Setting up a Shopify store isn’t as difficult as making it visible to the audience. You are done setting up the store, but no one is visiting it, which means no sales. It’s a problem that most Shopify owners have to face.
There are millions of businesses on Shopify, which makes it difficult for the merchants as the competition is high and so many similar stores are selling similar items. Hence it is essential for the retailers to understand Shopify SEO and how to optimize store and tips and tricks for better shop performance and search results.
Your store’s ranking matters a lot and helps in expanding your business. If your ranking is higher, there are more chances of viewers to land on your store and make a purchase; hence you must follow the SEO tips to improve your search results.
Following are a few tips to help customers find your Shopify store:
Improve the User Experience.
User experience matters a lot for your store’s progress which is why you must focus on aspects that play an important role in a smooth user’s experience. Whether you have a store for Carpet Cleaning in Eastbourne or for Homemade Jam in Virginia, Improving user experience is essential to retain and convert customers.
Let’s have a look at how you can improve user’s experience on your Shopify’s store:
Load Speed:
It causes a lot of frustration for the user if it takes a lot of time for your store to load. The quicker your site loads, the better it is for the users. Your site must be easy to navigate so that the user can enjoy a seamless experience and hop onto pages without having to wait for them to load.
You can try the following practices for better results:
- Use mobile-responsive theme
- Images must be optimized
- Discard unwanted apps
- Don’t overuse sliders
As per research from Google, 40 percent of users will leave a page which is taking longer than three seconds to load. While 79% of the users remain dissatisfied with their experience on a website with slow load speed.
Responsive Design:
The design template that you use for your Shopify store must be responsive, which means that it should look good on a PC as well as your phone. Too often, when a store is being used on the phone, it looks weird, and the text isn’t aligned. Make sure that your store works well on both laptops as well as a phone screen for a better user experience.
Optimise Shopify Stores for SEO.
Optimisation of your Shopify store is essential for it to appear on top results as well as to attract more traffic. You must follow the rules and tips to optimise your store. Let’s have a look at a few essential tips:
Site Structure
Your site’s structure is essential to your store’s success. The way you have organized the content on your website is important and shouldn’t be cluttered. Make sure that your website is to the point and neatly organized. Do not add pointless pages and make it short and simple. The user must be able to easily navigate through the content on your website.
While organising, keep in mind the customer’s perspective to make it simple. Examples of a simple site structure are
- Homepage » Category Pages » Product Pages
- Homepage » Category Pages » Sub-Category Page » Product Pages
Right Keywords
The keyword integration is also essential for your Shopify store to perform better. Although the role of keywords keeps changing, however, they are still essential as they help search engines to recognise what the user is looking for.
Some of the ways to look for keywords is through:
- Creating buyer’s personas
- Look into competitor’s meta-descriptions and similar sources
- Use keyword tools such as Ahrefs and SEMRush
- Social media pages related to products
Optimise URLs, titles, and Meta descriptions.
After you are done with the right keyword selection, now is the time to optimise the content on your website. You should optimise the pages that would be mostly viewed by the customers, for example, the product pages. There is an option of “Search engine listing preview.” Click “Edit website SEO.” You can now edit the page title, description and URL of your website’s pages.
- You must write unique title tags and descriptions for each page
- Avoid overuse of keywords
- Organically place keywords in URLs or descriptions
- Page description should be 320 characters or fewer
- If your product is available on other platforms as well, don’t copy-paste the same description
Install Shopify SEO apps.
There are several apps in Shopify to assist the users and improve their experience. You must search for Shopify’s SEO apps which can help you improve your store’s ranking and help you optimize the content. These will also help you acquire backlinks. Some of Shopify’s SEO apps are:
- Smart SEO: This app helps you generate alt tags and meta tags so it can save your time.
- Plugin SEO: This app helps identify SEO related issues and also integrates Google Search Console.
Add Alt Text to Images.
Alternative text, also known as alt text, is essential in the SEO of your Shopify store. It is the text which explains an image, and stock photos improving the search engine results. If you add alt text to your images, it will rank on search engines hence improving your reach.
Be as precise as possible when describing your images. For example, write ‘a picture showing three puppies playing on the ground’ instead of just 3 puppies.
Content Marketing.
Content has a lot of power, and just putting unique descriptions isn’t enough. You must focus on content marketing and work towards it to notice a visible difference in the reach of your store.
Content helps people understand your products and their usage.
You can work towards creating a content strategy that can include dedicated blogs, guest blog posts, email marketing, newsletters, etc., to enhance the reach of your store and products. The better you put your content, the higher your chances to increase the reach of your store.
Build Links to Your Store.
Backlinks play an important role in the reach of your store. The off-page optimization strategy helps in promoting your store. You get to ask for links from some essential parties involved in your store or reach out to:
- Supplier/Manufacturer Links
- Influencers/ bloggers
- Mentions
- Broken Links
