While most of your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts will be focused on Google, Bing and Yahoo, it’s also worth looking at how your ecommerce product pages rank on Shopify’s own search engine.
Shopify powers more than 500,000 online stores in 175 countries. Its popularity makes it a common choice for sellers operating multiple storefronts.
According to BuiltWith, around 90 percent of all Shopify stores are in the United States. This means that if you’re a U.S.-based seller, ranking well on Shopify can give you access to a huge audience. Fortunately, winning the top spots is relatively easy compared to Google — Shopify is a significantly smaller search engine.
So how do you tweak your Shopify store listings to gain more exposure? Here are tips to consider:
1. Understand your audience
At First Page, shopify SEO is all about improving search results and understanding who your customers are and what they’re looking for. Conduct a survey or two to find out about their shopping habits, including what keywords they use when searching for products. Search engine optimization is critical to your Shopify store, but it’s usually not the first thing on a new ecommerce entrepreneur’s mind. After all, there are so many other things to do: figuring out how to get products, setting up a website, building an email list. And if you’re going to be selling on Amazon and eBay as well, who has time to think about search engine optimization? The truth is that without an SEO strategy in place, you could be missing out on some of the most important traffic and sales for your business.
The bottom line is that you want people who are already looking for products like yours to find you. Search engines are incredibly effective for this purpose. In fact, according to ComScore’s “U.S. Digital Future in Focus 2012” report, searches converted at 2% in Q4 2011 — meaning that 2% of people who did a product-related search ended up buying something in their search results.
Optimizing your site is one of the most cost-effective ways to improve your conversion rate. Below we’ve outlined five SEO strategies that’ll help you get more sales from search engines.
2. Optimize your images
Your keyword strategy should not be limited to text content on your website. Optimize all images so that they are visible in search results as well. Make sure all images have ALT tags and include relevant keywords here too.
Tags are another way of telling customers what your products are about. Use tags wisely so that customers can find items based on what’s most important to them, whether it’s a specific brand or a certain feature (i.e., “organic”).
3. Use keywords that relate to your business
When people use search engines, they type words into the search bar to find what they’re looking for. The words that people type in are called keywords, and they’re an important part of SEO. Including relevant keywords on your website tells search engines what your site is about and how it can help visitors that are searching for those topics. Work with shopify seo agency to help generate orders and skyrocket sales.
There are two types of keywords: short-tail keywords (e.g., Shopify) and long-tail keywords (e.g., best ecommerce platform). Short-tail keywords are more general (and usually have a higher search volume) while long-tail keywords are more specific (and usually have a lower search volume).
4. Tweak Your Title Tags and Meta Descriptions
Title tags are one of the most important on-page SEO factors, so make sure you’re optimizing them for each page on your site. The title tag tells search engines what the page is about, so be sure to use your target keywords in this tag. Usually, it’s best to place them at the beginning of the tag as opposed to at the end. Also, make sure each title is unique and don’t use more than 70 characters because anything beyond that will be cut off from search results.
Meta descriptions aren’t used by Google as a ranking factor, but they are still important because they help increase click-through rates (CTR) from the SERP. Make sure each meta description you write is unique and contains your target keyword(s).