A good SEO strategy can take you to the top of several search engines. This is fairly important for any website – much more a Shopify store – as 75% of users never go past the first page of search engine results.
To attract as many possible buyers as you can, you need to get the following SEO strategies right:
Choose A Good Domain Name
First impressions last. As such, you need to have a domain name that is as catchy to customers as it is attractive to search engines.
If you have just opened your store, then you should consider these domain naming tips:
• A short domain name makes your store fairly memorable to customers.
• Make sure to affix your brand name in the URL.
• Avoid symbols as it may affect brand trust.
• A .com suffix is deemed more legitimate by most clients.
It’s All About The Theme
Shopify offers various store themes. While you might be leaning towards a color combination that’s more up your alley, you should consider one thing: speed.
Remember, a beautiful theme is not always good for you. More often than not, it performs slowly. This can be bad for your business, as delayed loading can reduce conversion by as much as 7%.
To avoid the costly mistake of picking a slow-loading theme, use tools that determine page speed. One good example is PageSpeed Insights. This will show you the speed of your website, including what else you could do to improve page optimization.
Focus On Website Structure And Content
In general, there are four huge factors that can help you achieve higher search rankings:
• Website authority, which is based on engagement and other factors
• Domain name age
• The volume of links to your store coming from other websites
SEO-optimized website content and structure
If you are a new seller, then it will take you some time to achieve the first three. Although that is the case, you can improve the SEO for Shopify store by focusing on structure and content.
Use SEO-Friendly Keywords
As established, optimized content can help you rank higher in search engines. To make this possible, you need to use keywords that customers use to find such products.
You could use various tools for this, one of which is Ahrefs. When you do so, pay attention to two things: keyword difficulty and search volume.
Once you get a good list of keywords and phrases, it’s time for you to incorporate them in the following:
• Page titles (should be 70 characters or fewer)
• Meta-descriptions
• ALT tags
• Headers
• Content proper
As always, you need to blend these keywords seamlessly into the text. Poorly incorporated keywords will make your content unreadable, and such could adversely affect your SEO rankings in the long run. If you aren't a search engine optimization expert, an ecommerce seo company can improve your keyword ranking on Google and other top search engines.
Optimize Your Title
Without a doubt, having a keyword in your page title is a good SEO for Shopify store strategy. But apart from this, you should try to add any of these four factors:
• Reference to low prices (cheap, under $10, affordable)
• Time element (Spring, Holiday, Christmas 2020)
• Volume (“125 products to choose from...”)
• Speed of purchase (one-click checkout, checkout within 30 seconds)
Content Is King
Time and time again, content has been heralded as a primary driver of optimization. So how would this apply to Shopify SEO, you ask?
Well, you could make use of the product description section. Here you could add important details and, most importantly, keywords. Again, always remember to use these keywords naturally.
Should you find yourself running out of product description space for keywords, you could always create a blog. It can help boost your SEO and engage customers, making you an industry expert along the way.
Avoid Duplicate Content
If you have similar products that only differ in size or style, then your website probably has duplicate content.
As with most websites, duplicate content in your Shopify store can negatively impact your SEO rankings.
To prevent this, test your website as often possible. You can use the Copyscape plagiarism checker or the SEMrush audit bot. These can help you determine the pages that have more than 80% similarities so you can modify them right away.
Don’t Leave The ALT Tag Empty
Content is so important that even your images should have them.
Since a search engine can’t ‘read’ an image, it needs an alt tag to guide it. If you leave this unfilled, you will fail to cover this important SEO strategy.
To add ALT text to your images, go to the Products option. Choose an item and click "ALT". Make sure to add a long-tail keyword as this could greatly help in search engine indexing.
Reduce Image Size
As mentioned, a slow website will drive Shopify store customers away. If you want your store to perform as fast as it could, then you should consider reducing the size of your image uploads. This is particularly important if your server does not offer unlimited storage space.
For this, you could use TinyPNG, an application that can help compress your photos and then upload the compressed image directly to your Shopify store.
Ranking well in search engines will attract more customers and rake in more sales. If you want to boost your store visibility across the board, then you should keep these useful strategies in mind.
