November 09, 2022 8 min read

With more than $543 billion in sales during its 16 years of operations, Shopify is a worthy platform for any seller wanting to build and run an online store. Shopify has so much to offer sellers with numerous features that support online stores of all sizes with a wide range of industries. It is a piece of cake to create a Shopify store, however, running and driving new revenue on your new store is challenging. That is when Shopify SEO comes in handy. 

Shopify SEO helps funnel-in new potential customers who may buy products from you and enables sellers to gain more trust and confidence from online shoppers. 

Want to know how toimprove Shopify SEOand attract new customers to your store?Let's dive right into our article now!

shopify seo

Is Shopify helpful for your online store?

Shopify is a cloud-based, ‘all-in-one’ eCommerce platform that lets users build and run an online store. It creates a favorable environment for non-code experience seller to build their online store with full functionality as a coded one. 

Shopify also provides sellers with a handful of eCommerce features covering all aspects of running their online stores such as POS, payment gateways, email marketing tools, and shipping solutions,... you name it.  

Shopify merchants can not only sell on this platform but also sell their products on a variety of sale channels such as Facebook, Youtube, and Instagram,... 

It can not be denied that Shopify isan excellent solution for many eCommerce firms. However, it is still hard to thrive new revenue and attract potential customers on this platform. To gain more customers, sellers must put a lot of effort into improving their Shopify SEO.

Shopify SEO overview

Shopify SEO overview

People start to search for something they want on the internet by entering a certain keyword on Google, Bing, or other search tools. Search engines are designed to usea variety of information from websites to create a ranked list of results for a particular search query. 

Search engines will determine which website will appear on the result lists for customers to choose from. When sellers improve Shopify SEO, they try to make their product lists appear on results pages as much as possible.

To get a higher ranking on search engines, one Shopify store must meet some conditions, including:

  • the number of natural (not purchased or social media) links from other websites pointing to your store
  • the website's authority based on engagement and other variables
  • your domain name's age
  • Search engine-optimized website structure and content

Everything takes time to show its result, especially with SEO, if you first have nothing to do with your domain age or authority, optimizing your content, image, and video to attract customers. 

Shopify SEO checklist to increase traffic

Shopify SEO checklist to increase traffic

 

There’s no better tactic than SEO for driving leads to your Shopify store. Reading this checklist to improve your Shopify SEO.

Adding keywords to your Shopify Store

If you want your products to appear on the customer results page when they search a certain keyword, you need to add targeted keywords in the page title, meta description, ALT tags, and page body’s content, …

You should use online tools to get keyword ideas and keyword volume to add to your site. It’s best to choose keywords relevant to your products, which will ensure that when customers type into search engines like Google, your products will appear at the top of the search results.

Keyword optimization checklist:

    • Edit the title and meta description for the page: Title must include the target keywords and be attractive enough to encourage customers to click on the link. A Meta description is a brief description of your product shown below the title tag. A good meta description will make customers know more about your products and increase the click rate to your store
    • Set image ALT text: Search engines can read the text but can't read the image, image  ALT Text is added to help search engines easily find your content. Shopify merchants can add relevant keywords to alt text.
    • Add keywords to the H1 header for a page: H1 is the page title, whenever you create a product page, or blog, Shopify will depend on the page title to create an H1 header. This H1 header will determine what that page is about and show customers the result when they search for them.
    • Using keywords in page content: Mention readable, unique phrases that include some of your targeted keywords in the page content so that search engines can compare the page’s content with a header to make sure that the page is talking about the same thing. 

Increasing the number of links to your store

The links to your online stores from other websites are backlinks and they help search engines know that your site can be trusted. If you just build your brand and not many people know about it, buying paid links can help. However, paid links may results in a lower rank for the store. 

There is some way Shopify's sellers can do to increase backlinks:

  • Try to list your online store on other websites, this website should be relevant to the products you sell
  • Build a relationship with other websites and ask them for a link back
  • Create useful and unique content to attract natural backlinks to your website

Optimizing your images and videos

In a world of instant gratification, Shopify sellers need to keep the customer moving seamlessly with a fast-loading eCommerce store. Using optimized images and video is about reducing their file size of them as much as possible to make sure the page load time remains low. 

This does not mean sellers have to sacrifice image or video quality, many online tools help Sellers limit their file size of them while the quality is still the same.

Some tools sellers can use to optimize their image are:

  • Avada SEO: Image Optimizer
  • TinyIMG SEO, Speed & Image Optimizer
  • TinyPNG 
  • These tools can shrink image size but still retain their quality. Try to use these tools for your store.

    Optimization of store navigation

    Google considers a website’s navigation in its ranking score. A website that is easy to navigate hasbetter user engagement and, hence, lower bounce rates.

    It’s also easy for search engines to know what the page is about if its navigation is well-organized with a logical order. 

    Some reports said that visitors should not click more than three times to reach a particular page they want. A good structure should be like this:

    Home >> Product Category >> Product

    There are some things you should consider when navigating your store:

    • Menu items should be in an order that makes sense to your store and links to other pages
    • Menu titles should show their contents
    • The link text for a menu item should be descriptive and match the title of the page that it links to.
    • In your online store's navigation, each page should have a link.
    • Wherever possible, pages should be no more than three clicks away from the main page.

    Using descriptive text for the internal links

    An internal link is any link from one page on your website to another page on your website. According to Yoast’s expert, Google uses links to find material on websites and rank that content in search results. When a post or page receives many links, Google interprets it as an essential or high-value article.

    When you add an internal link to any page, you should use descriptive link text. For example, add a link to “car ornament” instead of the whole “click hereto buy car ornament”

    Create a content marketing strategy

    Develop a full-fledged content marketing strategy to increase the coverage of your targeted keyword. Executing this plan may take months but it works in the long term. So keep doing it to improve your SEO. 

    Some things you can implement in your content marketing strategy are:

    • Information pages and blog posts related to your products and services (minimum 500 words)
    • Write original product descriptions with useful information
    • Add customer reviews to your page, social proof for new customers to trust your brand more
    • Keep in touch with potential customers and current customers by using other social platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, or Tiktok,...

    Optimize your URLs

    Your URL should be short, include your keyword, and not contain special characters. Remember these URLs will be read not only buy your search engines but also by your customer, there is something you can do to improve your URLs.

    • Get rid of special characters, make your URLs readable
    • Use hyphens not underscores
    • Include target keywords.

    For example: Instead of using this URL:https://printway.io/products/12oz-wine-tumbler-us/index.php?24551=p44=? 

    Edit to this:https://printway.io/products/12oz-wine-tumbler-us

    Fix duplicate content

    Search engines only rank your SEO score based on unique content, duplicate content will make search engines confused and not know what content you want to push so it may lower your SEO score. 

    Product pages and collections pages are the two most common duplicate content that usually appears in a store. 

    If you have duplicate content and can not delete it, use canonical content URL to let search engines know what URL you want to rank. Usea rel=” canonical”link to the head of any page with duplicate content



    Check if your store is mobile friendly 

     79% of smartphone users have made a purchase online using their mobile device in the last 6 months of 2022. This figure is important data to let eCommerce merchants know the crucial of a mobile-friendly store. 

    If your store loads slowly on a mobile phone, Google will see it and is less likely to recommend your site to customers. On the customer side, 70% of them say page speed impacts their purchasing decisions. 

    If you want to increase Shopify SEO, you have to optimize your site speed. Check your current speed by using:

  • https://search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly
  • https://pagespeed.web.dev/

  • If your site is not friendly enough for mobile phones, optimize it based on the suggestions of these sites mentioned above.

    Final Words

    If you are on a mission to improve Shopify SEO to the next level, consider those checklists above. Shopify already has a full function to create an all-in-one eCommerce store, with SEO Optimization, Shopify merchants can leverage your store to gain better traffic and sale.

    Finally, Printway - aPrint-on-demand supplier based in Viet Nam will help you with a bridge to easily find products and sell on Shopify or another selling platform. If are interested in print-on-demand don’t hesitate to reach out!

    You can also take part in our dynamic discussion byjoining our active eCommerce, Print-on-demand community!



    About Printway

    Printway is proudly offering POD fulfillment services globally with more than 500+ products & more than 1000+ SKUs. With our key strength & advantage in manufacturing experience, Printway is operating our in-house factory in Vietnam which is focusing on Home Decor & Kitchen products, especially on some key materials such as wood, metal, acrylic, ceramic…  


    Aiming to build more line up to the Home Living products range, Printway also has fulfillment networks & printing services in the US, EU, Canada, Australia, UK & China. Ecommerce sellers now can easily choose within our 500+ products (t-shirt, hoodie, sweatshirt, phones, shoes, ornaments, tumblers, mugs, metal signs...) to build their online stores and get their Print on Demand orders fulfilled by Printway via our Custom API, Shopify App, Order Desk… 

    Our current offering services as of now:

    - Print on Demand Fulfillment

    - Product on Demand 

    - Custom branding & Private label 

    - FBA, FBM, OEM, ODM

    Hạnh Hoàng
    Hạnh Hoàng


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