Shopify SEO Checklist You Need To Rank Your Site (Faster)

Are you thinking about scaling and spreading your Shopify business at a low cost? Higher search engine rankings will help you grab the lowest hanging fruits.

But, is it a reality? Shopify websites receive 93% of the organic traffic. 

When websites land amongst the top positions in SERPs, people prefer to click only on those links. Users don’t bother what’s there on the second Google page. So, with search engine optimization, you can capture maximum online sales.

Let’s find out SEO how your Shopify site achieves speedy higher ranks.

What is Shopify SEO?

Shopify SEO makes necessary adjustments on your website to help search engines easily find your products or services. SEO tactics are a series of steps that focus on fulfilling your and your customer needs

Search engine optimization is a measurable, consistent, and ongoing process to improve your eCommerce website’s worth. 

Higher the relevancy of your website, search engines will rank it higher. With this, you can earn more keyword rankings and organic traffic. 

Common SEO Challenges with Shopify eCommerce Websites

Shopify doesn’t come with optimization techniques on a platter. It has a wide array of challenges such as:

• Duplicate content: One of the most common challenges in Shopify SEO is duplicate content. Whenever you assign tags to your web page, it assigns different pages for the tags. 
• Improper schema utilization: With products schema, Google collects rich information relevant for users. By not utilizing schema, retailers can lose tons of customers.
• Forced URL structure: Properly framed URL structure invites more clicks from the search results. Sometimes, Shopify picks URL structure by itself as per preassigned format. 
• Thin content: Google prefers long-form content for deciding rankings. But by default, Shopify comes with thin content options. 
• Bad site architecture: Site architecture is the first thing for users to navigate the site smoothly. Shopify’s in-built architecture is poor, making it difficult for visitors to explore what’s best for them.

To make sure your eCommerce site doesn’t face these obstacles, implement the following SEO checklist Shopify. It helps you enhance the shopping experience and attract more visitors.

7 High-priority tasks on your Shopify SEO checklist

Shopify SEO is not a momentary process that you implemented for a few days, and it will be sufficient. It is inevitable to put in continuous efforts for customers to find your product listings whenever they look for them. 

A must-do checklist to follow every time for optimizing your Shopify site:

#1 Make sure to set up the SEO framework.

The first thing to do in the Shopify eCommerce SEO checklist is to set up the essential tools. It will assist you to optimize your Shopify store. These are the basic but highly effective tools:

Google Analytics

Google Analytics shows you a clear customer picture on your Shopify site. By installing Google Analytics, you can see the user check-out points and the best-performing pages. 

It is a web analytics tool that tracks and evaluates several factors like:

• Audience Targeting and knowing their behavior
• Total number of conversions and its resources
• Marketing campaigns evaluation

Google Search Console

Another one of the great Shopify free tools is Google Search Console. With this tool, you can track the status of your website visibility in the Google search results.

The best part is, it provides valuable data on website health, traffic, and performance. Use it for the purposes like:

• Does your website have any crawling errors?
• Is your sitemap updated?
• Have you submitted an optimized Robots .txt file?

Bing webmaster tools

Bing is the second largest search engine after Google. Setting up bing webmaster tools on your Shopify site can generate another source of traffic and sales. 

#2 Audit your Shopify store.

You might have many efforts to boost your website traffic and its marketing. But, how do you know whether these efforts are bearing required results? 

Auditing is the best way to access the SEO strengths and loopholes of your eCommerce store. 

It helps you build upon your successes and improve the challenging areas. An audit gets you out of any conversion bottlenecks or stagnant products pages.

The audit alerts you regarding small problems to save tons of time and money later. 

Recognizing and fixing something that is not working properly, enhance customer experience and build long-term trust in the brand 

So, it is necessary to:

• Eliminate unnecessary web pages to streamline website indexing.
• Improve website ranking potential by filtering high-quality backlinks.
• Assess website overall usability for users. Uplift customer convenience to navigate your Shopify store: adding items to the cart, order, and pay.

#3 Perform keyword research for Shopify SEO.

Keyword research is the fundamental SEO practice to know what users are searching for. 

If you use keywords that nobody wants, there are dismal chances to improve your website ranking. On the other hand, placing keywords in the spotlight places helps search engines pick your web pages:

• Alt text
• Title tag
• Headings 

Understanding keyword research for Shopify site

Keyword research is the deciding element in the eCommerce SEO checklist Shopify. It helps you plan content strategy and enhance customer engagement on the pages. 

Keyword research tools like Ahrefs, Semrush are highly effective in keyword strategy. The key factors for keyword research are:

Relevance
Google uses its algorithm to map relevant content with the user queries. For this, search intent matters a lot. 

The difference of one or two words completely changes the sense of a product query. For example: ‘Cake recipe’ means a user wants to know the recipe for preparing the cake.

For ‘Best cake around’, users are looking for the best cake bakeries around them.

Basically, search intent is of four types:

• Informational
• Navigational
• Commercial
• Transactional

Search Volume
Search volume is how many users are looking for a specific keyword. High the search volume is high, the more popular it is.

How is it beneficial? You can determine:

• Optimize which product pages
• Targeting right keywords

For instance, ‘blue jeans’ is a keyword that has a high search volume. You can opt to market the blue jeans keyword more.

Also, long-tail keywords have lower competition and high chances of conversions. People get more specific with their demands with long-tail queries like blue Nike women jeans. 

#4 Create high-quality content and optimize it.

High-quality content is the linchpin for any SEO checklist Shopify. Content has the power to make or break your eCommerce brand. It tells search engines what exactly to rank. On-page SEO services strengthen content quality by optimizing parameters:

Improve customer engagement

Google uses customer engagement metrics to determine content relevance. For this, optimize product pages with:

• Write detailed product descriptions as per user requirements.
• Links to related pages to ease product discovery.
• Use presentable images and videos.

Optimize meta descriptions

The meta description is the one thing that highlights your web page from search results itself. Keep meta descriptions compelling and actionable. 

Make proper URL structure.

A URL structure with lame characters is not suitable for Shopify SEO. URL must be concise to describe what a page is about. 

Include keywords in title tags

Search engines access the page purpose with the keywords in the title. Use primary keywords and make the title catchy to get more clicks.

Go for synonyms and LSI keywords.

Synonyms explain the same keywords from different angles that improve customer perception of the products. Headings and subheadings are the best places for them.

LSI products enhance the bandwidth of web pages across the industry. These are words or phrases semantically related to the main keywords. For bags, it is school bags, purses, sling bags, trolley bags, etc.

#5 Boost your rankings with strategic links.

As far now, we have covered auditing, keyword research, and content optimization. Next, in the pipeline of the Shopify SEO checklist is strategic link building.

Nothing in this world in isolation so is true with your Shopify store. To do this, perform:

Internal linking

If your product pages remain orphaned, search engines can’t find them and its rankings will touch the floor. So, it becomes vital to put the pages in the proper site structure. 

For this, set the hierarchical order with internal linkings. Linking to highly converting and relevant pages optimize your site. It will amplify your sales and highlight related pages.

External linking

You may think that external links will take users away from your site. But the other side of the coin is external links help users address their curiosity and find more information about the products not present on your website. 

If your page is valuable, users come to your website again. So, assign apt external links to your pages.

Effective link building

Links and citations from high-authority tell the search engines that your pages are worthwhile. It is an essential ranking factor. With strategic outreaching and digital public relationships, link building becomes a lot easier. 

#6 Fix technical issues with your eCommerce website.

Without fixing technical issues, the Shopify eCommerce SEO checklist will always remain incomplete. Technical issues remain hidden but eat your website inside out.

Look out for:

Fix broken links for SEO on Shopify

Broken links send users to blank pages affecting customer experience badly. Detect broken links with dead link checker tools.

After this, the better solution is assigning:

• Redirects
• 404-error

It is necessary to submit your page to Google for permanently deleted pages.

Implement mobile-friendliness

Mobile-friendliness is the most essential to cater to the mobile audience. People prefer online shopping with mobile internet users growing more than 90% worldwide. The responsive theme fits your Shopify site on all screens like:

• Smartphones
• PCs
• Tablets

Improve page speed for Shopify SEO

The slow website pushes back Shopify SEO considerably with 5G and fast-loading sites. Nobody likes to wait and the bounce rate increases affecting site rankings. For this:

• Optimize visuals
• Minify codings

#7 Shopify apps and tools work wonders for SEO.

Shopify apps and tools save your precious time and efforts to optimize your Shopify site. 

But there are tons of them available in the market. It is imperative to choose the right ones that suit your eCommerce requirements. 

SEO apps like SEO Metriks boost your overall optimization results. It works for link optimization, checking social engagement, and rank tracking. You can choose plug-in tools, but some may affect store loading efficiency.

Key takeaways

Shopify SEO skyrockets your site rankings to the next level. For this, the base must be robust enough by setting key tools like Google Analytics. There are several shortcomings and success areas of your e-commerce that need handling side-by-side. 

Shopify SEO services take care of these on-site and technical issues modifying the built-in Shopify structure. 

Further, optimize and promote your content across marketing channels. Email marketing and social media boost your SEO efforts. Our SEO experts help you make necessary tweaks to make your eCommerce store shine and take it to the top.