Two facts for you: there are over two million active online stores on Shopify, and search engine optimization, or SEO, is the single most effective way to generate organic traffic through improved rankings in the search engine results. Despite repeated cries that “SEO is dead,” it’s not going anywhere anytime soon.
What does it mean? There is a lot of competition on the website for eCommerce ventures, and optimizing a website for SEO is as important as it’s ever been to draw in potential customers and improve user experience.
If you sell online and have a website that’s powered by Shopify, here are 9 proven ways to boost your search engine rankings. Good news, too: you don’t need to be an expert digital marketer or a developer to execute most (if not all of these).
1. Use only an SEO-friendly Shopify theme
Shopify is compatible with a number of free themes and many more premium themes that are fast, SEO-friendly, and optimized to deliver a high-end UX that will hopefully boost conversions. Use one of these and start off on the right foot.
2. Perform keyword research and blog
Before you can optimize a Shopify website (or any website) for keywords, you need to perform keyword research. There are a number of tools you can use to help your search, too, such as SEMRush and Ahrefs.
Look for keywords that have high search volume and low difficulty. As a general rule, these are the best to target. Also, for eCommerce websites, it’s best to target keywords with transactional search intent.
Also, Shopify comes with a built-in blog. You should use it. Blogging engages with customers, helps generate leads, creates a better overall user experience, can give your brand a voice, and most importantly, optimized blogs can drastically improve SEO.
3. Optimize your images: use smaller files and add alt data
Either use a file compression tool to compress the sizes of the images on your Shopify website or use smaller files, to begin with. This will boost speed, which improves SEO.
Moreover, once you’ve performed your keyword research, you should include alt text for your images that contains the target keywords you’ve chosen, as this will also optimize your site.
4. Optimize page titles and metadata
Two easy things you can optimize for any website are page titles and meta descriptions. Include your target keywords in these to boost SEO.
5. Remove any apps or plugins you’re not using
Shopify is compatible with many third-party plugins, which is great, but if you have plugins installed that you don’t use, remove them. At best, they can slow your website down, and at worst, they can present a security risk, both of which can adversely impact SEO.
6. Add optimized product and category page content
Don’t just write blogs – write optimized content for your entire Shopify site, including product descriptions for your product pages and for product collections pages or category pages. These optimizations will help boost your online presence and will help your pages rank higher in the search results.
7. Insider eCommerce tip: Sow the seeds of backlinks to your eCommerce website by asking for links from your product suppliers’ websites.
Backlinks can help referral traffic find your store, but they can also boost SEO by awarding “link juice.” Unfortunately, it’s tough to trade for backlinks, but we have a trick for link building.
Reach out to your supply chain providers. Whoever sells you the products that you sell has a vested interest in helping customers find you so they can ultimately be more profitable. They may be willing to offer a link to a website to yours from theirs indicating your business as an “authorized retailer” or “distributor” or something like that. Both businesses will benefit!
8. Create internal links
Once you’ve written all that nice content for your blog and throughout the rest of your Shopify website, go back and add internal links. That will create a better user experience, promote cross-selling, and boost SEO.
9. Hire a Shopify SEO company
Finally, the best advice we can offer is to hire an experienced Shopify SEO company with years of experience in the business.
For ten years, 1DigitalⓇ Agency has been building custom SEO plans for eCommerce businesses built on Shopify (as well as BigCommerce, Magento, and other platforms) that bring in more customers and ultimately improve organic sales figures, too.
Visit their website for more information (they also offer web designs, development, content marketing, and social media marketing services), or get in touch with them directly at 888-982-8269.
