Shopify SEO
Here’s How to Optimize Your Shopify Store
One trend that is getting more and more common these days is the rise in the number of Shopify users. If you have a Shopify store of your own, one of the things that you need to know and learn is how to go about with Shopify SEO.
Find out the basics of what an SEO company is, and if you need one to help with your Shopify marketing plan, get in touch with us today!
Shopify SEO – A Quick Definition
Shopify SEO is basically SEO improve more unique and specifically tailored for Shopify instead of other websites. Although Shopify stores already come with several things that help with SEO like the ability to redirect and a blog, this may lead to some SEO problems like duplicate content.
Among the most common recommendations for Shopify SEO include the following:
Duplicate Content
As far as SEO is concerned, duplicate content is the number one priority issue that Shopify has created. Duplicate content happens when similar or duplicate content exists on two different URLs. It leads to problems for search engines since they might find it hard to determine which of these two pages must be the canonical version. Aside from that, most of the time, link signals even get split among the pages. There are two ways that Shopify creates duplicate content and these include duplicate collection pages as the result of pagination and duplicate product pages.
Product Variant Pages
Even though this is technically an extension of the duplicate content of Shopify from above, this deserves its own section as this is not really an SEO problem all the time. It is very common to see stores in Shopify that create several product URLs for the same products with some variations. It can lead to duplicate content problems because sometimes, the core product is just the same yet there are slight changes in a certain attribute.
If there are product variants in your store, it would be worth it to determine early on if the pages should exist at separate URLs or not. if yes, make sure you come up with unique for each one then optimize each for the target keywords of that variant.
Indexing and Crawling
There are several SEO items when it comes to indexing and crawling that are unique and exclusive to Shopify. Some of those that are applicable to Shopify are the following:
- It is not possible to adjust the robots.txt file in Shopify stores.
- Shopify allows the addition of “noindex” tag.
- Shopify lets you implement redirects straight out of the box.
- Just like robots.txt, Shopify also doesn’t provide log file information.
Structured Data
Shopify does a really great job when it comes to structured data. Most themes in Shopify should contain the “Product” markup right out of the box, providing Google with essential information like the name, price and description of your product. It is possibly the top most structured data that you can ever have on ecommerce sites so it is great that a lot of themes are doing this for you.
If you are using the blog functionality of Shopify, you also need to use Article structured data, an excellent schema type that informs Google of the editorial nature of your blog content. Breadcrumb List structured data is also crucial as breadcrumbs offer users with the easy to use internal links indicating where they are in a website’s hierarchy.
Keyword research and keyword optimization are also essential for Shopify stores.
Content Addition to Product Pages
It is ideal to add unique content to every page if you want to index every individual product. At first, your products in Shopify might not be associated with unique on-page content. It is a very common concern for Shopify store since it is common that there are no descriptions at all or the same descriptions are being used across several products. The addition of product descriptions with best practices on-page can increase the chances of your products to rank high in the results pages. Always remember to write your product descriptions from the point of view of the users. Writing about the product features they care about the most can give your website the best chance to improve conversions and SEO alike.
Shopify Blog
You can create a blog with Shopify but many Shopify stores actually miss it. This makes perfect sense since the main goal of any ecommerce website is revenue so the initial building of the website is focused on the products.
If your Shopify store doesn’t include a blog, this can make you miss out on many businesses. Having a blog lets you have a very natural place wherein you can develop informational content.
How search engine works? If you see that Google ranks content that are more of article or blog types for those keywords mapped to your own store in Shopify, your best option is to make sure that you create this kind of content yourself.
Apps
Similar to plugins in WordPress, Shopify also got Apps that lets you give your website a more advanced functionality with no need for you to manually make adjustments to the code. What makes these Shopify apps different from WordPress plugins is that most of them are paid, requiring either a monthly or one-time fee.
Some of the Shopify apps to help boost your website SEO include:
- JSON-LD for SEO
- pics
- Yotpo Reviews
- Smart SEO
Just like WordPress plugins, apps in Shopify will also inject your site with additional code. It means that the addition of more apps can result to a slowed down site.
Learn why is beneficial to prioritize Core Web Vitals of your site and make sure that you audit all the apps you are using on a regular basis and get rid of those that don’t add value or are not used by the website.
As the use of Shopify only continues to grow bigger and better by the day, it also becomes more and more important for you to understand all the SEO implications associated with this ecommerce platform. Make sure to refer to this guide to help you ensure that your Shopify store will be stronger and will rank higher in the major search engines.
