7 SEO Shopify Tips for Small Business

Written by Ethan He

June 16, 2022

SEO-Shopify

 

Many Shopify store owners aren’t taking advantage of their platform’s full SEO potential. You may assume that Shopify SEO is unnecessary or that it is too complex to implement, but you could be losing out on a huge number of potential clients that are browsing your online store.

Here are some SEO Shopify ideas to get you started if you want to help your e-commerce store rank higher in search engines.

 

What is Shopify SEO?

Shopify SEO is the process of increasing the visibility of your online store on search engine results pages (SERPs). This means that you want to rank high when people search for the product you sell so that you can obtain more organic traffic and sales.

 

1. Focus On The Right Keywords

When it comes to optimizing a Shopify store, strategic, careful keyword selection is the foundation of every successful SEO effort.

If you already have some primary keywords in mind, you can use those as a starting point. If you don’t have any, start by making a list of five or six major topics that your customers care about.

Consider the keywords you could use to search for products similar to those listed for sale in your store if you were a customer.

In this case, consulting your buyer personas for ideas can be valuable. To maximize similar forms of content, look at social media hashtags relevant to your industry or specific words used by your competitors.

 

2. Create Original Content

Duplicate content, including across categories and product pages, is harmful for SEO in any scenario.

However, because this is a widespread issue in eCommerce, it’s critical to ensure that your content is as unique as possible.

Internal duplication isn’t a major concern within a single site, but you don’t want your content to be too similar to anything on other sites.

If your eCommerce store sells items that are also available elsewhere on the internet, don’t just copy and paste the manufacturer’s stock descriptions.

Completely rework them for originality and develop unique content for your category pages.

 

3. Optimize Your Site Structure

Everyone has experienced the frustration of arriving on an eCommerce site with a confusing structure.

Finding what you’re looking for can be a time-consuming and difficult task. If the process is too difficult or time-consuming, you may opt not to purchase anything.

Compare that to your most recent seamless, streamlined shopping experience on a site where everything was well-organized and all things were precisely where you expected them to be.

You most likely spent a lot of time there and perhaps spent more money than you intended. A well-organized Shopify site will evoke the same response from your clients.

As a result, keep your site’s structure simple, clear, and user-friendly.

 

4. Optimize Your Images

Many website owners overlook images and aesthetic aspects while improving the content of their eCommerce store, but they should.

Although search engine crawl bots are unable to see images in the same way that human visitors can, they do index them and use alt tags to determine what an image is about.

Visitors with visual impairments may utilize site readers to assist them understand the pages they visit, and site readers use alt text.

This means for each image on your site, you’ll want to create unique keyword-rich alt tags.

This not only makes your site more accessible to all of your visitors, but it also increases the likelihood of your site ranking for searches related to the products you sell

 

5. Boost Your Site Speed

The time it takes for your website’s pages to load, believe it or not, has a massive impact on your SEO rating.

Here are some steps you can take to ensure that your website loads as quickly as possible:

  • Reduce the size of the images you’re using.
  • Use only one or two web fonts instead of a variety of them.
  • Use a responsive website design to ensure that your store appears great on all devices, including laptops, smartphones, and tablets.

Your clients will be satisfied and spend more time looking around your store if your site is easy to browse and loads quickly. That’s a good thing, because search engines take into account how long visitors stay on your site.

 

6. Don’t Ignore Your Internal Links

Internal linking has a major impact on Shopify SEO, however many people still overlook it. To be honest, the time and effort required is rather minimal, making it a low-cost Shopify SEO method.

Internal linking can improve your website’s SEO and user experience while also reducing your off-page SEO efforts. By linking to relevant pages on your website, you can rank your eye-catching keywords on Google’s first page.

It’s also a good idea to link your most significant (profit-generating) pages to the homepage, such as product and category pages, as well as other pages that may be valuable to visitors, such as refund policies, contact information, and so on.

7. Start a Blog

Many business owners believe that the content on their product, category, about, and contact pages is sufficient.

However, by not adding a blog to their site, they are missing out on a golden opportunity to boost their SERP results, attract more consumers, and establish authority.

Search engines prefer websites that are updated frequently and have a lot of relevant content, and a blog is one of the simplest and most accessible ways to achieve that requirement.

A well-maintained blog can also be an excellent resource for customers anywhere at point of the purchasing process.

Fill yours with frequently asked questions, shopping tips, product maintenance how-to instructions, and articles on subjects that matter to your customers.

 

If you need help implementing any of the above suggestions, please contact me! You know I am always happy to help. 

About Ethan He

Ethan is a Full Stack Web Developer and SEO Specialist based in Pittsburgh, PA. In his free time, Ethan enjoys working on various projects involving Ruby, Vue and AWS applications.

Ethan graduated from The Firehose Project coding bootcamp in 2016 with a focus on Ruby on Rail and Computer Software engineering.