If you have a Shopify or Shopify Plus store, you already know: Shopify search engine optimization (SEO) is no small order. As a result of increasingly fierce competition in the eCommerce landscape, across virtually all markets and industries, SEO for Shopify and Shopify Plus is critical to your survival. This is even more true in 2020, as everything digital has changed – from how you market yourself, to the buying habits of your customers.
Working with a Shopify SEO consultant provides eCommerce brands with two major benefits.
- First, it can increase your organic click rates. Rather than paying for leads (and often artificial traffic), with the right optimization, you can naturally draw more visitors to your site by ranking higher on popular search engines for your targeted keywords.
- Second, and even better than the traffic (yes, we did just say that), a knowledgeable Shopify SEO expert can help get you a higher conversion rate. Get more than just those vanity metrics showing you’ve got a ton of traffic, because that doesn’t mean zip if you’re not getting those users to convert. When your site ranks higher, you’ll get higher quality clicks that will almost inevitably translate to a higher conversion ratio, leading to better profits.
What is Shopify SEO?
It’s easy to think of SEO as something simple. And wouldn’t it be great if you could just use the right keywords in your metadata and content, and you’d magically get a huge bump in your ranking?
But Shopify SEO is far more specific to driving results to the Shopify platform. Several factors are taken into consideration by search engines, including:
- site structure
- existing engagement
- how long you’ve held the domain
- site authority
- URL parameters
- Ahreflangs (multiple languages and currencies)
- referring domains
- and more
An experienced Shopify SEO consultant can go through your Shopify store and quickly determine apps that have the potential to boost SEO. They can also offer tips and tricks that may not be obvious to you (and that might not do anything for traditional websites). What’s more, they can help you use Shopify’s unique metadata to your advantage, getting the most out of what your Shopify store has to offer.
How Does SEO Increase Traffic to Shopify Stores?
So, how does SEO specific to Shopify stores actually help your business gain online traction?
Keep in mind, most consumers will first Google a new product when they’re looking for trustworthy options. Shopify SEO services can help optimize your shop to bump it up in the rankings for whatever targeted keyword a user may be searching for. Studies show that consumers overwhelmingly trust those organic, high-ranking results much more so than any paid ads above them. And when they click to a site in those top-ranking positions, it’s what’s known as “organic” traffic.
***Fun little side note: search engines keep track of which sites get this real, organic traffic, and that trend can have a real snowball effect. As the snowball starts rolling, and getting bigger, and more users come to your site, you’ll be rewarded with a higher ranking in the search results.
SEO campaigns for any site are a multifaceted effort. And for Shopify and Shopify Plus sites, the process can be even more complex. And while the path looks similar to that of traditional SEO, there’s more to it than most people know. Yes, at the most basic level, Google and other search engines reward sites based on how relative the content on the site is to the searches users perform. But another huge component is how trustworthy the engines deem your site to be. If the search engines view you as trustworthy, you’ll ultimately be rewarded.
So back to that snowball metaphor – the more actual customers who search for what you offer, and then click through to your site, the more “trustworthy” you become in the eyes of Google.
There are many moving pieces to Shopify SEO – from the amount of time you’ve owned a domain, to the number of authoritative sites that link to you, to how relevant and optimized your content is, to how buttoned up the technical, back end aspects of your SEO are…it all plays a role in determining where you are ranked.
Our Process-Driven SEO For Shopify
We’ve developed a surefire toolkit for helping Shopify business owners find success in the world of SEO.
eCommerce Keyword Research: Knowing what words your customers use to find your business is not always obvious, but it’s critical to the process. Our proven, high end research tools and strategies let us conduct comprehensive, exhaustive, effective keyword research for you with ease. This research will be the driving force and a key component to everything you do moving forward.
Shopify Site Architecture: While the need for the right keywords is obvious, for Shopify in particular, the architecture of your site is just as important. We’ll configure your site in a way that invites search engines to crawl and query it. The result? More results, for more relevant topics, so you’ll get those organic clicks your business needs to succeed.
On-Page SEO: We can help craft the actual content and data on the web pages from behind your site, to match the format search engines scour the web for. For example, the length of your page titles, the amount of content you have, your internal and external linking strategies, and more all play a part in determining whether your Shopify store will succeed, or if it will fail. We use our knowledge to help Shopify businesses all over the world use on-page SEO for success.
Technical SEO: This is perhaps the most complex component of all. Luckily for you – we excel in this area! Technical SEO for your Shopify store involves being ready to handle the queries modern search engines will send your site’s way. Since different search engines have different requirements, and these requirements are constantly changing, it’s essential you have experts in SEO for Shopify in your corner.
Backlink Building: A critical factor in search engines’ algorithms is how many sites link to you. In order to earn those backlinks, it’s essential that you have high-quality content on your domain along with your products. So, for example, a blog relevant to your industry would want to link to a product you carry. We’ll identify how and where to get the best backlinks for SEO purposes. We hear from clients all the time that building backlinks is one of the most difficult things for them to manage, but that’s where we come in. And believe us when we tell you…there’s a guaranteed payoff.
Which Solutions Are Right For You?
As you’ve seen, there’s a lot that goes into SEO for Shopify. If you have a Shopify or Shopify Plus store, and you’re looking for success, reach out today to get started! What are you waiting for? The sooner you take that step and start the optimization process, the sooner you’ll be driving the right traffic to your store, making the sales you want, and earning the revenue your competition is dreaming about.