your products using Schema.org vocabulary, which can result in rich search results, showing additional information like price and reviews. Most Shopify themes include basic structured data, but you can use apps or Yoast SEO for Shopify to add more detailed Schema data.
Managing Redirects
Redirects are crucial for maintaining a good user experience when pages or products are removed. Shopify has a built-in redirect feature that automatically creates redirects when you change a URL slug. For bulk redirects, you can upload a CSV file or use the URL redirect feature in the admin settings, where you specify the old and new URLs.
By focusing on these technical aspects, you can enhance your Shopify store’s SEO and provide a better experience for your customers.
How to Increase Sales on Shopify
Once your Shopify store is up and running, the goal is to attract customers and encourage them to return and spend more. Ranking well in search results can be tough for new stores, so you’ll need to go beyond just having your store live. Effective marketing and enhancing user experience (UX) are key to boosting sales.
Conversion Rate Optimization on Shopify
Having great products, engaging content, a solid design, and good SEO are essential for your store. However, this doesn’t always guarantee high sales. To improve your store’s performance, you need to focus on conversion rate optimization (CRO). This involves refining the customer experience to ensure visitors turn into buyers.
Examine any obstacles that might be hindering the conversion process. Technical issues, like a slow-loading shopping cart, or content issues, such as unclear call-to-action (CTA) text, should be addressed. Evaluate your product pages and experiment with different setups for your shopping cart. Track, test, and make changes to continuously improve.
International Expansion
Expanding to international markets can be complex, but it’s a significant opportunity. Shopify offers tools to simplify this process with Shopify Markets. This feature helps with local payments, content translation, shipping, and tax management.
Shopify Markets supports various global domain setups, including subfolders, subdomains, or top-level domains. A Geolocator app redirects customers to the appropriate domain based on their location, and Shopify automatically adds the necessary hreflang tags for search engines.
Migrating from WooCommerce to Shopify
If you’re considering moving from WooCommerce to Shopify, the process is fairly straightforward. Export your data from WooCommerce, then import it into Shopify using the Store Importer app. Review the imported data to ensure everything is correct. Any missing products or customers can be added manually. For detailed instructions, refer to Shopify’s store migration guide.
Enhance Your Skills with Yoast SEO for Shopify
This guide covers essential steps to improve your Shopify store’s SEO. For more in-depth learning, consider Yoast SEO’s training courses. They offer guidance on setting up Yoast SEO for Shopify and other ecommerce SEO strategies. Explore Yoast SEO Academy to boost your online store’s performance.
Conclusion on Shopify SEO
Shopify is a popular choice for online stores due to its ease of use and strong performance. To maximise your store’s success, focus on enhancing your SEO efforts with the tips in this guide.
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