Shopify is one of the most loved ecommerce platforms globally, and that number continues to grow. Because it makes the website easy to manage, but there are still some SEO issues that are not appropriately optimized on Shopify. If you want your Shopify store to come on the first Google position, follow the Shopify SEO tips suggested below in this article.
Why choose Shopify for your eCommerce store:
- Lot’s of tools for design
- Easy to Manage
- Easy backend administration
- No required coding skills
- Fantastic Search Engine with ecommerce platform
- Fully secure payment gateway
Shopify SEO Tips for E-commerce Platform
So you have created a website on Shopify, but you are not getting traffic and sales?
Let’s take a glimpse at the 7 tips that can help you drive traffic and more sales.
- Create a unique page title and write a catchy description.
- Connect Google Analytics & Google Search console.
- Improve Technical SEO of Shopify.
- Find Duplicate Content and Remove them from your Shopify store.
- Optimize your store images.
- Add a sitemap to Google Search Console.
- Use Canonical tag and Domain Canonicalization.
1. Create a Unique page title and write a catchy description for your page.
The page title and meta description are the vital search engine ranking factors; it tells Google and users what the page is about.
You should include keywords related to the page content in the page title and meta description. Google focuses more on the first 3 to 4 words of the title, so you should use your keyword at the beginning of the title. And include at least 2-3 keywords in your meta description.
The character limit for the page title is 60; you do not have to make the title bigger than 60 characters; otherwise, it will not be fully visible on the search engine. And Google has set a limit of 160 characters for meta description.
How to edit meta title & description in Shopify –
Go to Head to Online Store > Preferences.
Pro Tip – As far as possible, avoid including these words in the title and meta description like – “a”, “an”, “the”, “and”, “or”, “but”, “if” and “thus”.
2. How to Add Google Analytics & Google Search console
Add your website with Google Analytics & Google Search console for seeing website performance.
Google Analytics
If you are working hard on your website all day, how will you determine whether you have done it correctly or not?
For this use, Google Analytics Tool is a free tool provided by Google which is very good to track website success.
This tool allows you to analyze the website, where you can see from where and how many people are coming to your website and how the behavior of the people who are coming, how long they are on your website Stopped, which pages they visited, etc.
Add Google Analytics code in Shopify.
Open Shopify Admin > Online Store > Preferences.
Pro Tip – Always Add google analytics universal code.
Google Search console
Google Search Console is a great tool to see website traffic, performance, add a sitemap, find keywords, etc., that Google provides for free.
Add Google search console code in Shopify
Open Shopify Store > Online Store > Themes > Edit Code > theme.liquid
Copy the code after <head> and before <body>.
Save
3. Improve Technical SEO of Shopify
Technical SEO is always essential for every type of website. It is mandatory for the Shopify store.
- A web admin should keep some guidelines in mind while optimizing the website for search engines which are as follows.
- Make sure that your website has a robot.txt file attached to it so that the bot can crawl the website.
- Add sitemap.xml file to the website and submit the sitemap to Google Search Search Console so that the search engine can index your page, product, and blog.
- Create an account for your website on Google Search Console, Google Analytics, and Google Tag Manager and confirm your ownership.
- Check HTML and CSS file for validation.
- Find crawl and redirect issues and fix them.
- Make sure your website is mobile-friendly.
- Improve page loading time for a better user experience.
- Analysis of your website loading speed on GT Metrix, google insight speed tool.
4. Find Duplicate Content and Remove them from your Shopify store.
Google Definition about duplicate content
This duplicate content may be on your website or any other website. Having duplicates on your website means that you have two or more identical pages on your website.
Duplicate content can lower your page’s ranking because whenever Google, Bing, or Yahoo bots recognize this content, they will penalize it.
However, the good news is that search engines are pretty tolerant of internal duplication, as they are aware that many times such duplicate pages are created.
Now you have to remove duplicate content from all your product pages, home pages, category pages, blogs, and whatever else.
To identify duplicate content, you can take the help of tools like CopyScape, Grammarly, Duplichker, Quetext, etc.
5. Optimize your store images.
Research has shown that images play an essential role in getting the website’s ranking. More than 50% of people search for products on search engines through product images. You can take the help of Social media Design experts to make a meaningful & unique image.
You need to optimize images properly to improve their presence in search engines. Image Alt tag and title name should be given in the photos. So that the search engine bot can identify what the images are about and which pages, products, and blogs they point to.
For example, if a person is searching for black shoes on a search engine and you have given an image alt tag with the name of black shoes in the product image, then there is a better possibility that your product image will be shown to that user.
How to add Alt Text in Images
1. open Shopify Store
2. Click products
3. Click on the product name you want to edit
4. Hover over the image and click on the three dots
5. Select Edit Alt Text
6. Edit or Add Alt Text in the image box
7. Click Done Save to next.
6. Add a sitemap to Google Search Console.
A sitemap is a file that tells search engines which page to index and crawl regularly. Shopify Store itself creates a sitemap file that includes all the pages and products of the website; you just need to submit this sitemap to Google Search Console.
How to Submit Sitemap.xml file in Google Search Console
Sign in to google search console
>Click on your shopify website url
>Go down on the left side and click on sitemap
>Paste your sitemap url in the blank section
>Click Submit button
7. Use Canonical tag and Domain Canonicalization.
Canonical means having two or more identical pages available on the same domain.
If there are two or more identical pages on a website, search engines can get confused about which page should be ranked.
Sometimes they get the page ranked, which you do not want to be ranked.
That’s why you have to add canonical links to your pages which are duplicate or similar pages of your main page.
In all similar pages, add your main page as a canonical tag so that the search engines can know which page you want to rank, and it also becomes easier for the search engines to find that page.
I hope you enjoyed these Shopify SEO guide tips.
Let me know in the comment section.
