When it comes to running a powerful Shopify store, boosting organic search visibility is a must!
If you run a Shopify ecommerce website, you know the power, capability and user-friendliness of the platform. But launching your Shopify store is only half the battle. To ensure maximum visibility and to boost organic sales, you must be driving valuable traffic to your site and to do that, your online store needs to be visible within Google search results (and in AI-powered search results, but more on that later). That’s where Shopify SEO comes into play! Here are our top tips for maximising your organic search visibility driving valuable traffic to your site and ensuring your Shopify store is set up for success. Without further ado, let’s jump in!
1. Make the most of Shopify’s SEO settings
Shopify is a fantastic ecommerce platform for making the most of SEO as it provides user-friendly editable fields for page titles, meta descriptions, and URLs for all pages. So whether you’re optimising product pages, collections, blog posts or other static pages, you can rest assured you can implement everything you need to boost a page’s visibility within the search engine results pages (SERPs). Simply navigate to your Shopify admin dashboard and customise your title and meta description using relevant keywords. If you don’t know what keywords to target, you need to undertake thorough keyword research or enlist the help of an SEO agency to do this for you, otherwise you’ll just be chancing your arm that you’re actually going gain any traction! We’d always recommend focusing on long-tail keywords that include natural, conversational language your audience is likely to type into Google or even an AI-powered search engine. This way, you’re much more likely to create momentum and see your site climb the rankings.
2. Optimise product pages & descriptions
Next, it’s time to optimise your product pages and product descriptions. Product pages are truly the bread and butter of your ecommerce store so as a result, they must be optimised perfectly to boost your chances of success. When it comes to writing product descriptions, you must write descriptive copy that incorporates your target keywords and has an emotional connection to your site visitors. Use engaging, persuasive language that compels users to add products to their baskets, always ensure you use high-quality imagery and never fail to incorporate social proof and user-generated content (UGC) as all of these elements build trust in the eyes of Google. By naturally and concisely incorporating keywords into your product titles, descriptions, alt text and structured data, you can significantly boost your rankings and chances of being displayed to Google users, ChatGPT search users and within Google’s AI Overviews or rich snippets.
3. Improve site speed
Website speed is an aspect of technical SEO that is often overlooked by ecommerce managers, business owners and marketers. But that can significantly hurts web page rankings! Site speed is an essential aspect of SEO, particularly in light of Google’s Core Web Vital metrics and therefore, should never be overlooked. Ensure your Shopify store is built on a responsive, lightning-fast theme, always optimise and compress imagery to ensure that large files aren’t causing your site to perform sluggishly and remove any integrations or apps you’re not using to keep your site running fast. Prioritising site speed will not only help your site climb the ranks, it’ll also improve customer trust and lead to more conversions as a slow-loading site is one of the top reasons users will abandon a session.
4. Utilise Shopify’s built-in blog
Content marketing is one of the best ways to boost your organic site visibility as it provides an excellent opportunity to incorporate SEO keywords, internal linking and build customer relationships by offering value to users. Shopify has a built-in blog at your disposal so there really is no excuse not to utilise it! If you’re unsure where to start when it comes to blogging, we’d recommend beginning by writing posts that answer your target audience’s most frequently asked questions and once you’ve done a few of these posts, you will boost your confidence and be able to branch into how-to-guides and inspiration articles that will engage your audience.
5. Simplify URL structures
Your URL structures must be optimised if you want your Shopify store to rank highly in the search engines. Shopify has a nifty trick of automatically generating URLs based on product or page titled, but this doesn’t mean you can’t improve and optimise them for success. Ensure your URLs are clean, concise and succinct to ensure that both search engines and genuine users can easily understand them. Avoid unnecessary words, superfluous language (see what we did there) and repeating words or phrases to boost your SEO credentials and ensure your site looks professional.
6. Add Alt Text to every image
High-quality photography is vital for any ecommerce store but seeing as search engines can’t “see” your images without a description, including alt text for each and every visual image or graphic on your site is paramount. Alt text not only helps visually impaired users understand your content, but it also allows your images to appear in search results. Shopify makes it extremely easy to add alt text directly to each and every image whenever you list a new product so get into the habit of doing this then, and whenever you upload images to blog posts or other pages to ensure you keep on top of it.
7. Implement a robust internal linking strategy
Internal linking could be the secret weapon you’ve been searching for when it comes to boosting organic visibility and driving traffic to your site. A robust internal linking strategy enables search engine crawlers to seamlessly digest, understand and subsequently categorise and display your website content to relevant search queries. Be sure to create a robust internal strategy that links relevant pages in a logical and natural way, utilising descriptive anchor text that naturally incorporates keywords and lets users know exactly what they’re clicking on.
8. Submit your sitemap to Google Search Console
Shopify automatically generates a sitemap for your online store which includes a list of all pages, products and collections that you have on your site. It’s absolutely essential that you submit this sitemap to Google Search Console as it ensures your pages are being indexed correctly. If you make regular updates to your store, resubmitting your sitemap can help search engines keep up with those changes and puts your site in a good positions to rank and appear in relevant search queries.
Once you’ve implemented our top tips for boosting your Shopify store’s SEO credentials, we’re pretty sure you’ll start to reap the rewards of increased organic visibility, more traffic and ultimately, more sales for your business. If you need a helping hand launching your new Shopify or Shopify Plus website or would like to migrate to Shopify, don’t hesitate to get in touch!
