Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has come a long way from the days of keyword stuffing and clickbait titles. To rank on the first page of Google search results, your store’s content must align with the intent of potential visitors. Optimizing your site for search engines may seem overwhelming and tedious, but it’s really about understanding how search engines work, how users utilize them, and implementing that understanding into your page copy, then systematically refining the backend.
Why is Search Engine Optimization so Important?
1. Most traffic comes from organic search: If you don’t have an SEO strategy for your store, you may be missing out on traffic and revenue. Online stores can expect that 35% of their total traffic comes from search engine results pages and 33% of revenue comes from this organic traffic, making it the marketing channel that can produce the highest traffic and revenue, according to Wolfgang Digital.
2. Paid advertising costs are rising and SEO is considered “free traffic”: If you’re generating most of your sales through paid advertising channels like Facebook or Instagram, this could impact your profit margins. Although generating organic traffic takes time, it should ultimately become the best channel for acquiring customers, making its costs sustainable. SEO shouldn’t be a secondary thought even though the return isn’t immediate.
3. Ranking first in search engines can increase daily traffic by up to 30%: There’s a joke in the SEO world that says if you want to hide a dead body, you should put it on the second page. Many clicks go to the links that rank first, significantly compared to those ranking eleventh.
If you have a page that is already performing well for organic traffic without any search optimization, it’s likely that you can enhance the page to increase traffic, sometimes with just minor tweaks.
Before You Begin: Essential SEO Improvements for Shopify
There are some vital things you need to set up before you start optimizing SEO for your Shopify store. These are:
Purchase a Custom Domain
Simply put, your store needs its own domain to succeed in SEO. A custom domain helps build trust with potential shoppers who click on your site from search engines, and it’s also more distinctive and easier to remember. If you still have your brand name.myshopify.com, it’s time to upgrade to a custom domain like brandname.com. You can get a custom domain for $10-20 a year. If you need help, we have a resource on how to choose a domain name for your store.
Ensure Google Analytics is Installed on Your Site
Google Analytics allows you to know how much traffic you are getting and what is happening on your site. Learn how to set up Google Analytics on your Shopify store.
Ensure Google Search Console is Installed on Your Site
Google Search Console provides you insight into which pages rank for which queries, where they rank, and how many clicks you are getting, among other useful information. Learn how to set up Google Search Console on your Shopify store.
Get a Mobile-Ready Template
Shopify offers a range of free templates designed with responsive web design in mind. If you’ve made any modifications to your template or built a custom one, it’s best to test its mobile readiness using Google’s tool even if no changes were made.
Remove
Password Protection
If you are still creating and organizing product pages, you may want to wait to remove password protection from your store so that search engines can see and index your pages and rank them in search engine results pages. However, if your store is password protected, search engines will not be able to see anything beyond the homepage and will not index or rank your pages in search engine results pages.
Be on a Paid Plan
Although stores using free trials can be indexed, if you are not on a paid plan, you won’t see the fruits of your efforts once the trial period ends, as it will take longer to index a new store than 14 days.
Once you’ve ensured that all of these matters are in order, you are ready to get started. Use this guide to improve organic traffic and appear in search engines like Google and Bing.
Technical SEO Optimization
Technical SEO optimization is a type of search engine optimization that cannot be seen with the naked eye, but it can greatly improve the search performance of your website. Technical SEO optimization ensures that your website is optimized for search engines and performs well in terms of page speed, mobile compatibility, content organization, internal linking, meta tags, and other technical factors. Technical SEO optimization improves your website for humans by ensuring that its structure, organization, and internal links allow for easy navigation, and that meta tags are filled out so that both search engines and humans know what the page is about.
Create a Logical Internal Linking Strategy Using Lists
Cost: $0, or $4 per month for one app
SEO Expertise (out of 5): ?️
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Effort (out of 5): ????
Impact (out of 5): ?????
It’s easy to overlook internal linking, especially in the early days of building your online store. I understand – it doesn’t seem important compared to publishing new pages and promoting your business. However, creating internal links is not just about slapping them on a
Source: https://www.shopify.com/blog/shopify-seo
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