You have an amazing product to offer and have developed an eCommerce store on Shopify with cutting-edge design and features, but you won’t be making sales unless people can easily find your store online. Most of the time, people generally search for a product online and click directly on the links that appear on the top of the search results page.
An eCommerce store can reach its potential customers only when it is optimized for the search engine. Higher search engine rankings ensure that your Shopify store is visible and easily accessible to the public. This drives more targeted traffic to your store and eventually makes them convert to a paying customer.
Shopify is an SEO friendly platform by itself with its default theme being well-optimized for SEO. Shopify is specifically focused on eCommerce websites and it is made specifically to rank such content. While other CMS (Content Management Systems) are specifically made for content-oriented websites. This very fact makes it the most used platform for setting up an eCommerce business. If you are in need of professional help in setting up and maintaining a Shopify store successfully, we’re are happy to help you!
Successfully identifying and implementing certain Shopify SEO techniques can ensure visibility and accessibility to a wider audience. And the end goal is to rank on the top of the search results page. So let’s get started and find out some Shopify SEO hacks for 2020!
Use SSL
Internet browsers are harsh when it comes to websites with no SSL (http://). They immediately display warning messages to the visitors, degrading their trust. The search engines make it easily identifiable for the website visitors whether the site is secure or not. Moreover, search engines prefer a website with SSL (https://) over the other. So make sure your eCommerce store has an SSL certificate.
But in Shopify, you don’t have to worry about paying separately for an SSL certificate. It is already a part of your package and you can just activate it accessing the Shopify dashboard, and then to Sales Channels > Online Store > Domains.
The URL’s relevance
A website’s URL length and its ranking are related. Websites with shorter URL lengths have a better chance of ranking on Google’s first page of results. One quick reason for this is that a shorter URL is less complex for search engines to comprehend.
Your URL for a particular product page can be something like this: https://randomstore.com/category/subcategory/product.html. This clearly indicates that your eCommerce website would have a longer URL compared to other websites. Also, certain websites have URLs that include codes or characters irrelevant to humans and search engines.
So try transforming your URLs into a much more interpretable form, make sure to use words that are short, crisp, and easier to understand for the search engines as well as for a common man. Try to fit in relevant keywords in the link so that it’s relatable to the viewer. This practice describes the product better and aids in SEO.
Google search console
Every website owner has to register their site with Google search console and submit their XML sitemap. Your efforts for putting up a website pay off only when you let others know about your website’s existence.
It is also important to verify and register with both www and non-www versions of your website just in case if you have both.
Google Domain Property is a new feature allowing you to configure your website and automatically sign all versions.
Google search console can also help in finding technical SEO problems. It troubleshoots any crawling or indexing issues hindering your website’s chances to rank on the SERP. Moreover, insights from this can help in boosting your site’s visibility.
Titles and headings
The most important element of any website is a title. It’s the key piece of information they use for search engines to rate and categorize the website.
Make sure to start with the ‘focus keyword’ on your Shopify page title and keep it straightforward. The focus keywords are mostly keywords related to the product. It should look professional so do not stuff too many words, even a keyword for that matter.
Try these:
- Use catchy words and phrases. People generally tend to stop by words such as “Buy, Cheap, Deals, Free shipping”. These are also the terms that people search while buying something online.
- Product titles including the terms “X% off or Lowest Price” can easily attract people to click on the link, thereby boosting the click-through-rate (CTR).
- Similarly, include terms such as “clearance- sale or Great selection” in the product description field to catch the viewer’s attention.
Product Description
A proper product description can go a long way in helping the website’s SEO since it can improve the CTR numbers.
Product descriptions should provide the customer with clear insights into what the product is. Take time to write it in such a way that it addresses the shopper’s concerns and the benefits they can gain out of it rather than just writing a typical product summary.
For example, people won’t be interested in buying a water bottle “made with carbon fiber”, rather they’ll prefer the one that is unbreakable!
Also, expressing the product description using high-quality keywords can improve SEO. Including catchy phrases in it can attract more visitors.
Smart image SEO strategy
As search engine algorithms begin to index your pages, they do not only read words but also images. Adding ‘alt text’ and file names that are both understandable and relevant to images on your website can help.
For example, you are selling a yellow-colored paperweight on your Shopify store, the image that you upload should probably have the name “yellowpaperweight.jpg” instead of something like “IMG6181JXA-378”.
The reasons why you shouldn’t avoid ‘alt text’ in images are as follows:
- Alt text can help visually impaired people easily utilize screen readers to access your website and know what the product is;
- It serves the purpose of a description if the image fails to load on time;
- It helps the search engines to better classify the content.
Also, “Google images” is huge and it has the power to direct traffic to your site through the images on it. So, always put ‘alt text’ on images if you don’t want to miss out on a potential traffic driving source.
Content for your Shopify store
They say “content is king” and it applies to a Shopify store as well. Most of the time, eCommerce store owners do not consider it important to include content-rich blog posts on their website. But that is a wrong approach to stick by.
It’s an opportunity to fit in more keywords and create plenty of backlinks and traffic to your store. It also has the power of keeping people longer on your site (great for SEO) and directing visitors to your merchandise.
Take time and create blog posts that are insightful to the visitor. Make use of online tools available for copywriting. Publish content related to the products you sell on the website. Remember, it’s not the product information to be included in the content, but the answers to some real-customer queries. And by reading them the customers should feel they have more reasons to buy your product.
Use Shopify SEO plugins
Identify and use the right Shopify SEO apps/tools. Research extensively and figure out which app works best for your website. Also, try using them one at a time on your Shopify store. This can help you in making the best out of the Shopify app store.
Ahrefs, Plug-In SEO, SEO Booster, SEO Doctor, SEO Monitor, Simple SEO are some SEO apps performing well in Shopify.
Shopify has a lot of apps & tools in its store and these perform well. After all, they were meant to ease your job. But it is always better to not completely rely on these apps & tools. Shopify has a lot of in-built SEO friendly features by itself, so it’s better to avoid using an app where it isn’t required.
A personalized approach
One thing is evident from all the Google search that’s happening in the world- everyone is looking for something! And helping people reach where they want can benefit your website.
Develop a friendly relationship with your website visitors, engage with them, and make the best out of the bond. You can show similar products brought from the past or make the past purchases easily accessible. This can hugely benefit in the sales process since these things persuade people to make purchases again.
Customized suggestions always delight people, a popup/notification with their name on it, reminding about items on their wishlist, or a personalized email, are effective approaches.
People wouldn’t hesitate to give their information or even buy from the website if they can enjoy a better user experience. So make efforts to make the visitor stick around the website longer.
Interactive product presentation
People view a product as many times as they can until they decide to purchase them or not. They are asking themselves reasons to buy the product through this. So it’s better to provide them those reasons rather than making them think about it.
Incorporate technologies to simplify your website visitors’ work, by making the best out of AR & VR technologies, and 3-D images of the product on the website. It provides users with an opportunity to virtually visualize the product. This way it’s much easier to persuade people to buy from the eCommerce store.
AI & chatbots
AI & chatbots can aid in offering superior user experience on the website. They will resolve lots of product-specific concerns, and save a great deal of time for your team.
Use chatbots to answer the shopper’s queries, suggest your product as an answer to their requirement or solution to their problem. They can help in providing website visitors with a timely response. A timely response is much appreciated because unanswered queries can badly affect the sale.
Fix duplicate content issue
Duplicate content is a serious issue that Shopify stores encounter. An eCommerce website obviously has too many pages and writing unique descriptions for each of them can be difficult. The problem arises when duplicate or similar content exists under two different URLs and can bring in ambiguity for the search engines.
Try deleting or noindexing product pages that have not generated any revenue lately; combining those pages into a better page can be a great idea.
People tend to click on a store name “mysandalstore.com” rather than “mysandalstore.myshopify.com.” So it’s ideal to ensure what is your custom domain, it might confuse otherwise.
Use website-audit tools to figure out and fix these issues. It can easily point out errors in the product title, it can identify duplicate content as well as broken links on the website.
Page speed
People usually don’t want to waste their time by clicking on that refresh button repeatedly. If the website takes time to load its contents, then chances are high for a page visitor to bounce back. They may not consider your website for the future purchase or may even share the worst experience with others, degrading your brand name. Website speed can seriously affect SEO!
Although Shopify compresses the product images so that the page loading time can be minimized, use tools to compress large image files. Optimize your Shopify store speed using a device-responsive theme, by avoiding sliders wherever possible, choosing a faster-loading theme by running them on the preview page before using it, etc.
Backlinks
Backlinks are very useful in SEO. It is a way of establishing your site’s credibility and improving domain authority.
An eCommerce store has several sources for getting a backlink. If your store sells items supplied by established companies, you can take a link from them asking via an email. Asking influencers to promote and share your website’s link is another way. Besides these techniques, you can interlink your own website pages in all possible ways.
Conclusion
Make sure your Shopify store account is on a paid plan since Shopify doesn’t allow search engines to index trial accounts. Set up Google Analytics on the Shopify account to track your store visitors.
Mobile-friendly sites are a necessity. The majority of internet users use their mobile phones to browse. So ensure that your Shopify store uses a responsive theme. You can also check responsiveness using Google’s mobile-friendly tester.
Remember SEO does require time, patience, and effort from your part. It takes a certain time to rank the website in the search results page and as well as maintain that.
Give people a good reason to buy the products that you sell in the store. Set up your store in such a way that the customers feel like buying from you and keep coming back to you.
The eCommerce industry is booming and you need to catch up with the trends going around to stay relevant in the industry, moreover grow your business.
Still, confused? We’ve got you covered. Connect with our team of Shopify experts and expand your business right away!
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