Optimizing Your Shopify Store for SEO: Best Practices

Did you know that global e-commerce sales reached $5.8 trillion in 2023? And this figure is expected to hit the $8 trillion mark by 2027. This shows that along with the opportunity for online retail businesses, the level of competition is also growing.

Don’t worry; as a Shopify store owner, you can follow SEO optimization for Shopify to carve out a strong online presence. By optimizing your store, you can improve rankings, attract more traffic, and bring in more paying customers.

In today's digital landscape, where almost 60.67% of traffic comes from mobile devices, ensuring your Shopify store is optimized is not just beneficial—it's essential. Why? Because a well-optimized store enhances visibility and also improves user experience.

Studies even show that 75% of users never scroll past the first page of search results, highlighting the need for effective SEO strategies. If you don’t want people to overlook your Shopify store, follow the best practices mentioned in this post.

We will discuss:

Let’s get started!

What is Shopify SEO?

Shopify SEO is a simple process of improving the Shopify store’s organic search visibility to attract more customers for your business. Certain times, Shopify SEO includes tweaking the website so it ranks up in the search results.

Optimizing the Shopify store for SEO includes optimizing product descriptions, enhancing the site’s loading speed, ensuring that the store works well on mobile devices, building quality backlinks, and improving the site’s layout.

Why is Shopify a Good Option for SEO?

Optimizing Shopify store is a good option because Shopify comes with multiple SEO-friendly features, making it easy for e-commerce owners to enhance their online presence. Some built-in SEO features include:

1. Automatic Sitemaps

Shopify generates an XML sitemap for online stores, which helps search engines easily crawl and index web pages so they appear in search results.

2. Canonical Tags

You can tell search engines about the page version you want them to index by using canonical tags, which Shopify supports. This is particularly important to prevent problems with duplicate content on e-commerce platforms where product pages can be accessed via multiple links.

3. Meta Tags Support

Customizing your page titles and meta descriptions is simple with Shopify. These elements are visible in the search results and have a significant impact on click-through rates.

4. SSL Certification

For all Shopify stores, Shopify offers a free SSL certification. This security feature protects sensitive data, like payment and customer information, by encrypting data exchanged between the user's browser and the website. SSL-secured websites rank higher than insecure websites.

5. Schema Markup

Shopify supports structured data, which improves how your site appears in search results by using rich snippets.

For instance, you can make your listings more appealing to potential customers by including product characteristics like price, availability, reviews, and ratings that show up right in the search results.

6. Site Speed Enhancements

Do you know how to improve Shopify store speed? Well, you must know because slow load times can decrease conversion rates by 0.3% for every additional second it takes your site to load.

Shopify utilizes a CDN that automatically optimizes images, ensuring that your store loads quickly and efficiently for users.

Drawbacks of Shopify SEO

While Shopify has multiple built-in SEO features, it also has limitations. Understanding these downsides will help you develop robust Shopify strategies.

Common SEO-related problems of the platform include:

Optimizing Your Shopify SEO: Best Practices

With almost 80% of online experiences starting with a search, your website must rank higher. But where will you begin? Don’t worry; we got your back!

We have compiled a list of the top 7 proven best practices to optimize your Shopify store for search engine success. From picking a custom domain name to following on-page SEO strategies, these expert tips will boost your store's visibility and traffic.

Get ready to dominate the search results with these best practices:

1. Pick a Custom Domain Name

Use your custom domain name instead of the default Shopify subdomain like yourstore.myshopify.com. It can boost your online presence.

Here’s why:

You can easily purchase a custom domain through Shopify or from any third-party domain registry.

2. Connect with Google Search Console

You must submit your Shopify store to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools to improve your SEO. These tools provide necessary insights into how search engines see your website, including any issues with indexing, crawling, and performance.

By linking your store to these platforms, you can easily spot and fix any SEO problems, ensuring your site is optimized for better visibility in search results. Furthermore, linking your Shopify store with these platforms makes it accessible to wider audiences.

3. Structure Your Site

Here’s how a well-structured Shopify store can boost your SEO:

The bottom line? A well-designed store not only improves customers' experience but also improves search engine ranking!

Here’s an example of a Shopify-powered store with simple navigation (United By Blue):

As you can see, the site has a simple navigation menu that allows users to move from broad categories like "Bags & Accessories" to specific items in just a few clicks.

4. Research Keywords

You must identify the target keywords to increase the chances of your product and category pages appearing in relevant queries. You can follow the below-mentioned steps to ensure your store is optimized for search engines and reaches the right audience:

Many tools are available to help you research the terms your customers use when searching for the products you sell.

For instance, Google’s free autosuggest feature allows you to discover common search queries. Let's suppose you are searching for “Women's Wrist Watches.” Google’s free autosuggest will inform you of valuable keywords and phrases that you can include in your titles and meta descriptions.

Similarly, Google Trends offers insight into popular keywords so you can identify rising search terms. To further enhance your keyword searches, use popular tools like Ahrefs, Semrush, or Moz.

These tools also offer competitive analysis features, which you can use to identify the keywords your competitors use. You can then accordingly create a strategy to fill the gap.

5. On-Page SEO Best Practices

You can make your Shopify store pages more search-friendly and drive more traffic by focusing on on-page SEO elements. Here are some tips for optimizing your Shopify store pages for better SEO:

6. Improve Technical SEO

Follow these technical SEO tips to make your Shopify store search-engine friendly and offer a better user experience:

7. Off-Page SEO Best Practices

Implement these off-page SEO tactics to enhance your store's reputation and attract more visitors:

How Can Protonshub Technologies Help You Optimize Your Shopify Store?

If you want to rank your store higher on Google, you must know how to optimize Shopify store. Or you can consistently implement the best practices discussed in this blog.

From choosing a custom domain and conducting thorough keyword research to enhancing your site's technical SEO, you need to do everything to attract high-quality traffic to your online store.

You can also reach out to our experts to understand the ins and outs of Shopify store optimization. Our team can also create a robust Shopify platform for you. So hurry up and contact us today.

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Ekta Singh

"Senior Content Writer"

Ekta Singh is a rookie food experimentalist and k-drama fan with 4+ years of experience in writing. Bridging gaps between companies and customers through conversion-driven content is her forte. She believes in writing stories for a living and living life for exploring places.