Shopify has around 20% market share and there are about 5300+ stores on their eCommerce platform. If you are one of them and wondering how to rank your Shopify site in organic search, then here is your SEO optimization Checklist for the year 2022.
Why to choose SEO over other options:
Seo is the most effective and budget-friendly digital marketing you can do for your online store. Especially if you own an e-commerce store, a Shopify SEO Checklist is very important for you. You have to make sure that your website is optimized completely.
To drive traffic to your store website you can also embrace the practice of search engine marketing and other marketing techniques but they all have a start and end period with an allocated budget to work with. So you can always invest in SEO optimization for your Shopify site. With this information, we hope you can bring on more traffic of potential buyers to your online store site.
What is the difference between SEO and Shopify SEO?
| SEO | Shopify SEO |
| Optimizing any website or webpage present on the internet is known as SEO, Search engine optimization | Complete optimization of a Shopify website is known as a Shopify SEO. |
This entirely concentrates on optimizing the eCommerce website of people who use the content management system Shopify. This helps to increase organic traffic to the website and keyword ranking is a side benefit of SEO.
General SEO
Custom domain name over ‘myshopify’
The custom domain name seems more professional and allures more users. Because this is not like something goes on in the back end. Your domain name appears in the URL of your site and web pages. So it’s wise to invest in them because with more click-through-rates you can rank your e-commerce website.
Be ready with your other analytics tools:
Though your Shopify account comes with its own analytic dashboard it’s ok to involve a third-party tool to have a better understanding on what is the traffic driving factor of your website and the user behavior after landing your webpage
So the must-have free tools from you are:
- Google search console
- Google analytics
Helpful apps from Shopify:
You have a wide range of Shopify SEO apps to choose from to optimize your entire website. And here are some of our suggestions, SEO pro, Smart SEO, and Plug in SEO that is very similar to the WordPress plugin yost.
On-Page SEO
Know your keywords:
Keyword analysis is the basics of an SEO Checklist. Your optimization begins with this. You have to identify the keywords that are highly relevant to your page and products. As a user, there could be 100+ ways for them to search for your product. Some might search as ‘pineapple pizza’ whereas others might search as ‘Hawaiian pizza’ and some might even search ‘fruit toppings over cheese pizza’. So to know your audience and keywords there are many tools. Some of these tools are
- Keywords Everywhere
- Keyword Tool Dominator
- AlsoAsked
- Google Adwords
- MerchantWords
- Soovle
Page Title and Meta descriptions are also a part of your webpage
The title tags and Meta descriptions are a major part of your SEO optimization for shopify as they are the ones that your user will encounter first in the search engine results page. So optimizing those helps you drive traffic for your Shopify site.
So make sure you add your keywords to them and the length of the title and description is equally important.
| S.No | Title | Number of characters |
| 1 | Title tag | within 60 characters |
| 2 | Meta description | within 160 characters |
Google makes sure to look into these titles and descriptions to understand what your site or page is all about. Google can also understand synonyms so there is no need for keyword stuffing in these areas. Because understand that they are not just for Google but also for your users. So try to summarize your page’s content in the description.
Technical SEO
Navigation bars can also be SEO friendly:
Navigation bars are nothing but like a Google map that allows users to travel smoothly throughout your website. So this gives your potential customers an amazing user experience. And the better part is much like the users the Google crawlers will also find it easy to crawl through your website.
Some tips and tricks to remember:
- Organize your products systematically
- Make the navigation consistent throughout the website
- Keep it simple and clear
Importance of product schema:
Product schema is nothing but the pieces of information about the product that you mention on the website. This might require you to directly edit the code but if that’s not your cup of tea then there are many Shopify plugins for your rescue. And you can also very well use some tools for schema generation. Some of the product schemas that you should consider are Image, category, color, material, brand, dimensions, aggregate rating, and Special offers.
Off-Page SEO
Earning backlinks from other relevant sites:
Getting external links from other relevant websites is an unsaid signal for Google that your website is a trustworthy place. But this is considered the most difficult part of SEO. Because you have no control over other pages for them to give you a backlink.
Shopify Website Maintenance
You don’t want your website to be pronounced dead:
As an ecommerce site, there is a high possibility of you changing your product offerings which might result in deleting several pages. Here is where a broken link is formed when you mention the URL of these deleted pages anywhere precious. Too many broken links might seem like an inactive website to Google so to rank your site you should very much consider eradicating all the broken links from your website. You can check out for broken links once a quarter.
Conclusion:
SEO optimization does not just help you to drive organic traffic to your shopify site but also improves your user experience. Remember, improved website user experience results in an improved Google experience. So Google considers users’ reactions to your website as the key for ranking your Shopify site.
