As of 2021, over 1,000,000 businesses in 175 countries are run by Shopify sellers. Are you one of those businesses? Then this blog is for you!

The digital landscape today has become a hotspot for shopping. No matter what you’re looking for, it is available just a click away, quite literally. You Google it, you find it! When shopping becomes this easy, marketers need to rethink their strategies and ensure that they’re truly a click away from their customers. If not, a large portion of the audience will be hanging out on their competitor’s page. 

One (and the most popular) way through which marketers can facilitate purchases online is through an E-commerce website. An E-commerce website is like an online store for a brand where they can display their products and deliver them to their customers, providing them with a comfortable and uncomplicated shopping experience!

In this blog, we’ll be talking about one in particular – Shopify. Shopify is one of the most popular global e-commerce platforms that allow all types of businesses to establish and market their online platforms. 

As of October 2019, Shopify had completed over 1 billion orders and had generated more than $135 billion in total revenues for its merchants.

There are many organic, absolutely free ways through which you can get more traffic to your Shopify. Although there are some underlying hidden costs, this is the most effective way to get relevant traffic to your website. 

Did you know?

There are currently over 24 MILLION eCommerce websites on the internet! However, E-commerce was first introduced in 1979. Michael Aldrich created online shopping in the 1980s and 1990s before the Internet took off by connecting a household television set to a phone line.

So, let’s start talking about traffic! 

How Does SEO Work on Shopify?

Before jumping into the complete Shopify SEO checklist, let’s first make the fundamentals strong. Many individuals use a search engine like Google or Bing to find information on the internet. In fact, before making a purchase, 81% of retail customers undertake research online. (Source: GE Capital Retail Bank)

These search engines are meant to provide a ranked list of results for a certain search query using a range of information from websites. Search engines assess which websites are most likely to be related to the search query and rank the results accordingly.

There are three parts of SEO: On-page, and Off-page, Technical SEO 

On-page SEO: The on-page SEO of your store is directly tied to how well it is optimized for user experience and for search engines to crawl the website.

Off-page SEO: Off-page SEO is concerned with other websites and how they refer to and mention your store. it all bought budling high-quality content and getting links point back to your website

Check This:– 20 Must Know Off-Page SEO Techniques

Technical SEO: Technical SEO total depends on how well a website is been structured and allowing google bots to crawl the website with any issue.

A sitemap is a blueprint for your website that assists search engines in finding, crawling, and indexing all of your content. Sitemaps also inform search engines about the most important pages on your website. 

Starting with on-page SEO makes sense because you have control over the majority of the signals. After you’ve nailed it, you should concentrate on off-page SEO Techniques. 

In order to get an in-depth understanding of the Shopify SEO checklist, one must understand the concept of keywords, the lifeline of an effective SEO strategy. 

Let’s See How To Do Proper Keyword Research

There are three main factors: search volume, difficulty, and user intent, knowing which will give you a substantial understanding of how keywords work! 

User Intent

The goal of a user’s search is known as user intent. You may establish your company as an authority in your field by matching user search intent. Providing relevant content that matches a user’s search query demonstrates to your audience that you know your stuff and can answer their queries about your company, products, and industry.

Who Is Your Target Audience?

While performing keyword research, it is very crucial to consider who your target audience is. Once you understand your audience, it becomes fairly easy to determine the relevant keywords. 

Search Volume

Within a given timeframe, the search volume reflects the number of search inquiries for a specific search phrase in a search engine such as Google. The quantity of search queries is estimated and can fluctuate depending on seasonal, regional, and thematic factors. 

Keyword Difficulty

It is possible to calculate the difficulty of a specific phrase to rank using various tools. You may use the difficulty of a term as a second filter when selecting keywords.

Now that you understand the crux of keyword research let’s jump into our Shopify SEO checklist and see how you can master it!

Here Is The Shopify SEO Checklist and Guide For Beginners

1. Plan Your Website Structure 

The first factor we’ll discuss on this Shopify SEO checklist is the page title and meta description. The text you see in your browser tab is the page title. It’s also (often) displayed alongside a page description in the SERPs. Shopify uses the product name as the page title and the product description as the page description by default. It’s certainly preferable to nothing, but you can easily improve it to get more search traffic.

According to Moz, the Page title should be up to 70-60 characters long. You might specify some other keywords in addition to the product name. For example, in the image below, the highlighted title of the product contains certain keywords like “100% organic” and “buy baby car seats.” 

The meta description should have a maximum length of 150-160 characters. It should contain the product description as well as an incentive to click on the search result. based on your product specializations that make your product stand out in your meta description. 

2. Ensure That Your Page is Loading QUICKLY!   

Page speed is a signal that search engines use to rank websites in search results, with faster sites being given favour over slower ones. So, remember to check your loading time as part of your shopify seo checklist.

Because you can’t buy your own hosting or create your own template, you have to use Shopify’s servers and templates (which are great but don’t provide you fine-grained control over how fast your site loads). However, there are several things you can do to speed up the loading of a Shopify site.

Tips on how to reduce the loading time: 

• Remove any Shopify apps that you aren’t utilizing or that you don’t require.
• Avoid utilizing a high number of web fonts on your site, and consider switching to web-safe fonts entirely (these load much faster).
• Reduce the size of any images you’re uploading to Shopify by using image compression tools like Tiny Png.
• Use as few external scripts or custom code as possible on your website.
• Use picture sliders sparingly (in favour of one well-optimized image).

3. Ensure Your Store is Mobile-Friendly  

Mobile commerce is increasingly the norm, with mobile devices accounting for more purchases than desktop devices. Mobile devices accounted for 67 percent of purchases on Black Friday 2020, while desktop devices accounted for only 33 percent. As a result, having a mobile-first business is critical for SEO and conversion rates.

Within 3 navigation -from home page to product page else user will be generally bounce out which will increase bounce rate will increase 

Fortunately, Shopify’s free themes have now been optimized for mobile use. You can also invest in a premium template to deliver a mobile-first experience.

4. Remove Duplicate Content 

You should avoid having duplicate tags and content in your store, as specified in the meta title and description recommendation. Use canonical links to “inform” Google which page is the major one and should be prioritised in search if you need to construct numerous product or landing pages with the same/similar content. You can also use the noindex element to make the duplicate page invisible to search engines and prevent it from being indexed.

5. Keep Your Images Short (in KBs) and Sweet!

We’ve mentioned this before on our shopify seo checklist, and we’ll mention it again! The size of your images on the product page is one of the most important aspects affecting page load time, making it an important part of your SEO strategy. The majority of your resources will most likely be media, particularly photographs. Shopify doesn’t have an image optimiser (compressor) built-in; therefore, it utilises any picture you upload. Some of the themes support lazy loading, which is fantastic (i.e. not all product images are loaded simultaneously, but only when they are “needed”).

The original image below, for example, has been greatly compressed. Even though there is a significant size difference, the image still appears fine.

6. SEO-Optimized URL Structure

The last component of the URL, referred to as the slug, identifies a specific product or page on your store. For example, in the URL: https://1ststep.com/collections/baby-car-seat, the slug is “baby-car-seats.” 

Shopify uses product names without blank spaces or special characters by default. The slug should describe the page in general, include the relevant keyword(s), and have a clear focus. It should be brief and descriptive, with all lowercase letters. Instead of blank space, use the dash “-” while ensuring that prepositions, inquiries, and other unnecessary words should be avoided. 

7. Add Unique Content 

Content is king at Google (and other search engines) – particularly original content. You should aim for roughly 300 words of material on your product pages. It may be tough to write a personalised product description of this length, but you may supplement it with aspects such as user reviews, FAQs, and technical information.

Utilise product descriptions from your supplies instead, as many of your competitors are likely to use them. Write them in your own words from scratch. Consider employing a copywriter for your most important product pages. You can replicate something by taking inspiration from the images below

8. Maintaining a Blog and Other Landing Pages 

The first thing you need to establish a successful e-commerce firm isn’t always a blog or content site. It’s a long-term plan that demands a lot of resources (i.e. someone to create the content), but it may deliver a lot of value and SEO benefits if done correctly. Many retailers are unaware that Shopify includes an integrated blog CMS. 

You can develop a collection of landing pages that are somewhat related to your items in addition to maintaining a blog. If you own a fashion store, for example, you may design landing pages that describe the various garment sizes and how they convert.

Difference between a blog and a landing page: 

You should utilize blog posts to write about current events or breaking news. The landing page, on the other hand, is usually time-independent and frequently modified during its lifetime.

9. Have Internal and Outbound Links 

Link building is a very important factor of on-page SEO. It’s what adds more credibility to your website and makes it rank over the others. Let’s talk about two main types of links that you must add to your website. 

Internal links are those that direct your users from one page to another of your website. 

When someone visits your product category page, for example, you can include an internal link that directs them to your actual store. Internal connections to past relevant blog pieces and even your social media platforms can also be included.

An outbound link is a link that directs traffic away from your website and towards another. It’s common to overlook the significance of these ties. After all, it doesn’t seem fair to offer a link to another page and steer readers away from your site after you’ve worked so hard to get them there. Sure, that’s a reasonable argument, but it misleads you as to why websites engage in link building in the first place. Increasing your links, internal, outbound and inbound, will increase your chances of being ranked. 

10. Get Backlinks From Relevant Websites

A crucial off-page SEO technique to increase your ranking is to get backlinks from other relevant websites. This could include links from relevant blogs, bloggers from your niche, or influencers. This increases your credibility and Google will identify you as a trustworthy website, hence rising your chances of getting ranked. 

11. Create Content that Gets Natural Backlinks: 

While creating content, you should do it strategically. Creating more reserach-based content with tons of statistics or posting infographics will get you automatic backlinks without asking for it. 

12. Press Releases

Publishing press releases is another great way to get more credible backlinks to your website. Once they get picked up by journalists and get published to actual news sources, the value of your website is very likely to rise immensely. 

13. Broken Link Techniques

The method of creating backlinks by replacing connections to 404 pages with working links to a target website is known as broken link building (also known as dead link building). For instance, if you find a blog that has directed to a broken link, you can take your existing blogs (or write a new one) and request the owner to replace the broken link with your blog. 

14. Install SLL

As an e-commerce business owner, you should be aware that Google has mandated that all sites use HTTPS for security reasons. To do so, you must first install an SSL certificate to ensure the website’s overall security. There are several locations where you can get an inexpensive SSL certificate, so it doesn’t have to be a big concern.

An SSL certificate can boost your website’s rating and ensure that all data transmitted between the web server and the site is secure. So now is the time to switch your website from HTTP to HTTPS in order to prioritise security.

15. Make a Sitemap 

A sitemap is a blueprint for your website that assists search engines in finding, crawling, and indexing all of your material. Sitemaps also inform search engines about the most important pages on your website.

16. Robots.TXT

Through robots.txt, you can instruct the crawlers that check your website and tell them where to go, where not to go, and what to do. It’s part of the Robots Exclusion Protocol (REP), which is a collection of rules for how robots crawl and index content on the Internet. Although it may appear to be a difficult and complex task, writing a robots.txt file is a simple procedure. 

17. Implement Schema Code 

One of the SEO techniques is Schema markup, often known as Schema.org. It represents your website’s semantic vocabulary (also known as microdata). Schema markup aids search engine robots in comprehending your material.

What is the best way to put it into action? You can include microdata in the HTML of your web page. It makes it easier for search engines to read your content and enhances how users see your page.

Conclusion 

SEO is a continuous and never-ending process. It takes a lot of resources and takes time to see results. However, if done correctly, it may significantly contribute to your online store’s success. We hope these pointers helped you better grasp on-page SEO and identify at least a few places where you were lacking. 

If you’re looking for professionals who can help you optimise your Shopify store, we have a solution for you! echoVME Digital is a 360-degree digital marketing agency in Chennai who have 11+ years of experience in building websites that rank. They have a group of SEO experts who can make your online store profitable! Contact them today: www.echovme.com 

Did this shopify seo checklist help you build a better online store? Let us know in the comments below!