Shopify SEO Tips: Improve Your Store's SEO

Shopify SEO is very essential in modern times. In June 2019, there were around 820,000 Shopify eCommerce stores, according to Shopify & You Statistics. 

If you’re one of the merchants who run their Shopify eCommerce store, getting more traffic to your site is your top priority.

Now imagine you can do that without spending a penny on it.

Yes, it will take time and a bit of effort from your side, but optimising your Shopify site for the SERPs pays off in the long run.

What is Shopify SEO and Why Does It Matters?

Like any other site out there, you can get to Shopify pages through Google. 

However, to rank in Google, your website has to either pay for the ads that will show on top of your results or optimise the site so it can rank higher.

Shopify eCommerce SEO is a process of making changes to your site so you can generate more traffic to it. Once you have more visitors coming your way, there will be more sales.

Shopify SEO Tips for Your eCommerce Site

I was managing a few Shopify accounts for my clients in the past, and I’ve gathered interesting data about Shopify SEO.

• It is a locked platform, meaning you can’t make substantial changes on it once you set up your site.
• Google won’t crawl certain pages in Shopify, because the robots.txt is locked in.
• You’ll get an automatically-generated sitemap once you run your site.
• It’s almost impossible to tweak category pages and patent category pages once you have everything set up.
  

Nonetheless, with all of the mentioned drawbacks, you can still implement valuable SEO changes to the site.

Here are five of the best Shopify SEO tips to help you optimise your eCommerce store.

1. Eliminate Duplicate Content from Your Pages

Duplicate content is all text that’s the same across pages. If you overdo it, it can confuse Google and hurt your rankings.

As stated by Google Help Center’s Guidelines, duplicate content refers to “substantive blocks of content within or across domains that either completely match other content or are appreciably similar.”

The following are the most common duplicate content issues you can fix right away.

• If you have an accurate description of the products across pages, try to merge those products into one page.
• Write unique content for the description of each of your products. In other words, never use the description given by the manufacturer,
• In case there are multiple pages with similar content you have to leave as they are, make sure to chose one canonical page for crawling.
• Reduce the number of pages to a minimum.
  

Tluxe, an Australian designer clothing brand, uses only four main pages.

Moreover, they do have duplicate content for some of the items they sell. 

However, they use canonicalization to help Google chose the correct version of the page.

Also, you can find the same top in different colours on two or more distinct URLs.

2. Optimise All the Images

Image optimisation is crucial in your eCommerce store, especially for the products of a similar name. 

You should include an Alt tag (with keywords) to every image on the site. 

For example, Biko, a Canadian jewellery brand, uses the exact names of their products in the image alt tags.  

Also, when you’re uploading other than product images, such as featured images, make sure they depict your keyword and that they include the keyword.

Nonetheless, you shouldn’t overstuff the pages with keywords. Add them naturally and where you think it’s needed.

For proper image optimisation, remember the following:

• Always use a unique alt tag.
• Let the tag be as short as possible.
• It should give the exact description of the image.
• Buttons or smaller images don’t require an alt tag. 
  

Once you type in a few alt tags, you’ll get the hang of it. 

3. Target the Right Keywords

You probably already know how to do keyword research, but the tricky part is to add the right keywords to your eCommerce store. 

Try to put yourself in your customer’s shoes. 

The best point of action for this is to develop a buyer persona. 

When you know what your customer wants, it’s easier to give them the right keywords.

Naturally, you can’t go too far from what you’re selling. Still, a clever thing to do is to invest a little in content marketing. It serves as a tool to bring visitors who are looking for keywords with broader niche searches.

In other words, you’ll be able to bring customers who aren’t directly searching for fine linen bedsheets. They could land on the shop page from the article about natural sleep aids, like in Au Lit Fine Linens’ blog section.

4. Invest in Content Marketing

I'm aware that eCommerce owners have no spare time to write their content. 

Luckily, content marketing is easy to source these days. 

Nevertheless, you have to make sure you’re hiring an experienced content marketer.

They could take on your whole eCommerce content strategy to a new level. 

Except for product guides, blogging, or email marketing, shift your focus to the content types which most of us often forget.

• Provide clear information about your payment options.
• Have a clearly structured and useful FAQ section.
• Make a page about your shipping information and returns policy, so that the customers are sure what they get when they purchase something.
• Give your visitors information about the promotions you offer.
  

Harris Farm Markets, an Australian fresh produce brand, has clear information about delivery, promotions, refunds, and returns policy stated on their Shopify website.

5. Tweak Your Technical SEO

Lastly, if you want to implement good Shopify SEO elements to your eCommerce store, you can’t bypass technical SEO.

It’s everything you can’t see on your site’s but instead inside the Shopify’s theme.

Although duplicate content fixing and image optimisation is technical SEO, I incorporated it above since it isn’t rocket science.

However, there are changes to technical SEO your web developer should help you with. 

• Make sure your site has a sitemap.xml file.
• Create a Google Webmaster account and verify your domain.
• Create and set up your Google Analytics account.
• Use proper tags (H1, H2, H3, and so on.)
• Run your eCommerce site through GTMetrix to analyze the site’s speed and fix what you can.

Are You Ready to Implement Our Shopify SEO Tips to Your eCommerce?

Yes, I know, I barely scratched the SEO surface of an eCommerce store.

Nonetheless, these few tips are what you need to get you started.

If you’re eager to find out more about SEO practices, make sure to follow our blog.