Put aside all the digital marketing channels; there’s nothing as head-scratching as search engine optimization. Most of us rely on Google to get answers to at least one query a day. Understanding the cruciality of having search engines index and rank web pages doesn’t come naturally to many online business owners, but eventually, they come to question others about how to improve the store rank of the search engines. To our surprise, there isn’t one way to grow your online store but numerous ones. Some may think that getting people to reach the store is enough to create the ‘buzz’. Well, pals, that’s not all. The seed for your overall growth is –  organic search traffic.

 

Organic search traffic, by definition, is the traffic that shows up on your website through search engine results. This is where Shopify SEO (Search Engine Optimization) comes into practice. Perhaps, you’ve already heard of the term but may not know how to use it. Luckily, in this guide, you’ll learn exactly learn that.

 

For years, online store owners or merchants have been using the Shopify eCommerce platform to conduct trade. Shopify is the best and highest-rated eCommerce platform on the market. Its design, tools, and other functions are directed at helping people build their own online store that’s scalable, packed with built-in features, and loaded with tonnes of apps to easily sell the products on your website. You don’t need technical skills to run and manage Shopify, but a little knowledge and awareness never hurt anyone.

 

Understanding Shopify SEO

 

 SEO or Search Engine Optimization is a series of tactics used to get the search engines to identify your site as an authentic source where users can find solutions to their problems. These tactics can be intended to achieve different things, such as creating a positive user experience, developing meaningful content, improving the search rank, and so on. Whatever your goal is, it includes capturing the audience’s attention so they perceive your website as a relevant source to visit and find solutions. The calculation thus goes as – the higher the relevancy of your website, the higher the chances of you getting ranked in the SERP.

 

These rankings are the real deal for eCommerce sites. Any Shopify store that ranks in the first position tends to receive twice as much traffic as the website in the second position. Well, website SEO and Shopify SEO are different from one another because in this case, you’re not only optimizing the content but also optimizing the product listings.

 

Are you using Shopify SEO features to gain the required sales growth? If not yet, here’s why you should start to acknowledge the fact that Shopify SEO is good and you should immediately put it into practice.

 

Reasons That Make Shopify SEO Good

 Offers on-page SEO basics to all

 

 Whether you’re an SEO amateur or a professional, Shopify helps you to easily edit and make changes to on-page SEO features.

 

    • Meta Title and Description: you can write page titles and descriptions using targeted keywords that’ll help your store to rank higher on Google or other search engines. It also shows character limits for writing SEO-friendly titles or descriptions, making your job effortless.
    • Editable URL: Shopify has a coordinated site structure that differentiates blogs and product pages. On top of this, you get the feature to shorten the page URL so that search engines crawl your page faster and rank it on top.
    • Tags and Image Alt-text: you can add additional tags for images and pages. Using targeted keywords as tags help Google to read and find your page positively.

 Has an organized site structure

 Google and other search engines love to crawl pages with organized content. Such pages have higher chances of getting better rankings. Shopify’s hierarchy of categories also makes it good for SEO. Additionally, the Sitemap.xml file and Robots.txt file can be used to help Google index your site and rank it on the search results page.

 

Rigid Shopify web security protection

 Google is very strict when it comes to web security. Any store that’s found without a Secure Sockets Layer, or SSL is automatically allotted a lower rank on the search page. But with Shopify, you don’t have to worry about it. From the Basic to the Advanced plan, you’ll get free SSL encryption and an SSL certificate. This simply means that all your transaction data will remain safe.

 

All Shopify stores are mobile-friendly

 The failure of your website from Google’s perspective can result from neglecting to optimise the mobile version of your site. If the store is not mobile-friendly, your website won’t get a higher rank from the search engine. Using Shopify, you can create a store and switch it to mobile devices. All the layouts would adjust accordingly to become more responsive on a smartphone. Besides this, merchants need to keep a close eye on the loading speed of the page.

 

Your store speed is going to be outstanding

As you already know, one of the basics of retaining visitors to your website is ensuring that all the pages load fast. There are many factors that might impact the online store’s loading speed, like:

 

  • Used theme
  • Image files
  • Java script
  • App features
  • Video files
  • Fonts

One thing is for sure, Google doesn’t like slow pages. So, if you want to rank among the top 10, take note of the loading speed of all your pages throughout the website.

 

Shopify app store offers tools for better optimization

 

Shopify has your back even if you’re stuck with SEO strategy. Several great SEO tools offer you a helping hand in attracting relevant traffic to your store. All you need to do is type “marketing” or “SEO” in the search and a list of Shopify SEO apps will appear on the screen. The most common and popular tools to use are listed here:

 

If you already practice Shopify SEO but still feel that getting the required results is a daunting task, you’re likely doing something wrong. Here are a few things you can do to generate more organic traffic and more sales.

10 Improvements to do to your Shopify website

Perform these key tasks to enhance the effects of Shopify SEO.

 

  1. Register your Shopify or any online store with Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. Doing this means you’re telling Google and Bing about your existence so that they crawl and index the web pages.
  2. Design and develop it so that the pages load quickly. Remember to keep a tab on factors that might affect the loading speed.
  3. Perform comprehensive keyword research as you’ll get to know what people are actually searching for. This research will undoubtedly help you to identify relevant keywords, the volume of searches, and their difficulty to rank.
  4. Ensure that your page and product titles are right. In case you need to edit anything, Shopify will easily let you.
  5. Apply headings properly (Heading 1, Heading 2, Heading 3, etc.) to make your content look pretty, readable, and organized.
  6. Use engaging meta descriptions that follow Shopify SEO rules like being accurate, concise, and inclusive of the primary keyword.
  7.  All your product titles and descriptions must be unique to mitigate the chance of ‘duplicate content’ or ‘duplicate product’ as it’ll only lower your rank.
  8. Optimize Alt text and image names so that any visually impaired users could understand them. Alongside this, it’ll help search engines to understand and categorize your content accurately.
  9. Use only  SEO-friendly URLs to help users and Google locate you immediately.
  10. Add snippets to your products and pages to help searchers and search engines to understand what the page is about.

Conclusion

 

Shopify SEO is the most important factor to keep your online store ranked high in search engines like Google, Bing, etc. It’s undeniably an indispensable tool to promote your website without spending tonnes of money. Implementation of good SEO is the way to generate organic traffic. However, it doesn’t mean that Shopify will bring millions of visitors to your online store within hours. It takes time and consistent usage of smart SEO tools to bring improvements to your Shopify website. All of this seems overwhelming but remain stress-free because Shopify has you and all your SEO practices covered.