With 53.3% of all website traffic coming from organic searches, the importance of SEO for Shopify store cannot be denied. This is especially important for new sellers who have yet to make their mark on the web.
If you are looking for good, fool-proof ways to attract more new customers, then you should follow these tips on how to optimize your Shopify store SEO:
Register your store
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If you want your website to be known and properly crawled, then there’s one thing you need to do: register your website with Google Search Console or the Bing Webmaster Tool.
For Google, begin with the property selector dropdown at the Console page. Choose the property type (URL-prefix, domain, or Google-hosted). Afterward, you can select from a variety of verification methods that you could use with your Shopify store.
For Bing, it’s as easy as opening an account and adding and verifying your website.
Quick Tip: Make sure to register both domain versions – www and non-www. If you have http:// and https:// versions, register them as well.
Submit your sitemap
After registering your website, the next thing you need to do is submit your store’s XML sitemap. Again, this will help both Google and Bing index your website easily.
Fortunately, Shopify creates an automatic sitemap for all its users. All you need to do is enter the link, which usually takes the form, “http://www.yourstore.com/sitemap.xml”.
Keep your website secure
Shopify stores handle sensitive info such as credit card data and shipping addresses, to name a few. With hackers being more sophisticated by the minute, you should keep your site secure.
One of the ways to do this is to get an SSL certificate.
Also known as Secure Socket Layer, this certification is proof that your site is encrypted. This is a good way to tell your customers that they can shop with confidence.
In terms of SEO for Shopify store, SSL websites rank better than those without.
What’s great about Shopify is that it provides this layer of security to all of its subscribers.
To activate your SSL, all you need to do is go to your dashboard and click Sales Channels > Online Store > Domains.
Use a simple yet optimized URL structure
Ever visited a website with a lengthy, unmemorable URL? If you don’t like it, know that search engines hate them too.
As such, you should strive for a URL that’s simple, short, and comprehensible. While Shopify URLs are good enough, it wouldn’t hurt to edit it and incorporate some of your focus keywords. You can do this by clicking the Edit Website SEO option at the bottom of the page.
Make your website lightning fast
Nobody likes shopping in a slow-loading store. Sadly, this can prod your potential clients to make a switch for a faster-moving website.
Unless you plan on hosting your website and coding your template, you will need to rely on Shopify’s servers. While some of the templates work fairly well, you can further improve loading times by doing the following:
- Use compression tools to reduce the sizes of the photos you upload in Shopify.
- Minimize the use of custom code or external scripts.
- Remove any unnecessary apps in your store.
- Use one optimized photo instead of an image slider.
- Use fast-loading, web-safe fonts instead of a wide variety of fonts.
- Make sure that your Shopify store comes in an accelerated mobile page (AMP) format.
Keep your customers glued to your website
Good products are not enough to keep buyers well within your website. If you want to capitalize on the excellent effects of SEO for Shopify store, then you should try and do the following:
Simplify website navigation
For best results, make sure that your products are no more than 3 clicks away from the homepage.
Write great content
Although a picture paints a thousand words, it’s always good to write articles that complement it. This means making a catchy product description and helpful blog posts that customers love to read.
Make sure everything you write is useful – no fluff, please!
Embed videos
If you want to keep buyers in your store for as long as possible, then make use of captivating videos. These are sure to keep your visitors on your website for a couple of minutes.
Encourage customer engagement
One of the best ways to keep your clients hanging is to encourage them to comment on your blog posts and other media.
Link internally
If your customer is looking for something, you might as well give him/her something within your website. You can do this by publishing calls to action that are linked internally in your store.
Do this by adding a “See Also” or “Suggested Further Reading” in key areas of your website.
An optimized store will do wonders for your store’s revenues. If you find these tips too complicated to follow, worry not as you can always seek the help of an established Shopify SEO agency to help you out.
