A recent survey states that only 4.8% of users move to the second page of Google search results. Less than 2% of people go to the third page, meaning if you want people to visit your Shopify e-commerce store, then you need to rank on the first page.
The number one way to increase user engagement on your Shopify e-commerce store is by SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). To get more traffic and grow your audience organically, it is imperative to employ e-commerce SEO.
E-commerce SEO is nothing but optimizing your e-commerce store according to the SEO guidelines which in turn will help you attract more organic traffic. E-commerce SEO works in such a manner that when a customer searches for a product that is related to your business you appear at the top of the results.
Although, finding your way to the first page of search results is not an easy task especially for e-commerce websites, as there are many competitors. To achieve this feat you need to do various activities like keyword research, creating a site structure that attracts customers, on and off-page SEO, etc.
However, there are some hacks that are specifically designed for Shopify e-commerce stores that will help you to generate even more traffic.
And here this article specifically speaks about Shopify SEO in detail. This article will serve you as a Shopify SEO guide and it will answer your questions regarding how to improve SEO on Shopify.
Let’s start!
History Of Shopify
Shopify’s e-commerce website is amongst the top e-commerce platforms that offer sellers a place to create an e-commerce website and sell their products online.
The story behind Shopify is quite interesting. Shopify online store was started by Tobias Lütke and Scott Lake in 2006, who wanted to sell snowboarding equipment online. They saw how inefficient the other e-commerce websites were and decided to seize the opportunity to launch a new one.
They started an app that lets sellers create their own Shopify online store where they can sell their products. Shopify takes care of all the marketing needed for the e-commerce websites like email marketing, social media posts, etc.,
As of May 2021, the Shopify e-commerce website hosts over 17,00,000 businesses across 175 countries.
5 Reasons To Choose Shopify As Your Online E-Commerce Store
Shopify e-commerce is one of the largest online sellers globally and has a total sales of $200 billion to date. Therefore, Shopify’s online store is the best choice to set up your online e-commerce store. Some other reasons for choosing Shopify are
- Shopify takes care of all the technicalities such as coding, launching, and hosting the website.
- The Shopify e-commerce website can be trusted to safely store all the sensitive information of your buyers.
- Website maintenance and upgrades are taken care of from time to time by Shopify, ensuring constant user interaction with the e-commerce platform.
- Secure payment gateways are provided by Shopify. There are various payment gateways and all of them are maintained effectively.
- Shopify offers 3 diverse plans that are cost-effective.
The Shopify store hosts various apps that help to improve e-commerce website functionality.
8 Tips That Need To Be Followed For Improving The SEO Of Your Shopify Store/ E-Commerce SEO Checklist
Here we have provided 8 important tips that you need to follow which will significantly improve your e-commerce SEO
1. Make sure your titles and descriptions are keyword-rich
Keywords are an important determining factor that helps you to optimize Shopify SEO. They are the words that the user uses to search for your product/service online. The more the search volume of the words, the more value it holds.
Such keywords are known as Commercial keywords and their research is different from normal keyword research. Commercial keywords should directly relate to the product/service that you are selling. Once you find such keywords, use them on the titles and product descriptions to make your store more visible.
2. Use images and videos liberally, and make sure they’re properly tagged
More than words, visual stimulation induces the sales of the product largely. Wherever appropriate, use images and videos of high quality to capture the attention of the buyers.
To improve SEO on Shopify, you need to ensure that images and videos are tagged.
Wherein tagging is the process of describing the image in words. It allows search engines to identify what the image is about and show them when relevant words are searched by the user.
3. Connect your social media accounts and use relevant hashtags
Undeniably, social media is a huge platform to get more customers. Still, for your posts to become viral, you need to employ several strategies in place. One such strategy is the use of hashtags.
Hashtags organize posts of similar nature in one place. For example, if a customer searches for “Shopify online store”, posts that have hashtags related to the keyword such as ‘Shopify’, ‘online’ ‘e-commerce’, etc., will be shown to the user.
4. Add a blog to your store and populate it regularly
Another way to attract customers to your Shopify e-commerce website is by promoting your products through a blog. A well-articulated blog catches the attention of the customer and provokes them to buy your product.
You can give the link to your Shopify e-commerce website inside the blog so that customers can reach your products with just a single click. Although you should remember that blogs must also be written keyword rich to reach more audiences.
5. Get involved in online communities related to your niche
Networking is the art of socializing with communities and advocating your product/service to increase its brand value. And you can use this method to increase the sales of your Shopify e-commerce website.
There are many communities available online that have a massive followers base. You can reach out to them and associate yourself with them to promote the product. It is one of the best forms of networking that helps to sell your product online.
6. Review your website’s analytics to see where you can improve your SEO strategy
Understanding what works for your business and what doesn’t is an important aspect of making it a successful business. And to do so you’ll have to keep it under analysis and will have to do it from time to time.
By doing so you’ll have a better understanding of your SEO strategies and your business in general. Also, you’ll get a better idea of how your audience interacts with your products/services.
7. Install the free Product Review App
If you were to buy a product the first thing that you’ll do is to go into the review section and see how other customers have interacted with it. The more positive reviews you see from customers, the more the chances of you buying the product.
That’s why the Shopify app store provides a free product review app to improve SEO on Shopify e-commerce websites. Using this App feature for your Shopify e-commerce website will enable your customers to leave a review about your products helping you attract more traffic.
8. Technical SEO for Shopify is a must
Technical SEO is an important part of any SEO strategy and Implementing technical SEO on your Shopify e-commerce website will open up new opportunities for you. Something that falls under the umbrella of technical SEO is
- Removing duplicate pages and URLs
- Creating structured data for the viewers
- Eliminating unnecessary Shopify apps
Now you know about different SEO hacking that you can use to increase your eCommerce store football. It’s time to learn how to add a Google search console and Google Analytics to Shopify so you can track your growth.
How To Set Up Google Search Console and Google Analytics On Shopify
Adding these tools is important because they will help you analyze your strategy and growth with help of numbers and reports.
Before adding Google Analytics to Shopify, make sure you have not already enabled the option.
To check that,
- On your Shopify admin page, select settings ->Apps and sales channels.
- Go to the Online Store from the apps and sales channel.
- Click Open sales channel -> Preferences.
- There you can see the Google Analytics option. See if the box has the text “Paste your code from Google here” or if it is empty.
In case you see any code like “UA-“ on the box, it means Google Analytics has already been enabled. If the box is empty proceed with the below steps
- Select Themes -> Actions -> Edit code
- There on the layout section, Click {/} theme.liquid
- In that file, see if you can find any of the tags
- ga.js
- dc.js
- gtag.js
- analytics.js
If you see any of the above tags in the file, then Google Analytics is already enabled.
If you do not see any tags, continue to the next step.
Steps to add Google Analytics on Shopify
Step 1: Have a Google Account.
Make sure you have a Google account. In case you do not, create a Google account to enable Google Analytics.
Step 2: Enabling Google Analytics.
- From the browser, go to Google Analytics.
- Click Admin -> Account
- From the account option, select your account.
- Then in the property section, Select create a property.
- Type a name for the property and select Create a Universal Analytics property only
- Then choose the settings as per your need and click create.
- Press ctrl+C or command+C on your PC to copy the Universal Analytics property to your clipboard.
- Open a new tab and go to the Shopify admin page.
- Select Online store -> preference.
- Add your Universal Analytics property to the Google Analytics account field in the Google Analytics section.
You have enabled Google Analytics on your Shopify store now.
Steps to add Google search console
Google search console is a tool that allows a user to monitor their SEO performance on the Google search engine. The following steps will help you connect both of them.
Step 1: Verifying the properties
Domain and URL prefix are the two methods of determining the property of your site.
Since the URL prefix method is easy to follow, let us see verifying properties with that method.
In this step, we are going to copy a code and paste it into the Shopify website for verification. To copy the code
- Visit Google Search Console
- Sign in with the username and password you used for Google Analytics
- Open the menu, and click on “add a property”
- Select URL Prefix as the Property Type
- Enter the URL used for your main page and continue
- Select HTML under Other Verification Methods
- A code called will be visible to you
- Copy the meta tag code
Now for verification,
- Log into your Shopify store and select Online Store
- Click Themes
- Click Actions -> Edit Code
- In your theme liquid, find where these <head> and <body> tags are
- Past the code that we copied earlier between <head> and <body> tags
- Save the process
Now go back to the Google search console and verify it. The verification process is done.
Step 2: Ensuring the primary property contains the XML sitemap
Before these steps, choose your primary property from these options – HTTPS/HTTP and WWW or non-WWW. After this follow these steps
- Enter your principal property URL into your browser
- Sitemap.xml should be added to the website address, and it should be in order
- Open Google Search Console
- In the Index menu, click Sitemaps
- Click Sitemaps from the Index Menu
- Paste Sitemap.xml on the option “Add a new sitemap”
- Click submit
- Make sure the sitemap is pasted only to your primary property.
Step 3: Change the International segmentation
Assess the location of your target audience and change the International Targeting settings
- Go into Google Search Console
- Select Old Tools and Reports (formerly Legacy Tools and Reports)
- Click International Segmentation
- Open the Country tab in the new window
- Select the country you want to target and check the box
- Save it
Step 4: Connect Google Analytics with Google Search Console
You need to connect your Google Analytics and Google Search Console to analyze your search engine ranking.
- Log in to the Google Analytics account
- Choose the e-commerce website that you want to associate with the Google search console
- Go to Admin -> Property
- Select all products
- Select “Link search console” from the Google search console
- Click Edit -> Add. Now you can add the primary site
- Select your preferred view and enable it
- Save the process
With this procedure, your data will be shared between Google Analytics and Google Search Console, allowing you to analyze it.
The Benefits Of E-Commerce SEO
Enabling e-commerce SEO service for your Shopify website has numerous websites. Some of them are
- Less advertising cost
As all the advertising is done organically with the help of e-commerce SEO, the business owners do not need to pay any additional cost for advertising.
- Brand Exposure
E-commerce SEO services will help to promote your brand and reach a larger audience. It helps in brand exposure and builds trust with the customer.
- Enhances sales
Online shopping has grown over 180% in the past two years. Proper SEO will boost online sales of your products by ranking them first during such searches.
- Long term growth
For the long-term growth of the business, SEO implementation is a must. Optimized websites sustain for a longer time and generate more revenue.
Final Thoughts
Now it’s time to implement all the Shopify SEO hacks mentioned above and quadruple your business revue. We hope we provided all the necessary details that you were looking for regarding Shopify SEO.
Although, this one thing that we emphasize is that SEO is a long game so don’t lose your patience. Keep exploring with different SEO hacks and see what works for your business and what doesn’t.
And if you think we might have missed out on something do let us know in the comments.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. Is Shopify good for SEO?
Shopify offers a complete package when it comes to SEO. The tools offered by Shopify SEO are simple to use. Shopify stores offer advanced SEO tools if you need them.
2. How much does Shopify SEO cost?
Shopify SEO’s basic plan is priced at ₹2200/month, Shopify’s plan is priced at ₹5990/month, and the Advanced plan is priced at ₹22,680/month.
3. Is SEO important for Shopify?
Yes. Undoubtedly, SEO is important for your Shopify e-commerce website to help you rank first in the search results.
4. How do e-commerce products do SEO?
E-commerce products do SEO through various methods such as Keyword research for content and titles, simple site structure, optimizing product pages, etc.
5. How do I optimize my e-commerce store with Shopify?
You can optimize your e-commerce store with Shopify by using simple themes that help faster loading of the website, improving user experience, Using product review apps, etc.
