Shopify is a popular framework to develop e-commerce stores that are used by business owners around the world.
As an e-commerce development framework, it is necessary for Shopify websites to have a sound SEO strategy in place to boost sales for any e-commerce business. This is because search engine rankings play a very important part of getting higher traffic to your e-commerce store. This directly results in higher sales.
According to Australia based Shopify Marketing Agency expert, Joshua Uebergang, “If you weigh as much as a small car, your health has enormous room for improvement. If your Shopify has poor SEO, you have more space for growth. Should the audit show poor SEO health, you are more likely to grow from SEO than another store who passes 90% of the audit.”
Below, we are sharing some key pointers to consider while strategizing an SEO strategy for your Shopify website that is bound to deliver results in 2020.
1. SHOPIFY WEBSITE STRUCTURE OPTIMIZATION –
The organization of content on your web page is very important for SEO.
If your website and the products listed on it can be easily found by users, they will end up spending more time on the website and view a higher number of pages and products.
This will grow your search engine rankings. To make the site easier to navigate, keep your product categories, and subcategories minimal. The website should have a customer-centric UX.
2. IMPROVE USER EXPERIENCE
The best way to improve the UX of a website is to use a responsive design and boost the website performance.
- Responsive design means that your website will have a seamless performance across devices ranging from mobile devices to desktop screens. Responsive web design causes your website visitors to spend more time on the website, which increases the time-on-page metric for Google search.
- Website speed is mostly about accessibility, where you ensure that the website has faster page load times, and users can navigate between pages quickly. For increasing the speed of your Shopify store, do the following:
- Use a mobile friendly theme.
- Use optimized and scaled images.
- Remove any apps that are not in use.
3. TARGET THE RIGHT KEYWORDS
SEO is incomplete without researching the correct set of keywords. Keywords serve as the foundation for the success of SEO strategy.
To perform a good keyword search, one needs to put themselves into their customer’s shoes.
Use the Google keyword research tool to identify keywords that can get you the highest traffic, which will drive results. There is no need to use extravagant tools to do this research.
Since most of your searches are happening on Google, using Google’s own keyword research tool is the best thing to do. Some other places you can look for inspiration to find the keywords are:
- Product related social media hashtags
- Check the meta tags of your competitor websites.
- Look at forums to get an idea what the users are searching about
4. DEVELOP EXTERNAL LINKS TO GET MORE TRAFFIC
Search engines prioritize backlinks to determine how high your website is placed in the community.
It is an off-page SEO technique which helps in the establishment of your trustworthiness and credibility. There are different kinds of links that can be created:
- Mentions
Your website can already have a presence on other websites without having a live backlink. To search for such mentions, you can use mention.com. Send them an email to request a link to your website with the mention.
- Manufacturer/Supplier Links
If you are a seller for reputed companies, selling their products, you can always request them to provide a link to your Shopify store if you are an authorized seller.
- Industry/Influencer Videos
One can always leverage the power of industry leaders and influencers to conduct their interviews, which will generate both content and links to your eCommerce store.
5. OPTIMIZE THE PRODUCT PAGES OF YOUR SHOPIFY STORE
Optimization of your product pages with the relevant keywords is very important. Your home page is the first step in this journey.
Apart from the home page, you should focus on those pages which are accountable for a higher percentage of your website visitor traffic.
Your keywords should automatically fit into the content in a way that it is easily comprehensible and makes sense for the reader. For the web page optimization, focus on the following:
- Title tags for categories
- Title and Meta Description tags for product pages
- Alt tags for images
6. LEVERAGE CONTENT MARKETING TO RANK HIGHER
With each new update to the search engine algorithms, Google has put an ever increasing emphasis on the role of content in search engine rankings.
Most eCommerce store owners don’t pay much attention to content on the product descriptions on their website. If this attention is paid to detail, it can deliver success on an unprecedented scale.
Having great content also helps to deliver a seamless user experience to the website visitors. The content should be written in such a way that it provides real answers to the questions that your users might have.
Content’s primary role is to engage users and retain them on the site long enough so that they can make an informed decision.
7. SHOPIFY APPS AND TOOLS
Shopify has a vast library of apps that can be integrated into your e-commerce website. There are plugins that help with the SEO practices by helping you to optimize your website content and streamline the data for better search results. Some of the best SEO plugins and tools for a Shopify website are:
If you can ensure that the above points are thoroughly taken care of, your Shopify website will get higher search rankings. These factors will drive more visitors to your e-commerce store, which will directly result in higher product sales for your business.