If you’re using Shopify to run your online business, achieving high visibility on search engines is essential. However, many businesses unknowingly commit several SEO mistakes which can significantly hamper their eCommerce success. This article will explore the top 10 common Shopify SEO mistakes and provide effective solutions to evade them.
From understanding the basics of SEO for Shopify to the consequences of not using SEO-friendly URLs, this piece provides a comprehensive guide to boosting your online visibility. Additionally, pressing issues such as duplicate content and ignoring Shopify’s built-in SEO tools are addressed with appropriate remedies. By the end, you will have a proficient understanding of how to circumvent common pitfalls and enhance your Shopify store’s SEO performance.
TL;DR
- Shopify SEO consists of keyword research, on-page SEO, off-page SEO, technical SEO, and SEO analytics. It is crucial for improving online visibility and sales.
- Using SEO-friendly URLs helps improve visibility on search engines, driving more organic traffic to your online store.
- Duplicate content on your Shopify site can harm your site’s SEO. Tactics like using the rel=”canonical” tag and providing unique product descriptions can mitigate this issue.
- Image optimisation, including appropriate labelling and compression, can enhance your store’s search engine rankings and the overall customer experience.
- Shopify’s built-in SEO tools are fundamental for improving your site’s visibility, driving organic traffic, and increasing conversion rates.
- Securing high-quality backlinks can enhance your Shopify store’s visibility on search engine results pages (SERPs).
- Avoid keyword stuffing and instead focus on creating quality, relevant content, and use long-tail keywords for better SEO performance.
- Mobile optimisation is necessary for your Shopify store as it impacts your site’s search engine ranking and overall user experience.
Understanding Shopify SEO Basics
Before diving into specific Shopify SEO mistakes and their fixes, it’s vital to understand the basics of Shopify SEO. Shopify is an excellent platform that facilitates online sales, but to get the most out of this tool, you need to be aware of the fundamental aspects of SEO. SEO, or Search Engine Optimisation, is a vital digital marketing strategy used to improve the visibility of your eCommerce website on the search engine result pages (SERPs). Essentially, the goal of SEO is to generate organic traffic, increase sales, and build your online presence.
Shopify SEO encompasses several aspects, including keyword research, on-page SEO, off-page SEO, technical SEO, and SEO analytics. Keyword research is finding and analysing the terms people use when searching for products or services online. On-page SEO optimises individual webpages to rank higher and drive more relevant traffic. This includes elements like meta descriptions, subheadings, and image alt texts.
On the other hand, off-page SEO refers to actions taken outside of your own eCommerce website to impact your rankings within the search engine results pages. This may involve creating backlinks from other reputable online sources. Technical SEO involves the process of optimising your website for the crawling and indexing phase to ensure search engines can access and understand your content.
Lastly, SEO analytics helps you measure your success by analysing data about your website’s traffic, bounce rates, conversion rates, and more. Remember, understanding these basics is crucial to avoiding common Shopify SEO mistakes, as they guide what an optimised Shopify store should look like.
Not Using SEO-Friendly URLs: The Consequences and Solutions
This mistake can significantly impair the visibility of your online store on search engines, leading to a reduced amount of organic traffic. SEO-friendly URLs are short, descriptive, and easy for both search engines and users to understand. They should ideally include keywords that accurately describe the content of the page.
When your store’s URLs are not SEO-friendly, it can lead to consequences such as a lower search engine ranking and less traffic directed towards your site. A lower ranking on search engines like Google reduces the visibility of your products to potential customers. This is because users typically do not bother to look past the first page of search results. As a result, if your store doesn’t rank high enough, your products may become virtually invisible to most online shoppers.
The solution is to start using SEO-friendly URLs. Shopify allows its users to customise their URLs. You must ensure that each URL precisely describes what visitors can expect to find on the page. This typically involves including one or two relevant keywords in the URL. For instance, a URL like ‘yourstore.com/womens-leather-boots’ is much more SEO-friendly than a generic and non-descriptive URL like ‘yourstore.com/product123’.
Remember, making your URLs SEO-friendly is just one component of optimising your Shopify store for search engines. However, it is a step that can have a worthwhile impact on your visibility online. By avoiding this common mistake, you can increase the chances of finding your store by the right people and, ultimately, increase your sales.
Duplicate Content Issues on Shopify and How to Fix Them
Duplicate content issues can be a significant problem for Shopify users, negatively impacting a website’s search engine optimisation or SEO. These issues can arise when search engines find similar content in multiple locations throughout your website. Search engines might fail to understand which version of the content to include/exclude from their indices, which can potentially affect your site’s rankings. Fortunately, various strategies can be used to identify and address this challenge.
One common mistake Shopify users encounter is customer testimonials or product reviews getting indexed as unique pages. While these testimonies significantly contribute to a positive user experience, they can occasionally lead to duplicate content problems if not managed properly. One effective solution to this issue is to use the rel=”canonical” tag. This tag tells search engines that a specific URL represents the master copy of a page, preventing duplicate content from appearing in search results.
Similarly, Shopify users often find product descriptions from manufacturers appearing on multiple other websites. This duplication can be solved by rewriting product descriptions to make them unique, thus improving their SEO. Furthermore, you should avoid creating separate product pages whenever you offer multiple options for a single product, like different sizes or colours. Instead, use one product page with options.
Lastly, always be aware of how your website’s structure contributes to duplicate content. When creating new pages, ensure they’ve not already been created or indexed elsewhere on your site. Indexing pages with similar content can confuse Google bots, leading to lower rankings in search results.
By proactively addressing these duplicate content issues, you can improve your Shopify’s site SEO, increase visibility, and boost your online sales.
Ignoring Image Optimisation: How it Impacts SEO and How to Improve It.
Image optimisation involves accurately naming and tagging your product photos and compressing them to an appropriate size, significantly boosting your store’s search engine rankings. Not optimising your images can negatively affect your website speed, user experience, and overall SEO rank.
Search engines like Google use image filenames and alt tags to understand an image’s content. Therefore, using default filenames like “IMG_245” doesn’t give search engine algorithms any useful information. Instead, rename your photos with relevant keywords. For example, name a picture of a men’s blue shirt as “Mens-Blue-Shirt.” This tactic improves your images’ search visibility, thus enhancing your store’s overall SEO.
Moreover, large image files slow down your website speed, which hampers its SEO performance. A slow-loading website is frustrating for your visitors, which increases the bounce rate and negatively affects your ranking. Thus, compressing your image files without compromising their quality is crucial. You can use various online tools like TinyPNG or Crush. Pics to compress your images effectively.
Improving image SEO on your Shopify store involves more than just these steps. You must also consider elements like image relevance, adding a caption, utilising the sitemap, and regularly checking your images’ SEO performance. By doing this, you enhance your SEO and improve the overall customer experience on your Shopify store.
The Downside of Not Using Shopify’s Built-In SEO Tools
Another common Shopify SEO mistake marketers and business owners make is not utilising Shopify’s built-in SEO tools to their full capacity. These tools are integral to Shopify’s offering and are essential in improving a site’s visibility, driving organic traffic, and increasing conversion rates. Ignoring these built-in tools can produce unfavourable outcomes for your eCommerce store in the long run.
Shopify’s SEO tools include features such as metadata editing, automatic XML sitemap generation, and alt text for images. These features are designed to make your site more visible and attractive to search engine algorithms, boosting your site’s ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs). Without using these tools, your site may struggle to achieve a high SERP ranking, potentially making it less visible to prospective customers and affecting your store’s sales.
Metadata, in particular, plays a critical role in how search engines interpret your site. If metadata is not optimised properly, your site’s pages may be improperly indexed, leading to decreased organic website traffic. The automatic XML sitemap generation is also vital as it helps search engine bots to crawl and index your site efficiently. Neglecting these tools can result in a poorly optimised site that fails to reach its full potential.
Lastly, using alt text for images is crucial for image SEO. You might miss out on significant potential traffic from image searches if not handled properly. Customers often use image searches when they’re looking for specific products, so ignoring this feature can negatively impact traffic and sales.
Not leveraging Shopify’s built-in SEO tools can lead to lower visibility, reduced traffic, and decreased revenue. Understanding and properly utilising these tools can greatly improve your online store’s overall performance.
Lack of Quality Backlinks: Why it’s a Problem and How to Gain More
Backlinks, also called inbound links, are crucial in boosting your Shopify store’s visibility. They act as endorsements from other sites, indicating to search engines like Google that your site is valuable and reliable. The failure to secure good quality backlinks might leave your Shopify store unnoticed on search engine results pages (SERPs). This is a problem because the lower your site ranks on SERPs, the less traffic you’re likely to draw, eventually leading to lower sales for your Shopify store.
To avoid this, there are several ways to gain more quality backlinks. First, you can offer guest blog posts to websites that are related to your Shopify store’s niche. These posts should provide value and relevance to the website’s audience. In return, you can include a link back to your Shopify store in the post or your author bio. Secondly, make sure the content on your Shopify store is shareable. This means producing high-quality, engaging, and unique content that other sites will want to link to. Content can include blogs, infographics, or videos.
Another strategy is building relationships with influencers in your niche. This can lead to collaborations, shared content, or testimonials that include a link back to your Shopify store. Finally, directory submissions, while they might seem old-fashioned, still work. Submit your Shopify store to reputable online business directories. Remember that quality matters more than quantity. One high-quality backlink can have a much bigger impact than several low-quality backlinks.
Keyword Stuffing: The Risks and Alternatives
In an attempt to attract more traffic and increase visibility on search engines, some site owners excessively use their targeted keywords in their content. This practice might seem to be beneficial. However, search engines like Google have become more sophisticated and can now detect and penalise keyword stuffing. This can result in poor site rankings and potentially a drop in traffic.
Keyword stuffing, in general, compromises the readability and quality of content. It appears unnatural and can make visitors uncomfortable, reducing their time spent on the site and increasing bounce rates. Therefore, instead of improving SEO, keyword stuffing may actually damage your store’s overall performance.
As an alternative to keyword stuffing, focus on creating quality content that is relevant to your target audience. Keyword usage should be organic and natural within the context of the content. Google rewards content that is valuable, informative, and beneficial to users, so a keen focus on user experience is essential. Also, the proper use of meta descriptions, title tags, and image alt texts can also help your site rank well.
Moreover, implementing more specific long-tail keywords can help you target the right audience. Whilst these may result in fewer search numbers, they usually have a higher conversion rate as they tend to be more relevant to what users are searching for. Using tools like Google Keyword Planner or other SEO tools can provide keyword suggestions to help optimise your approach.
Neglecting Mobile Optimisation: The Negative Effects and How to Counteract Them
As more and more consumers are shifting towards shopping on their smartphones and tablets, having a mobile-friendly site is no longer optional. It’s a necessity. In fact, Google has shifted to mobile-first indexing, meaning it primarily uses the mobile version of a website for indexing and ranking. Therefore, if your Shopify store isn’t optimised for mobile, it will likely seriously impact your site’s search engine ranking.
Failing to optimise your Shopify store for mobile devices could have several negative consequences. For one, a website that displays poorly on mobile devices may frustrate users, causing them to leave and resulting in a high bounce rate. Secondly, it impacts your site’s visibility on search engines. Shopify stores that aren’t mobile-friendly will be harder to find through search engines like Google, subsequently reducing your traffic and sales. The user experience is also compromised, damaging the potential for repeat business.
Fortunately, there are several steps you can take to ensure your Shopify store is mobile-friendly. First and foremost, choose a responsive theme. A responsive theme will automatically adjust the layout of your website based on the device it’s being viewed on, ensuring a seamless shopping experience for all users, regardless of their device. Moreover, ensure that your website loads quickly on mobile devices. Slow-loading pages can frustrate users and increase the likelihood of them leaving your site without making a purchase.
You should also strive to make the mobile user experience as straightforward and intuitive as possible. This could involve simplifying your website’s navigation, ensuring buttons are positioned and sized appropriately for touch screens, and that the checkout process on mobile is just as easy as it would be on a desktop.
Finally, regular testing on different devices and browsers will help you identify and resolve any issues that might compromise the mobile user experience. By optimising your Shopify store for mobile, you’ll not only enhance the user experience but also drive more traffic, ultimately leading to increased sales.
Conclusion
Avoiding common Shopify SEO mistakes can significantly enhance the visibility of your eCommerce store, drive more organic traffic, and increase overall sales. It’s essential to utilise best practices for URLs, avoid duplicate content, optimise images, and leverage Shopify’s built-in tools. Understanding the importance of backlinks, refraining from keyword stuffing, and focusing on mobile optimisation is equally vital.
Committing to these practices improves your store’s search engine rankings and enhances the user experience, leading to a higher customer retention rate. With commitment and consistency, these robust strategies can drastically improve your Shopify store’s SEO performance in the long run, giving you a competitive edge within the eCommerce landscape.
Despite the initial learning curve, mastering SEO for Shopify is achievable and definitely worthwhile. Remember to continuously learn, analyse, and improve because SEO is a long-term investment with great returns. Navigate the complexities of SEO and supercharge your Shopify store now!
