Shopify SEO Guide: How To Improve SEO on Shopify?

Simply put, Shopify SEO is the process of optimizing your online store to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs), thereby driving more traffic to your Shopify store. It’s not super different from other search engine optimization, and it is not hard at all.

For example, if you want to increase the visibility of one of the products, you should do keyword research and use that keyword in your product description, image alt text, product title, etc.

As you can see, you’ll find similar rules as you do on WordPress.

If you’re new to Shopify and don’t know what to do, Shopify SEO can yield terrific results with a basic understanding and careful strategy.

Let’s look at strategies to improve your Shopify store ranking on Google.

Your page title and meta description are two of the most important elements of Shopify SEO. The page title is the main headline that appears in SERPs, while the meta description is the short description below the page title.

Both your page title and meta description should be unique, relevant, and keyword-rich.

For example, for a shoe store on Shopify, a good page title for one of the product pages might be “Women’s Running Shoes – Best Seller.” This tells potential customers what they can expect to find on the page, and it includes a relevant keyword (“running shoes”).

Your meta description should elaborate on what the customer will find on the page. A good meta description for the same page might be “Looking for the best women’s running shoes? Shop our huge selection of top-rated shoes from leading brands.”

This meta description tells potential customers what they can expect to find on the page and again includes a relevant keyword (“running shoes”).

Both your page title and meta description should be unique, relevant, and keyword-rich.

One of the most important Shopify SEO features is automatic sitemaps containing a list of all the pages on your website. They help Google (and other search engines) index your website more quickly and easily. Shopify automatically generates sitemaps for your store and submits them to Google for you.

Another important Shopify SEO feature is the ability to edit your store’s robots.txt file. The robots.txt file tells Google (and other search engines) which pages on your website should index and which they should ignore. You can use Shopify’s robots.txt editor to make sure that Google is indexing the pages you want them to.

To access Shopify’s built-in SEO features, go to the “Online Store” section of your Shopify admin, and click on “Preferences”. From there, you’ll be able to edit your sitemaps and robots.txt file.

A canonical tag is an HTML element that tells Google which version of a page to index. Canonical tags are used to solve several common SEO problems, such as duplicate and cross-domain content.

Domain canonicalization is the process of pointing all of the versions of your website’s domain name to the same URL. For example, if your website can be accessed at both www.example.com and example.com, you would want to canonicalize both domains to the www version to prevent duplicate content issues.

To add a canonical tag to your Shopify store, go to the “Online Store” section of your Shopify admin and click on “Preferences”. From there, scroll down to the “Canonical URL” field and enter the URL you want Google to index.

To canonicalize your domain name, you will need to add a few lines of code to your Shopify store’s htaccess file. For more information on how to do this, be sure to check out Shopify’s documentation on the topic.

The number and quality of backlinks to your website have an enormous influence on the search ranking of your Shopify website.

For this reason, getting as many high-level backlinks is essential to succeed with SEO.

Backlinks are links from other websites to your website. Google uses backlinks as a ranking factor, so the more high-quality backlinks you have, the higher your Shopify store will rank in search results. However, remember that not all backlinks are the same.

For example, links from social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter won’t impact your ranking. And links from low-quality websites will do even worse. They harm your SEO.

So, keep in mind that the backlinks you get from websites matter a lot. Use a domain checker tool to determine how valuable a backlink is.

Here are some creative ways to generate backlinks to your store:

Google Analytics is a powerful tool that can help you track the performance of your Shopify store. Integrating Google Analytics with Shopify allows you to collect data on your store’s traffic, conversion rate, and more.

To integrate Google Analytics with Shopify, open your Shopify store and go to Admin > Online Store > Preferences. Paste your tracking ID code snippet into the Google Analytics Account field.

Shopify will then automatically send data to your Google Analytics account.

Once you’ve integrated Shopify with Google Analytics, you can start tracking your store’s performance. This data can be used to help you improve your Shopify store and optimize your SEO strategy.

Blogging is a great way to generate traffic to your Shopify store. Not only does it give you an opportunity to rank for long-tail keywords, but it also allows you to build relationships with your customers and create brand loyalty.

Blogging increases the chance of customers finding you. After all, the more pages you have, the more chance you have of appearing in searches.

When creating blog content, make sure you are writing for your target audience. Write about topics that are relevant to your niche and that will interest your customers. Also, be sure to optimize your blog posts for SEO. It means incorporating your target keywords into the title, meta description, and body of your post.