How to get the most out of Shopify’s native SEO functionality

This blog post has been written in collaboration with Noughts and Ones, an award-winning and certified B Corp™ ecommerce agency that craft Shopify stores for planet-conscious brands.

Shopify automatically generates URLs for your products, collections, and pages. However, you can improve these URLs to make them more SEO-friendly. Search engines favour clean, descriptive URLs that accurately represent the content of the page.

Best practices for URLs:

• Keep them short and descriptive. 
• Include relevant keywords. 
• Avoid unnecessary characters like numbers or symbols. 

For example, a URL like www.yourstore.com/collections/summer-dresses is more SEO-friendly than www.yourstore.com/collections/collection123

The title tag and meta description are some of the most important elements for SEO. Shopify allows you to easily edit these for each page, product, and collection.

• Title tags: These appear as the clickable headline in search engine results, so they need to be concise and relevant. Ideally, include your target keyword towards the beginning of the title. 
• Meta descriptions: While these don’t directly impact rankings, they do affect click-through rates (CTR). Write compelling meta descriptions that encourage users to click, and ensure they include your primary keyword. 

To improve your title tags and meta descriptions for SEO

1. Go to Online Store > Preferences.
2. Scroll to the Title and Meta Description section.
   
3. Edit your Homepage Title, Homepage Meta Description, and Default Product Title/Description templates.

Product pages are the backbone of your ecommerce SEO strategy. Shopify makes it easy to optimise each page with essential SEO elements.

• Product titles: Make sure they’re clear, descriptive, and keyword-rich. For example, instead of “Blue Shirt,” try “Men’s Blue Cotton Shirt – Casual Wear.”
• Product descriptions: Write detailed, unique product descriptions that incorporate relevant keywords without keyword stuffing. Provide clear benefits, features, and specifications.
  
• Image alt text: Shopify automatically generates alt text from image filenames, but it’s always best to manually update them with descriptive keywords to help search engines understand the image content.

Website speed is a key ranking factor for SEO. Shopify’s native functionality allows you to easily improve your site speed by:

• Using compressed images. 
• Avoiding unnecessary apps or scripts that slow down your store. 
• Leveraging Shopify’s built-in content delivery network (CDN) to ensure faster loading times. 

Additionally, Shopify’s mobile responsiveness ensures that your site loads quickly on all devices, which also contributes to SEO.

Structured data, or rich snippets, enhance your store’s visibility in search engine results by providing additional information like product prices, reviews, and availability. Shopify’s native SEO features automatically generate structured data for your product pages.

However, you can also manually edit and enhance the structured data for more detailed results, ensuring that your products stand out in search engine results with eye-catching elements like star ratings and price details.

Internal links help search engines crawl your site and index pages more effectively. Shopify allows you to easily create internal links between your products, collections, and pages.

• Link related products on your product pages. 
• Include relevant links in your blog posts. 
• Use descriptive anchor text that includes your target keywords. 

This not only helps search engines understand the structure of your store but also keeps visitors engaged by guiding them to related content.

An XML sitemap is essentially a map of your site that helps search engines find all your pages. Shopify automatically generates an XML sitemap for your store, and it’s updated automatically whenever you add new pages or products.

You can find your sitemap at www.yourstore.com/sitemap.xml. Once you’ve confirmed it’s working, submit it to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools to ensure your store is indexed correctly.

Shopify’s built-in blog functionality can be an excellent tool for driving organic traffic. Regularly posting high-quality, relevant blog content can help increase your site’s authority and provide valuable long-tail keywords that attract specific audiences.

• Create blog posts that align with your target keywords. 
• Include internal links to your product pages. 
• Optimise your blog posts with engaging titles, meta descriptions, and tags. 

By integrating a strong content marketing strategy with your SEO efforts, you can enhance your site’s ranking and visibility.

Shopify provides valuable insights into your store’s performance through its analytics dashboard. By keeping an eye on metrics like traffic, bounce rates, and search queries, you can see how well your SEO efforts are paying off and where improvements may be needed.

For even more detailed insights, link your store with Google Analytics and Google Search Console for more advanced tracking and reporting.

SEO isn’t a one-time task. To keep your store ranking well, regularly update and refresh your content. This could mean updating product descriptions, adding fresh blog posts, or improving old content with new keywords and information. Keeping your content up-to-date helps ensure that your store remains relevant and visible to both search engines and customers.

Shopify’s built-in SEO tools give you everything you need to improve your store’s visibility in search engines. By focusing on the basics, like enhancing your URLs, meta descriptions, and product pages, you can significantly improve your chances of ranking higher in search engine results. Add in regular content updates, internal linking, and performance monitoring, and you’ll be well on your way to driving more traffic to your Shopify store.

Remember, SEO is a long-term game. Consistently implementing these tips will pay off over time, so get started today and see the difference it makes for your store’s visibility and sales! Get in touch with the team at Noughts & Ones or Varn to explore more about the ways you can utilise Shopify’s native SEO functionality.