Top #10 Latest Shopify SEO Tactics For Your eCommerce Store

This guide will provide you with the latest Shopify SEO tactics. In today’s digital world, having an online store has become increasingly important for businesses to reach a wider audience and increase their sales. Shopify is one of the most popular e-commerce platforms that provide businesses with an easy and user-friendly way to create their online store.

However, having an online store is not enough. Businesses need to make sure their store is easily accessible and visible to potential customers through search engines. This is where Search Engine Optimization (SEO) comes into play. Unfortunately, when you are new to selling online, it can be difficult to do much about the basic SEO practices to rank on top pages.

Not to mention, it also takes quite some time and effort to build a reputation for your brand and get other websites to link back to yours. Fortunately, you can plan for long-term strategies in your content planning. For instance, you can try to focus on quality writing over quantity, but know that search engines use longer content to help understand your page better.

In addition, you should also try to make sure that every page has at least 250 words of descriptive text. And that informational pages and blog posts have at least 500 words. With that in mind, let’s learn more about some of the latest Shopify SEO tactics that you can integrate into your content plan. More so, that’s if you are an eCommerce webmaster or store owner.

The Latest Shopify SEO Tactics To Consider

Many people searching for something on the internet begin with search engines like Google or Bing. All are designed to use a variety of information from websites to create a ranked list of results for a particular search query. They determine which websites are most likely to be relevant to the search query, and then show the results in order of their relevance.

Notably, a SERP such as Google constantly crawls the internet in search of new data as a source for their search results. The robots.txt file tells search engine bots, known as crawlers, which pages to request to view from your online store. All Shopify stores have a default robots.txt.liqud file that’s optimal for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) purposes.

Moving on, as a rule of thumb, your sitemaps are often used by search engines to place your online store in the search engine results. In most cases, there are many factors that can make your online store appear higher in search results.

Such as the:

• Number of natural (not paid or social media) links pointing to your store from other websites
• Domain Authority (DA) Score of the website based on engagement and other factors
• Specific age of your domain name from the time of its registration/hosting
• Overall website structure and content that is optimized for search engines

In the short term, the easiest way to get more traffic to your online store is to optimize your content so that a search engine recognizes it as relevant to queries related to your products. This is what we mean by SEO. By all means, you can analyze your online store’s search engine optimization using apps in the Shopify App Store or even get more details from the video below.

The latest Shopify SEO tactics are a process that involves optimizing a website to rank higher in search engine results, making it more visible to potential customers. This is important because the higher a website ranks, the more likely it is to be visited by users. In the next section, we will discuss the latest Shopify SEO tactics and how they can benefit your store.

1. Keyword Research

Keyword research is the first and most important step in SEO. It involves finding out what keywords your target audience is using to search for products or services related to your business. This information will help you optimize your website for those keywords, making it easier for search engines to understand what your site is about and rank it accordingly.

Always remember, when you write content for a product or collection description, webpage, or blog post, use readable, unique phrases that include some of your keywords. Search engines compare a page’s content with its headers to make sure that the page is about what it claims to be about. When you write product descriptions, there’s something to note…

On that note, make sure that you don’t copy text that’s provided to you by a manufacturer because that description might already be used by other websites. For your information, there are several keyword research tools, including Google Keyword Planner and SEMrush that can help you find relevant keywords, search volume, competition, and other important metrics.

Once you have a list of keywords, it’s important to use them in the right places on your website. This includes using them in your page titles, meta descriptions, headings, and throughout the content on your pages. It’s best to choose keywords that are specific to your products and business, but that appear often in searches.

2. On-Page Optimization

Keywords appear in search queries that people enter into search engines. For example, a person might search for blue shoes in Canada. The keywords in this search would be blue shoes and Canada. To make your store appear higher in search results, you should try to find out which keywords your customers might use to find your products.

And then, add those keywords to your content. Keep in mind that the more traffic your keywords get, the more competition your store has in searches. This means, that your store might not be shown near the top of search results. For such and other reasons, that’s where a strategic On-Page SEO plan comes in handy to rescue you.

On-page optimization involves optimizing various elements of your website to make it more search-engine friendly. Be that as it may, there are a variety of elements that need to be optimized in this case scenario.

Consider the following:

• Page Titles: The title of each website page should include a primary keyword and accurately reflect the page content
• Meta Descriptions: It provides a brief summary of what the page is about including a primary keyword
• Headings: Use H1, H2, etc. to organize your content and make it easier for users and SERPs to understand
• URL Structure: Make sure your URLs are short, and descriptive, and include your primary keyword
• Content: High-quality, relevant, well-written content with a naturally placed primary keyword is essential for SEO

Of course, yes, the page title and meta description have set character limits. Meaning, that if you enter more text beyond the character limit, then your page title and description will be shortened in search engine results. To enumerate, a meta description is a brief bit of text that is shown in search engine results after the title tag.

It can be set for webpages, product pages, collection pages, and blog posts in Shopify. Make sure each page has a unique meta description that uses plain, direct language. Note that the process of crawling and indexing your website can take time — Google doesn’t guarantee how long it will take. Learn more from Google Search Console Help about what to expect.

3. UI And UX Experience

In reality, with the increasing number of users accessing the internet from their mobile devices, it’s essential that your website is optimized for mobile. Google has stated that mobile-friendliness is part of a considerable ranking factor. Therefore, having a responsive and mobile-optimized website can help improve your search engine rankings.

Shopify provides several mobile-friendly themes that can be easily customized to fit the needs of your business. You can also use tools like Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test to check the mobile-friendliness of your website. The key thing is to focus on both User Interface (UI) Design and User Experience (UX) Design in your website layout development plan.

Simply put, User Interface (UI) Design is the process designers use to build interfaces in software or computerized devices, focusing on looks or style. Designers aim to create interfaces that users find easy to use and pleasurable. So, we can clearly state that UI design often refers to graphical user interfaces and other forms — e.g., voice-controlled interfaces.

By the same token, User Experience (UX) Design is the process design teams use to create products that provide meaningful and relevant experiences to users. Must be remembered, that UX design usually involves the design of the entire process of acquiring and integrating the product. Perse, by including all aspects of branding, design, usability, and functionality.

4. Structure Optimization

Website speed is another important factor in SEO. A fast-loading website provides a better user experience, which can improve your search engine rankings. Additionally, a slow-loading website can lead to increased bounce rates and decreased conversions. You can optimize your site structure to make it easier for search engines to find all of your content.

In general, when you are selling with a Shopify online store, you don’t need to worry about your site structure. Obviously, this is because Shopify has a built-in toolkit feature for your overall website Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to make sure that search engines can easily find all of your content. There are also specific Shopify SEO best practices to note.

Consider the following:

• Content follows a logical hierarchy of categories
• Pages don’t use iframes
• URLs use standard characters and a simple, readable structure

Furthermore, you can do a few things yourself to make sure that your Shopify website structure is optimized for search engines. Including things like optimizing your online store navigation, using descriptive file names for your images, using descriptive link text for internal links, and the like. You can learn more about optimizing your online store navigation in detail.

In the same fashion, when you add a link to a page in your online store in a product or collection description, or in a webpage or blog post content, make sure that you use descriptive link text. For example, if you add a link in a blog post to a product called  Red Hat, then good link text might be: Check out this Red Hat and not Click Here to see the red hat.

5. Contextual Backlinking

Essentially, there are two types of backlinks when it comes to any given website link elements — that’s inbound links (internal), and outbound links (external) as well. On one hand, internal linking is a technique that involves linking to other pages within your website. This helps search engines understand the structure of your site and helps users navigate it more easily.

It also helps distribute the link equity to other pages, which can help improve their rankings. To implement internal linking, make sure to link to relevant pages within your content and use descriptive anchor text that accurately reflects the content of the linked page. So, we can simply say that backlinks are links from other websites that point to your website.

For this reason, when it comes to business blogging, they can help improve your search engine rankings. More so, by demonstrating to search engines that your website is valuable and relevant. To acquire backlinks, focus on creating high-quality content that other websites will want to link to. You can also reach out to other websites in your niche and ask for a link.

A few ways you can increase the number of links to your storefront:

• Look for opportunities to list your online store on other websites.
• Build relationships with other websites and blogs so that you can ask for a link back.
• Maintain updated and interesting content to create a website that naturally gets linked to.

In layman’s language, contextual backlinks (both internal and external) to your online store from other websites help search engines know that your website is popular and can be trusted. Moreover, there are services where you can buy paid links as well. However, paid links might result in a lower rank for your online store in search results.

6. Image Optimization

Realistically, images can greatly enhance the user experience on your website, but they can also slow it down if not optimized properly. In terms of Image SEO, it’s important to optimize your images for all search engines and users alike. For example, by compressing them, using descriptive file names, and including alt text that accurately describes the image.

Naturally, search engines can read the text in your content, but can’t read the images. You can use descriptive alternative (alt) text to help search engines find your content. Alt text is also an important accessibility feature for people who have visual impairments. When you’re writing alt text, use keywords from the page where the image is shown.

Additionally, try to use readable phrases that describe what appears in the image, not what you want someone to think about the image. In essence, you can set alt text for a product image, the collection featured image, or the blog post featured image. But, for Shopify SEO tactics, the process is a little bit different for a product image alt text than the other two.

Descriptive, readable file names for images are better for search engines because they reveal more about the image content. When you save an image by using a camera or editing software, the file name is often a string of numbers, letters, or dates that is difficult to read. To use descriptive image file names, you need to rename the files before you upload them to Shopify.

7. Social Media + Analytics

Chiefly, social media is a powerful tool that can drive traffic to your website and help build your brand. By creating a presence on popular social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, you can reach a wider audience and drive more traffic to your site. Make sure to share your content and products on social media and interact with your followers.

More so, in order to build a strong online community. In the same fashion, make sure that you can also easily and quickly track your overall website performance results. Remarkably, among other website performance tracking tools, Google Analytics and Search Console are two powerful tools that can help you track and improve your website’s performance.

On one hand, Google Analytics can help you understand the behavior of your website visitors and identify areas for improvement. Google Search Console, on the other hand, provides valuable insights into how your website is performing in search results, including the keywords that are driving traffic to your site and any technical issues that need to be addressed.

From our research, we know that most customers research online before they make any purchase decision. To make your Shopify store rank better and optimize it for boosting your sales, make sure you have all the data you need to help you implement a strategic plan. Remember, one keyword is insufficient to increase the visibility of your product in search engines.

8. Local SEO + Technical SEO

If your business has a physical location, Local SEO can help improve your visibility in local search results. This involves optimizing your website for keywords related to your business and location, as well as claiming your business on popular local listing directories such as Google My Business. It helps your business be more visible in local search results on Google.

Local SEO is a game of two halves because Google shows two types of search results for local searches. These are “map pack” results and organic “blue link” results. You can rank on both of them. Thus, any business that has a physical location or serves a geographic area can benefit — by its pages ranking high for certain searches performed by a local audience.

All in all, a good description in the local SEO context also encourages more people to click the link to your store. In the same fashion, Technical SEO is yet another great strategy that can complement your local SEO plan. By definition, it refers to website and server optimizations that help SERP spiders crawl and index a site more effectively (for organic rankings).

But, although technical SEO is the process of optimizing a website for search engines, it can also include other activities meant to improve user experience. Some of the other most common tasks associated with technical SEO include the following: Submitting a sitemap to SERPs, an SEO-friendly website structure, a responsive AMP-ready theme, and the like.

9. Regular Website Updates

Search engines love fresh, relevant content, so it’s important to regularly update your website with new products, blog posts, and other content. This helps keep your site relevant and engaging to both search engines and users. At all costs, by keeping your website updated, you can ensure that your website security will not be compromised.

Likewise, by updating your website content and design regularly, you can increase the traffic to your business website! But, updating your website is important for many other reasons. Not only does update a website increase website security and prevent hacking, but it can also help your internet marketing strategy and increase traffic to your website.

This is why we suggest that as an eCommerce business webmaster or even web-based store owner, you should try to update your website regularly to keep content flowing and fresh out of the box. Not forgetting, that updating a website can be done in many ways. Including your website platform and security, general content, design layout, user-friendliness, etc.

One of the top reasons websites get hacked is because of vulnerabilities that arise due to an out-of-date website framework or plugin. So, make sure that everything works just fine as expected by SERPs as well as website users.

10. Built-In SEO Features

Shopify offers several built-in SEO features that can help improve the visibility of your website in search results. These include customizing your website’s title and meta description, optimizing your images and product descriptions, and generating a sitemap that makes it easier for search engines to crawl your site as regularly as possible.

What’s more, Shopify provides several tools to optimize your website’s speed. Suffice it to say, including the ability to choose a fast-loading theme and use plugins to optimize images and other elements of your website. You can also use tools like GTmetrix and Pingdom to test the speed of your website and identify any areas that need improvement.

Markedly, there is also a built-in feature for finding and submitting your sitemap through Shopify. Whereby, all Shopify storefronts automatically generate a sitemap.xml file that contains links to all your products, primary product images, pages, collections, and blog posts. This file is used by search engines like Google and Bing to index your website.

So that, in the long run, your website store pages can quickly appear in search results. Whilst, keeping in mind, that submitting your sitemap files to Google Search Console helps Google find and index pages on your website. That said, you can visit this page from Shopify on Frequently Asked Questions About SEO to gather more additional information.

Other Best Practices For eCommerce Builders And Store Owners

In the first place, search engines like Google constantly crawl the internet in search of new data. When your site is being crawled, your store’s robots.txt file blocks page content that might otherwise reduce the effectiveness of your SEO strategy by stealing PageRank to be precise. What if you made changes or added a website page, and you want the URL recrawled?

Well, if you want Google to recrawl your URLs, then you have two options: You can either use the URL Inspection Tool or rather, submit a sitemap to Google. But you don’t need to worry since, by default, your store’s robots.txt file tells bots (usually search engine indexing bots, or “crawlers”) which pages or files they should or shouldn’t request to view from a website.

Get Started: StoreSEO – The Most Advanced App To Power Up SEO On Shopify

Still, you should try to add keywords to your content by using them in readable, natural phrases and sentences. Otherwise, your target customers and potential buyers won’t click links that use keywords in a random way. Still, most search engines might ignore websites that don’t use readable phrases. Secondly, consider your content title tag and meta description.

For one thing, these are two of the most important elements of SEO. They are shown in search engine results and provide information to people who are looking for things related to your products. A good title and description encourage customers to click the link in search results to visit your store. Make sure that you also optimize the title tag for search engines.

Consider the following ways:

• Use a unique, descriptive title
• Include your most important target keywords for each product, collection, webpage, or blog post near the title beginning
• Enter a title that is 70 characters or fewer, because most search engines will shorten longer titles
• Make sure that your title tag is readable

It’s also, important to realize, an H1 header is the main heading at the top of a page. When you create a product page, collection page, webpage, or blog post, Shopify uses the title that you enter to generate the H1 header for the page. The largest text size on a page is often the H1 header, and search engines use them to determine what the page content is about.

When you enter a page title, include your main keywords so the H1 header automatically includes them. You can’t change file names in Shopify. To use more descriptive file names for product images that you have already uploaded, you need to upload new images and replace the old images on each product page.

The Bottom Line:

Implementing effective Shopify SEO tactics can greatly benefit an e-commerce business. By optimizing website content, utilizing meta tags, and creating high-quality backlinks, businesses can increase their online visibility and attract more organic traffic to their site. Ultimately, this leads to a higher search engine ranking, and increased brand credibility.

As well as overall higher conversion rates and product sales. Shopify SEO is a crucial aspect of digital marketing and should be considered a long-term investment for any e-commerce business looking to succeed in the highly competitive online market. By investing in Shopify SEO Services, you can take your eCommerce business to the next level.

However, make sure you do some research and pay attention to their expertise, and previous work. But, if you’ll still need more support, you can always Contact Us at any time to get more help from our team of professional experts. You are also welcome to share your additional opinions, suggestions, recommendations, or even contributions in our comments section.