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Regardless of how many features a Shopify site has or how well-built it is for conversions, if it’s difficult for new customers to discover, a great Shopify site will struggle to generate revenue.
This is where the importance of search engine optimization comes (SEO) into play. When your Shopify site is optimised for search engines, it’s also optimised for customer discovery. But with an ever increasing number of requirements to get SEO correct, an always changing Google algorithm, and the constant competition from other brands, SEO can begin to feel like an insurmountable mountain to climb.
This guide is designed to help you get started with optimising your Shopify site for search engines, covering everything you need to know to get the ball rolling. So, let’s get started by first answering the most important question.
SEO, or search engine optimization, is a catch-all term for strategies used to improve the ranking of a website on search engines. Often referred to as organic search, SEO is a free-of-charge strategy to market a website online. This is because the higher a website’s search results rank across search engines, the more likely customers are to discover your brand.
Once a customer has made a search, a search engine goes on to organise the results into results pages. With two key factors playing a role…
The benefits of SEO for any business are well known. Not only does SEO boost the visibility of your website and get you more traffic, but it’s entirely free of charge from a monetary perspective. For eCommerce and Shopify stores specifically, the more traffic you have, the more opportunities you have to convert website visitors to customers.
That should be reason enough to invest significant time into SEO for your Shopify site. However, If you’re still not convinced that the effort is worthwhile, here are a few more advantages to SEO for Shopify that may change your mind.
Saying that SEO boosts the visibility of your Shopify website may imply that you have no control over where that traffic is coming from, but you do. In fact, SEO can generate you specifically targeted traffic, getting your site in front of the customers most likely to be interested in your product or service. This means the visitors to your site are more likely to purchase from you in the first place.
Secondly, users are more likely to trust a brand that ranks higher on search engine results pages, as a high search result signals that a brand is trustworthy, and that prior users have had a good experience with the site too.
Whilst we can’t pinpoint the exact reasons that a search result pulls through at the exact place it does, there are a number of factors that we know influence how a site ranks across the major search engines.
The primary thing that will influence your ranking position on any search engine results page is your keyword selection.
As mentioned before, Google and other search engines aim to match user searches with the best possible results. One of the main ways that Google does this is by scanning the text of a site for keywords, including their frequency and usage. This helps the search engine understand the context of keyword usage and determines the page’s relevance to the user’s query. It’s no use if a page simply contains the keyword over and over again whilst providing no benefit to the user.
In this context, keyword selection refers to the words and phrases your website’s content is based around. For example, websites that refer to Easter eggs as “chocolate eggs” will get fewer site visitors when a user searches for easter eggs, even if the content is relevant and a good match. It’s typically agreed that you want each page to have one primary keyword (your main focus) and one to three secondary keywords.
The quality of your content plays a role in your ranking position.
Google’s help desk explicitly states that it aims to provide users with reliable, quality content that’s “designed to serve people” rather than garner favour with search engines.
Therefore, it may sound antithetical to discuss how you can produce quality content and garner favour with results pages at the same time, but the point remains. “Quality content” essentially means that your content actually is answering user queries.
Backlinks play a major role in the ranking position of a website. Backlinks are essentially word of mouth recommendations in a digital form. Just like how the more someone recommends a song, TV show, restaurant - whatever it might be - in real life, the more likely we are to try it ourselves; the more backlinks - incoming links from other websites - a website has, the more reputable it is seen to be by search engines. Equally, just as you’re more likely to trust a bigger voice in your life, Google views backlinks from more reputable sites as more credible, and therefore as more influential in boosting a site’s SEO.
There are many different types of backlinks, with each type having a different level of impact on your site’s ranking position. For example, a link from a social media post or a piece of sponsored content will have little impact on your SEO, but links from industry leaders, reputable media organisations, and bloggers can make a huge difference. Your Shopify site can naturally earn new backlinks through simply garnering attention, but most businesses need a full link-building strategy to grow their reach, hence why there’s a whole industry dedicated to digital PR.
Although it’s difficult to know how large of a role it plays, Google’s EEAT framework does influence the ranking position of your Shopify Store specifically on Google.
The EEAT framework rates online content on whether or not it feels like it came from a real person. It was formerly known as the EAT framework, but with the generative text abilities of tools like ChatGPT having flooded the content we now find online - tools which don’t always provide correct information - Google introduced another component to its EAT framework, to create the EEAT framework. EEAT has four influencing factors,
Experience: The newest influencing factor, and arguably the one that holds the most weight today. “Experience” essentially asks whether the creator of a page has first-hand experience in a subject or not. This could be through author bios, “behind the scenes” content, or by directly referencing personal experiences within the content itself.
Expertise: “Expertise” asks whether the page creator demonstrates credibility in their field through credentials or specific knowledge. This is harder to relate to eCommerce, but the inclusion of stats and figures in content is key.
Authoritativeness: “Authoritativeness” asks whether the site as a whole is accurate in the area in question, or at least whether people believe it to be. Backlinks play a large role here.
Trustworthiness: “Trustworthiness” asks if the site hides some kind of bias or not? For an eCommerce store it’s a case of having a secure checkout and reliable customer service that people trust. Your reviews and Google My Business score play a large role here.
Another major factor influencing the ranking position of your Shopify site will be the site’s structure and design.
In the same way that every well organised sorting system has files inside of files; all organised and neatly put away in the right place, if search engines find it easy to crawl through your site’s pages and sub pages, you’ll benefit greatly from an SEO perspective. Google is simply looking for each part of your site to be accessible and that every page has a clear URL.
Finally the user experience of your site plays a large role in your ranking position too.
Search engines want to see that users have a good experience once they’ve clicked on a link. There are multiple ways that it will determine this, chief among them being the length of time a user spends on a site and the bounce rate - the rate of people going back to the search results page after clicking on a result. If users are spending a lot of time on a website, and aren’t bouncing from the site frequently, search engines can see that users are getting value from spending time on the site, and will boost its ranking position as a result.
It’s simply a case of making your Shopify site as engaging and user friendly as possible. A great user experience does more than just increase your conversion rate, it boosts your SEO too.
So we know the major factors that Google uses to determine the ranking position of a site against keywords. So, what can we do as merchants to improve this ranking position and ultimately get more visitors to our site?
If you’re running an eCommerce business, you’ve likely already made efforts to boost your SEO in the past. After all, the higher you rank on search engines, the more chances there are to convert visitors into customers.
The strategies for boosting the SEO of a Shopify store are no different to boosting the SEO for any other website. If anything, the structure of a Shopify site makes it easier to make improvements towards your SEO.
Put simply, the more content there is on a Shopify site’s webpage, the higher search engines are going to rank said page.
Choosing and using relevant keywords throughout your content is also going to be key to improving the SEO of your Shopify store. Using tools such as Ahrefs or SEMrush, you can find the search volume, keyword difficulty, and keyword type of individual search terms.
It’s essential to tailor your content to the keywords that are actually relevant to your customers. For example, if you sell leather loafers, a relevant keyword you could create content around might be “how to clean leather loafers.”
Tying neatly into your keyword strategies, your Shopify store’s metadata is also key to boosting your SEO.
Metadata is the data that describes a page to Google, it includes your page title, page description, and H1.
The major thing to keep front of mind is character limits and the inclusion of the right keywords wherever possible.
For page titles, do not exceed 60 characters, and for page descriptions, do not exceed 155 characters, doing so will ensure that the text isn’t cut off by search engine results.
The H1 is the title that appears at the top of the page once a user has clicked on the page. It’s key that this text is actually formatted as a H1, as it’s a distinct label that meta data uses to read text. H1s can be any length, and include as many keywords as you see fit.
It can be an arduous task to optimise your metadata for all of your pages, but one that will ultimately reap rewards in boosting your Shopify site’s SEO.
This is a massive oversimplification of course. A Shopify site may be slow to load for a number of reasons - with too many third party plugins, large files, and multiple redirects often being the main culprits. But making efforts so that your Shopify site loads quicker will have a positive knock on effect on your ranking position.
This will require a much more technical deep dive into your store than anything else, and diagnosing exactly why a Shopify site is slow to load may be a multi-day process. But once you know why your site is loading slowly, you can make the edits needed to set your site right and ensure that it loads quickly.
Unlike some other eCommerce platforms, Shopify actually gives merchants a great set of tools that automatically prepare their eCommerce website to be in the best position for a search engine. Here are three examples
Shopify’s in-built CMS automatically pulls each web page into the correct place within both the website’s overarching sitemap and the XML Site Map.
This is why some may refer to Shopify as having a rigid URL structure. This is true, with all collection pages containing “/collections/“ within a URL, all product pages containing “/Products/” and so on.
But this is ultimately beneficial to the merchants on the platform, as it provides a structure that search engine crawlers can read easily.
Your Shopify site may have multiple URLs for the same webpage (such as different mobile and desktop versions). Canonical tags allow you to assign one of these pages as the “primary” page, making it the only one to show up in search results, simplifying tracking.
An SSL certificate is key to your Shopify Site’s SEO, as it signals to Google that your site is secure. Shopify provides this to all websites as standard.
There are loads more, but these are the three that we believe to be the most important.
As there is a crossover between website development and marketing efforts when it comes to SEO, most Shopify Plus Agencies can also help with improving your site’s SEO. This can either be in the form of making sure your website is as technically sound as can be - that it loads quickly, that all pages are structured properly, and that all metadata is formatted and mapped correctly.
Some Shopify Plus Agencies, such as Cake Agency, can also assist in content creation and digital link building strategies, but this discipline falls under marketing more than it does web development.
So if you already work with a Shopify Agency to develop your shopify store, it may be worth asking them if they can help with your SEO too.
Cyberjammies is an online retailer of pyjamas and nightwear for men, women, and children.
Although Cyberjammies’ products are stocked in some major retail stores across the UK, Cyberjammies is by no means a household name. Yet, the business competes with major UK retailers such as Primark and John Lewis for space amongst Google’s top search results.
How?
Cyberjammies’ SEO strategy is entirely focused on creating new content and finding creative ways to create new content. Beyond a fast loading site, correctly formatted metadata, and a user friendly experience, content will be the major driver of your SEO.
Cyberjammies expand upon their target key search terms by splitting them out into a number of longer terms, and making content dense collection pages for each of them.
For example, within the keyword “women’s dressing gowns” there’s the opportunity to also rank for “women’s Blue Dressing gowns”, “women’s white dressing gowns”, and so on. Cyberjammies’ site casts this wide SEO net to find customers looking for each of these niche terms. This is key to their strategy, as when your rankings for less relevant pages improve, the ranking of your site overall improves too.
We know that SEO is one of the most powerful tools in a Shopify merchant’s arsenal when it comes to marketing their business. Not only does thoughtful and targeted SEO get your Shopify store in front of more potential customers, but it can make your business seem more trustworthy, and boost your conversion rate due to getting in front of your target audience.
Shopify as a platform also makes the process of optimising your business from an SEO perspective straightforward, giving you all of the tools you could need to get your business to position 1 on Google. Through effective strategies, content creation, and employing an SEO-first mindset, your business can compete with major brands for space amongst the top search results.
If you need help with boosting the SEO of your Shopify store, contact us!
