Shopify SEO Guide 2022
The goal of this article is simple, it’s to tell you exactly how to boost your SEO ranking for your Shopify store.
We’ll walk through expert tips on how to improve SEO on your (or your customer’s) Shopify website, both on the site itself and off it.
eCommerce is becoming a bigger and bigger trend and Shopify is at the forefront of this wave.
We’ve already looked at many ways to get ahead of your competitors in this area, such as:
- How to Manage your Social Media Ads with Shopify
- 6 Tactics to Improve your Shopify Store’s Digital Ads
- 5 Marketing Tactics to Scale your Shopify Clothing Store in 2022
SEO can greatly improve the rankings of your Shopify store which in turn will lead to more traffic and ultimately more conversions.
Let’s get into it!
The Ultimate Shopify SEO guide for 2022
Straight out of the box Shopify is actually pretty good with SEO. The platform comes with many SEO-friendly features such as automatically-generated sitemaps, editable title tags, free SSL certificate, meta descriptions, etc.
So yes, Shopify is actually pretty decent in its “basic” mode for SEO optimization. However, we don’t want “pretty good”… At Optily we strive for greatness.
That’s why if you follow these 5 expert solutions you’ll realize the true potential of SEO optimization for your Shopify store.
#1 - A Shopify SEO Domain
The first step is to register a custom domain name. This can be easily done through Shopify.
For your Shopify store to succeed in search it will need a unique domain name. Keep the name simple and as close to your brand name as possible. This way your customers will know that the website store is yours and not a spam website. Trust is vital as always with your customer.
Shopify also offers a handy domain name generator if you’re struggling to decide on one!
#2 - Flat & Wide Website Structure
The idea behind a flat and wide website structure is to make your pages as close to the customer as possible. The deeper and narrower your website structure is the harder it is for customers and search engines to crawl your website, leading to a lower SEO ranking.
As you can see in the example below, no webpage is more than four clicks away from the main page.
As eCommerce websites tend to have lots of different pages (some can have over 50,000!) it is essential that you design your website in this way from the beginning.
This backend process will help your business improve its SEO ranking for the get go.
#3 - The Correct Keywords for Shopify SEO
As you may have expected, keywords are an essential element to your Shopify store’s SEO ranking.
The main idea of finding and using the correct keywords is to identify low-competition product and category words that you can associate with your brand.
It’s also essential that you utilize keywords that are common topics that your customers care about while being closely related to your product.
Stuck for ideas on what keywords to use? Reverse engineer an eCommerce store that’s similar to yours to tap into a goldmine of keyword ideas.
#4 - Utilizing All Types of Links
Links of all kinds are used by search engines to determine how the rest of the internet values your website. This is why backlinks and internal links are so valuable to your website in terms of SEO.
The more quality links you have from reputable websites to your Shopify store, the higher the search engine will perceive your value.
To achieve more links you can try:
- Partnering with other companies
- Consider influencer marketing
- Reach out to other businesses like yours to see if you can get mentioned on their blog
Links can also be bad for your site. Broken links will hurt the credibility of your site so be sure to periodically check that all your links lead to a working webpage.
#5 - Image Optimization
More commonly than you think, people who are buying products online type the exact phrase into a search engine.
“Black winter coat for men.”
The next thing they do is click into the images to see which of the product they like. This is why it’s so important that your images are SEO optimized.
Ensure that your image filenames and alt text describe exactly what the image is. This way when someone searches “Black winter coat for men,” your product is more likely to appear higher up the webpage.
And that your alt text does the same thing.
What else can eCommerce businesses do in 2022?
We asked this question to Chase Clymer, Co-Founder at Electric Eye.
Chase advises that “SMBs need to invest in content in 2022. The brands that are winning have content production systems built into their business and are producing things on a regular cadence. This will create huge returns in the long run.“
We think this is fantastic advice and something that all businesses should also consider in 2022.
I still don't understand SEO?
Don’t worry SEO is a complicated subject. Not many marketers truly understand the extent of it (Google like to keep it all a bit mysterious), except our Optily experts of course 😉
You might find the SEO Essentials For All Businesses article useful as a supplemental to this blog.
Conclusion - Ultimate Guide to Shopify SEO
Now that you have your Shopify SEO checklist, you can use it to improve your Shopify store in many ways. It’s a great idea to solidify these types of backend processes at the beginning of the year to set your business up for a remarkably profitable year ahead.
Start with basic techniques like a custom domain and then delve into more advanced techniques such as linking and keyword research.
Building a truly SEO-optimized Shopify store will take time but the effort really will be worth it in the end.
Finally, if you need any help be sure to reach out to someone at the Optily squad. We’ll be happy to help, and who knows maybe you’re also interested in supercharging your eCommerce advertising across the entire online advertising world… well we can help you out with that too!
Until next time. 👋
