How To Do SEO For Shopify: The Ultimate 2022 Guide
If you’re looking for a Shopify SEO guide to increase traffic and sales to your store, you’ve come to the right place. Before the digital era, all you needed was to build a store, and customers would flock there. However, it takes more than creating an attractive store to draw sufficient customers in today’s internet age.
Search engine rankings play a crucial role in how shoppers find your store. The higher the rank, the more the customers your store will attract, and of course, your sales increase. One of the ways to rank higher is through search engine optimization (SEO).
How is Shopify’s SEO?
Shopify itself as well as Shopify alternatives have several SEO-friendly features that help you climb up the rankings. Yes, SEO relies on your usage of keywords, but it takes more than that. This guide will walk you through key steps to help you master Shopify’s SEO and rank at the top this year whether you need SEO Toronto, Dallas, or the entire state. Let’s dive in….
- Optimize Shopify Structure
Your Shopify site’s page layout is crucial to SEO success. Making it easy for customers to find what they are looking for on your site encourages them to view more pages and spend more time on the site. Therefore, make your site easy to navigate by not going overboard with multiple categories and subcategories. Try to limit your categories to “Homepage,” “Category pages,” “Product pages,” “About,” and “Contact page.”
Remember to include a search on your page which is a vital part of eCommerce optimization that may not help with SEO directly but will help visitors quickly find what they want.
- Enhance User Experience
One way to improve user experience is by boosting site speed. When your site has high speed, it means that categories are quickly accessible, and visitors have no cause for frustrations as they navigate. If you want to make your Shopify site faster, use smaller, optimized images, avoid using sliders, use a fast, mobile-friendly theme, and remove unnecessary apps.
Another way to boost your site’s speed is by using a responsive design. This means that the Shopify store will look awesome on any device, including smartphones, tablets, and desktops. A site with a responsive theme for all devices provides an exceptional user experience and keeps visitors longer on the site. Note that Google looks at the time-on-page to determine the site’s value. So, having a site that keeps visitors glued helps improve SEO rankings.
- Apply the Appropriate Keywords
Understanding the right keywords to get traffic to your Shopify is the foundation of keyword success. You don’t need third-party apps or other fancy tools to determine the right keyword for your shop. Simply make a list of topics that you think concern your customers and are related to the products. Also, put yourself in the customers’ shoes and find out the search terms they would type in to find the products.
If you’re still stuck on the appropriate keywords for your site, find inspiration from subreddits and search forums related to your products, your buyer personas, competitor’s sites, or social media hashtags.
- Optimize The Products Pages
By now, you should have several keywords and a simple Shopify structure. The next vital step would be to use the keywords to optimize the store’s pages. Be sure to start with the top pages first, which will likely include the home page, main product collections, etc.
The main task lies in optimizing products title and meta descriptions. You can use the formatting from your other supplier websites, but customers appreciate original content. Besides, the keywords should naturally fit into the copy without affecting the flow.
- Add Links to Shopify Store.
Backlinks are essential for search engines as they help determine your site’s value to the broader community. Using links is an off-page optimization strategy based on your trustworthiness and credibility. Think of it as word of mouth. Below are a few tips to help you get links to your store.
- Influencers
Contact industry influencers and leaders for interviews to acquire more content and generate links.
- Broken Links
This requires some in-depth research to find the broken links for the products and services similar to yours. Once you come across a broken link, contact the site owner and request them to link to your site instead. This is mutually beneficial for both of you as the broken links hurt SEO. They repair the backlink, and you acquire a backlink.
- Manufacturer Links
If an established company makes your products, check whether they have a policy authorizing retailers to acquire a link. Alternatively, you can contact them and ask if they can link to your store.
- Mentions
Check whether you already have mentions without links in other sites. The mention.com site helps retailers find mentions that can turn into links if you email the site and ask them to add your link to the mention.
- Increase Ranking with Content Marketing
If you have applied all the concepts discussed so far, you have improved your Shopify SEO ranking to some degree. However, you need to consider content marketing to remain at the top. Content attracts people to your site, and while you may consider product description enough content, there’s more success if you create content that enhances user experience. It’s 2023, and content creation at scale is absolutely pivotal for SEO. This means that creating long-form content is key. We recommend using a GPT-3 text generator to help you.
Deciding on the content to add should not be a daunting task as you only need to include information about what you think customers want. This way, current and prospective customers will know your brand and the products you sell.
That’s it! By implementing each of the six steps discussed in this guide, rest assured that your Shopify site will be climbing up the search results soon.