Shopify SEO: How To Optimize Your Store for Google?

Shopify SEO can significantly impact your e-commerce sales. Learn from SEO experts the top strategies that influence your search ranking.

The retail industry has significantly transformed in recent years as people increasingly turn to the Internet for their shopping needs. Convenience (who doesn’t love shopping in pajamas?) and necessity (a global pandemic has made it difficult for many physical stores to operate) have propelled the momentum of e-commerce.

As a result, platforms like Shopify have attracted tons of new sellers looking to move their businesses online. Over a million businesses worldwide have found success with a Shopify store. This means a large pool of competitors.

So, what should you do to set your Shopify site apart from others?

Attracting organic search traffic to your store is a surefire way to increase sales. Improving your Shopify SEO will help you achieve higher search engine rankings, which increases visibility. SEO draws people to your site and can even help convert them into customers.

Understanding Shopify SEO does not mean it is challenging to implement. With a basic understanding and a careful strategy, Shopify SEO can yield great results. At Stradiji, we have experienced these methods on internationally focused Shopify sites like Markandday.com, Hughugoli.com, and Ozmoz.org.au.

5 Ways to Improve Your Shopify SEO

1. Optimize Your Store’s Structure: Organizing content is essential for SEO success. Imagine entering a supermarket, and the first thing you see is products scattered on the floor. No signs direct you to a specific section, and you can’t find an employee to ask for help. Your first instinct would be to leave. The same is true for Shopify customers. When someone visits your online store, they want to find products quickly.
2. Minimize User Frustrations: A satisfied buyer is likelier to stay longer, browse more pages, and interact more with your site. This is good for both business and search signals. Speed up your site to enhance the customer experience. People today want immediate results.
3. Offer Shopify Collections: One way to improve SEO results while enhancing user experience is to offer your customers product collections. A collection (used as a category equivalent in Shopify) is a grouping of products that would typically be hosted in different categories of your site. Optimize and simplify your menu structure. Also, analyze how well your collection structure meets market needs from the start. On most sites, we had to completely redesign the entire collection structure and redirect old collection URLs to new ones. Although we tried to correct previous poor decisions, from an SEO and Google perspective, this means a significant loss of time.
4. Thoroughly Research Your Target Keywords: Keywords are the foundation of successful SEO. Keyword intent can be assessed as navigational, informational, or purchase-focused. Especially when defining your sales funnel, it’s essential to implement this keyword and content strategy properly. (You can find detailed information under the title “Effectively Reach Your Target Audience in the Marketing Funnel with SEO” in this newsletter)
5. Optimize Your Store’s Product Pages: Once you’ve created a simple (yet organized) site structure and selected some valuable keywords, optimizing your store’s pages is time. Use Microsoft Clarity to track user sessions on your Shopify site and improve site design. Make this one of the main agenda items in your weekly customer meetings. As far as we have done this, we have seen that we add value to our clients’ businesses. Ultimately, we use SEO to make sales, and there’s no need to approach rankings or organic traffic obsessively. Soon, we face the risk of increasingly diminishing organic traffic due to AI-supported search results. Therefore, prioritize branding and see SEO as one of the most essential tools.

Here are some more details:

Technical SEO:

• Ensure the Shopify theme you use is fast and mobile-friendly. Seek support from a Shopify developer if necessary.
• Ensure your product images and other media files are optimized. I recommend the Picsmize – Image Optimizer app.

Picsmize – Image Optimizer

• Set up your store’s URL structure to be clean and optimized.
• I recommend using the Yoast SEO app, which integrates well with Shopify.
• Properly implement schema configuration.
• Ensure your store has a sitemap and has been submitted to search engines. Although Shopify automates this, you should still perform your checks.

Content Optimization:

• Write high-quality and relevant product descriptions for your products and categories. You can use artificial intelligence for this, but ensure that professionals check and edit AI-generated content if necessary.
• Create informative and engaging blog posts for your store.
• Add relevant keywords to your products and categories.
• Optimize your store’s meta titles and meta descriptions. You can also use artificial intelligence for this.

Backlink Building:

• Obtain backlinks from other e-commerce sites and industry authorities.
• Share your store’s content on social media.
• Create email marketing campaigns for your store. You can even use the email tools that come with Shopify. Consider options for emailing users who have added items to their cart but have not made a purchase (don’t harass them!)
• Encourage your customers to leave reviews for your store. I recommend the Okendo app for reviews. It has a schema configuration that displays reviews with star ratings in Google results.

Stand Out with Shopify SEO

Shopify is a fantastic platform for those wanting to set up their business online. It’s intuitive, easy to set up, and offers opportunities to increase traffic and generate revenue. However, even the best Shopify store cannot succeed on its own. You’ll need to work a bit to maximize optimization opportunities and attract a loyal following to keep your business operational.

There is so much to share about Shopify SEO that fitting it all into one article is impossible. If you need support on this topic, feel free to contact me.