If you aren’t putting SEO tactics to work on your Shopify store – you’re missing out on a significant traffic source. When done right, proper SEO Shopify strategies will increase your organic traffic.Yet, you’ll need a checklist to keep you on track with your goals to do things right.
Otherwise, it’s easy to forget crucial steps in the search engine optimization process.
To simplify things, we’ve put together this comprehensive Shopify SEO checklist. It contains all the components of successful SEO, including:
- Content creation
- Link building
- Keyword research
- Technical SEO factors
- On-Page SEO audits
Read on to learn more about optimizing your Shopify SEO to generate more organic traffic and sales.
#1: Configure Google Search Console
Since Google is the most widely used search engine, you’ll want to know how it views your website. That’s why the Google Search Console is such a handy tool. With it, you can monitor your site’s performance within Google search.
The data you can view includes:
- Total clicks
- Total impressions
- Average click-through-rate (CTR)
- Average position (rank on Google)
In a nutshell, Google Search Console is how you track your SEO efforts’ success (or lack of success). Its data ensures that you aren’t simply shooting in the dark with your SEO tactics. There are lots of other features, such as being able to submit your sitemap, which helps the search engine index your webpages.
Tips: now let’s see how to submit your Shopify store sitemaps to Google Search Console below.
Your Shopify sitemap is typically located in the root directory of your domain(e.g. https://www.beardbrand.com/sitemap.xml). Also, you can find out the products sitemap, collection sitemap, page sitemap of your store by entering your root sitemap into the search box of Google.
Then from “Google Search Console”, click “Sitemap” in the left panel and add all of the sitemaps one by one.
#2: Install Bing Webmaster Tools
Microsoft Bing is an other web search engine that people would like to use. Actually Bing and Google are both world’s most popular search engines that accounted for at least 90% of the market share. It’s particularly important to optimize for Bing if you want to get more traffic. Now please don’t ignore Bing and do setup Bing Webmaster Tools to check the performance and site audit.
Also, please check if you submit sitemaps or not. And don’t forget to finish the job if you never do it before.
#3: Set Up and Connect Google Analytics
There’s another tool from Google that you’ll want in your arsenal – and that’s Google Analytics. It’s the most reliable way to learn how people discover your site and how they use it the most. Its metrics are invaluable for monitoring your traffic.
Google Analytics also works with Google Search Console, so it’s a good idea to have both.
You can connect them to see even more valuable information about your SEO. You can view insightful reports on landing pages, countries, devices, and search queries.
#4: Master the Basics of Keyword Research
All keyword research refers to is discovering what your potential customers are searching for online. Keywords, or search queries, refer to what users type into search engines. An example would be “Dentists near Washington D.C.” if the user needs a dentist near their location.
The idea is to insert commonly searched ‘keywords’ in your niche into your website. It’s a simple concept that gets more complicated once you dive into it. There are three basics you’ll need to understand to identify the strength of a keyword.
They are:
- Search volume
- Difficulty
- Search intent
Search volume refers to how many people search for the target keyword each month. That can provide invaluable insight for your Shopify store – such as which new products to launch.
For example, if you notice far more people are searching for ‘custom phone cases’ than ‘custom mousepads’ – you know phone cases are the way to go.
The difficulty of a keyword is how hard it is to rank for it. In other words, it’s harder to rise through the ranks with higher competition keywords.
Search intent is what the user meant when they entered the search query. An example would be ‘metal band,’ referring to the steel band on a ring and not a musical act.
#5: Use Trusted Keyword Research Tools
While you can go about keyword research any way you like (you can even use Google suggest) – research tools will help a lot. They will visualize critical keyword data such as search volumes, keyword difficulty, etc.
A research tool such as Semrush, Keyword Everwhere or KWFinder is also a great way to discover related keywords. You’ll also get the chance to look at which keywords your competitors are ranking with currently. With a keyword tool, you can find keywords with low difficulty yet high search volume.
#6: Avoid Repeated Contents/Pages
When injecting target keywords on your landing pages, make sure the main keyword or content is different. The last thing you want is to have two pages competing for the same keyword. While it may seem like a good idea to increase your chances of ranking – all you’ll end up doing is confusing Google.
According to Google Search guideline, you should avoid creating duplicate contents in your website. So if you have two pages with very similar contents or product features, it would be a good idea to combine them and add Variants in a product page to show different SKU, instead of create a new page in a hurry. Also, don’t forget to know more about the taxonomy for your ecommerce website, which helps you improve user experience and reduce the duplicated contents.
#7: Create Stand-Out Content Containing Your Keywords
To attract new traffic, you’ll want to publish valuable content on your Shopify store. That includes blog posts, landing pages, product pages, etc. For content to rank on Google, it not only needs the right keywords, but it needs to be:
- Readable
- Formatted with short paragraphs, bullet points, lists, and no long walls of text
- More than 200 words (Google views content under 200 words as thin)
- Relevant to the search query (answers questions, informs, educates, provides value)
Beyond that, you should strive to outdo the competition in your field. Find top-ranking articles in your niche and create content that goes into more detail.
#8: Write Unique Product Descriptions
I know some of you may make a product description template for your product pages, and when you upload a new product, all you do is to insert the product’s name in the pre-written product description.
Yes, it save time. But please avoid doing this from now on.
As you see, the contents of those pages are almost the same and the search engine don’t like them. What’s more, it’s always a good idea to write unique product description to attract visitors and improve customer experiences.
#9: Get Product Reviews Written
To have product reviews in your product selling page can effectively enhance trust from potential customers. When they come to your store and are interested in your product, they may sometimes indecisive as they don’t know if the product is good or not.
But if have lot’s of product reviews and high rating from others, the new visitors would enhance confidence of your product. So please try to get reviews from your customers who have bought your products. Actually, some of the Shopify app will do the job for you. You can set up a discount for someone who are willing to write a pertinent review.
#10: Add a Blog to an eCommerce Site
A blog is a great and effective content marketing tool that will drive organic traffic to your Shopify sites. You may post some awesome blog topics, like helpful tips and tricks, news, reviews, tutorials and guides related to your products. If you share knowledge and do provide values, your readers would trust you and then they will convert into actual sales. So you should never miss out to set up a blog on your ecommerce sites.
#11: Optimize URLs Of Your Webpage&Images
Your URL lets Google know what your website is about when crawling your website. Using your target keyword in the URL boosts your chances of ranking for it. Not only that but using keywords in URLs can improve your click-through rate. By the way, it’s recommended that your url is comprised up to 6 or 7 words. Because it’d be hard to be read if your url is too long.
Please note that you should not only optimize the pages’ urls, but also the images’. This is a very key step for image SEO, which helps to provide a best user experience and more importantly, let the search engine know more about your image.
#12: Optimize Your Metadata
An often neglected aspect of SEO is metadata. Your meta description and meta title are among the first things Google will see when crawling your site. Not only that, but the meta title is what shows up on Google’s search results page. An idea meta title is 50-60 characters and should contain your keyword. The meta description shouldn’t exceed 160 characters and should also include keywords.
#13: Use Internal Links
Link building is a core part of any SEO strategy, and Shopify is no different. Beyond external links, you’ll want to use internal links on your store. An internal link helps you pass on some SEO value from one page to another.
It’s also a helpful way for users to find other related content on your site that interests them. For Shopify stores, related product pages are perfect internal link opportunities.
#14: Use External Links and Backlinks
Shopify backlinks will significantly help your SEO – and there are a few ways to obtain them. While some opt to pay for backlinks, there are plenty of ways to get them for free.
For example, it would help if you also used external links to other pages with high domain authority. In general, Google views websites such as .edu and .gov with high authority – so link to those pages if possible.
Other tried and true way to get backlinks on Shopify is to get some reviews written for your products. How do you do that?
Reach out to bloggers, social media influencers, and anyone relevant in your industry. Send them a sample of your product and ask them to write up a review for you. From there, you’ll gain a valuable backlink from their review post.
For more details, you can check my post about how to get backlinks for Ecommerce store, which provide 16+ ways to do link building.
#15: Check Your Page Speed
A search engine’s goal is to provide the highest quality and most relevant results for queries. As such, they have high standards for site performance, especially speed. If you’re having trouble ranking on search engines, your site’s speed may be the culprit.
A high bounce rate is another indicator of a website that loads too slow. Users get impatient and click off to fulfill their needs elsewhere.
Luckily, you can use Google’s PageSpeed Insights to discover how fast your site runs. If it’s on the slow side, you can try compressing any images. Another tactic is to uninstall apps you don’t need or aren’t using anymore.
#16: Fix Broken Links/404 Pages
A broken link will wreak havoc on your SEO as it’s a sign that your site isn’t up to date. If you aren’t sure if you have broken links on your Shopify store, there are a few ways to do so. You can use tools like Semrush or Ahrefs to identify them. Once you find them, either redirect (Google prefers 301 redirects), update them, or remove them.
#17: Add Structured Data To Shopify Store
Using structured data in your website can help search engine understand what your web page is all about. More importantly, it display rich results like rich snippets, which makes the search result more visible and thus improve the click though rates. For example, visitors would more likely to click on the site with a high rating for the product in the search result page. So don’t forget to implement Schema Markup for your Shopify store.
#18: Make Sure Your Store is Mobile-Friendly
In today’s age, most consumers do their shopping on smart devices. Instead of a PC, they’ll likely be browsing your store on a phone or tablet. That’s why your store must work on mobile devices. Bring up your Shopify store on your smartphone to find out. If the formatting gets crazy, you need to do some tweaking.
You can check your website using Google Mobile-Friendly Test. If your site is not good enough, just try to fix it with the help of Google Search Console.
#19: Create an SEO Roadmap
Last but not least, you’ll want to create a roadmap for your SEO strategy. That means setting a clear-defined goal, such as increasing organic traffic by 20% in 24 months. Create a content calendar to keep your blog releases on track. Also, don’t forget to constantly check your metrics to see if what you’re trying is achieving results.
Concluding Thoughts: Shopify SEO Checklist
By now, you should better understand how to use SEO on Shopify. It would be best to use the proper tools, identify the right keywords, create content, build links, and monitor your metrics. Your SEO strategy should continue to change and evolve. In general, it takes around 12 months to start seeing an ROI from an SEO strategy. Once it starts to kick in, it has a habit of compounding on itself – generating consistent traffic for you in the future.