Shopify SEO – How to optimise your online shop for organic rankings

In e-commerce, organic growth has a significant impact on the success of your online shop, regardless of which shop platform you use. SEO ensures that new customers are constantly becoming aware of your brand. You should therefore always reinvest a portion of your turnover in search engine optimisation. Even shops that use Shopify as their CMS cannot afford to ignore SEO. But how does Shopify SEO differ from other systems? In this post, I’ll show you the subtle but important differences, whilst also explaining the basics of Shopify SEO. By the end of this article, you’ll know:

• What are the key features of Shopify SEO?
  
• What are the steps required for successful Shopify SEO?
  
• What should you bear in mind at each stage?
  
• Valuable practical advice

Increase your turnover with Shopify SEO

In this video, Christian explains the basics of SEO for Shopify.

How does Shopify SEO differ from ‘standard’ search engine optimisation?

In principle, Shopify SEO is no different from other platforms, as the basic principle is always the same. By providing genuine added value, you aim to position your products, services or information at the top of the SERPs (search engine results pages). You achieve this by offering searchers exactly what they’re looking for. So you’re doing SEO for people, not for search engines.

What makes SEO for Shopify unique are the restrictions that come with the platform. Nevertheless, it is possible to achieve a decent SEO setup with a Shopify shop. Many beginners even benefit from Shopify’s default settings, as the Canadian company has, once again, prioritised user-friendliness here too.

The SEO benefits of Shopify

The good news is that Shopify is already optimised for search engines out of the box. This means there are fewer adjustments to make here than, for example, with a WooCommerce shop. Shopify is already relatively sophisticated, particularly from a technical point of view, which makes a well-developed SEO strategy all the more important.

As a general rule, focus on the 20 per cent that accounts for 80 per cent of the results; this will help you keep track of things, reduce costs and see initial success more quickly. That’s why we’re going to take a closer look at this 20 per cent now.

Shopify SEO Setup – before you get started

Before we get started, I’d recommend you first take a few steps to flesh out the basics of Shopify. Then we’ll get down to the nitty-gritty.

Tracking & Monitoring

As with all online marketing activities, effective tracking and monitoring of optimisations are absolutely essential. Without figures, data and facts, you’re groping in the dark and won’t be able to adjust your strategy properly. 

This makes it all the more alarming to find, time and again, that very few companies have a properly configured tracking system. If you’re not sure whether your tracking is working correctly, please feel free to contact us and we’ll check your setup. 

Although Shopify does offer built-in tracking, this option isn’t sufficient, and I’d recommend you use the data solely to verify the other tracking tools.

Connect Google Search Console to Shopify

The GSC is the most essential tool when it comes to search engine optimisation. It provides you with the most important data for SEO directly from Google, completely free of charge. 

In Google Search Console, you will find:

• Keywords that will help people find you
  
• Clicks, impressions, CTR (click-through rate) and the position of each keyword
  
• Indexed pages on your website
  
• Indexing issues with your website

You must therefore set up a domain property for your Shopify shop in GSC. To do this, follow Google’s instructions.

You should then submit your sitemap. The sitemap tells Google about all the relevant pages on your Shopify shop, ensuring that no pages are overlooked; every URL you submit will be crawled by Google. With Shopify, the sitemap is generated and updated automatically, so apart from linking it, you don’t need to do anything else. 

You can access the sitemap by adding the slug “sitemap.xml” to your domain.

Example: shopify-beispiel-shop.com/sitemap.xml 

You can submit the URL in Search Console via the left-hand menu under Indexing → Sitemaps.

Google should now be able to find all the pages on your Shopify shop, and you can use GSC to keep an eye on your KPIs. You’ll also be able to see if any pages fail to be indexed, along with the reasons why.

More tools for Shopify SEO – My recommendations

The GSC allows you to cover a large part of your monitoring needs; you should round off your tracking setup with a powerful SEO tool such as Ahrefs, Sistrix or Semrush. 

I use Sistrix and Ahrefs every day, and I can wholeheartedly recommend both tools. I haven’t yet had the chance to test their competitor, Semrush. Each tool has its own specific focus and therefore has its pros and cons. If you want a single tool to cover as much as possible, I’d go for Sistrix.

Some interesting features include:

• On-page SEO audit
  
• Keyword Research
  
• Backlink Analysis
  
• Competitors’ keywords
  
• Keyword Tracking (Changes in rankings)

Google Analytics

Google Analytics allows you to collect and analyse even more in-depth data. To do this, you need to connect Google Analytics to your Shopify shop correctly. But be careful – there are some legal restrictions to bear in mind.

In my experience, many shop owners reach their limits here, which is why I recommend bringing in an expert who can guarantee a 100 per cent correct setup.

Shopify SEO Strategy

Now that the basic framework is in place, we can get on with the planning. Anyone who devises a sound strategy and implements it professionally will achieve their goals. The platform used is irrelevant. It is important to design the strategy with the customer in mind, which is why, in addition to keyword research, you should also map out a customer journey.

Keyword research for your Shopify shop

Many companies make the mistake of implementing marketing measures without first carrying out a comprehensive keyword analysis. Unfortunately, this is not very effective and can often even cause lasting damage.

In e-commerce, the focus is on the products, but even the product names themselves can be an advantage or a disadvantage when it comes to search engine optimisation.

That’s why I recommend carrying out keyword research as early as possible. First of all, you should ask yourself a few questions.

Ask yourself the following questions:

• What forms part of my niche?
  
• How can the niche be subdivided even further?
  
• What are people who need my product looking for?
  
• What works for the competition?
  
• What can I do better than the competition?
  
• What do customers say? (draw on your experience with customers)

Next, use the keyword research tool of your choice. Start by focusing on the product itself. Which keywords are directly related to your products? Try to be as specific as possible. You can then expand the list to include slightly broader terms that have higher search volumes.

A mix of long-tail and short-tail keywords is essential for populating the customer journey created in the next step with relevant search terms.

Customer Journey

Next, you’ll want to combine this new data with your knowledge of customers and their touchpoints to create a comprehensive customer journey. However, this goes beyond the scope of Shopify SEO, which is why a separate article on this topic will be published shortly.

It’s important to note that you should now have a comprehensive list of keywords for each phase.

Shopify On-page SEO

When it comes to on-page SEO, the aim is to find the right balance between effort and benefit. First and foremost, we still want to create content that helps users. Nevertheless, our basic framework needs to be right. The good news is that Shopify is already fundamentally optimised for SEO, so you generally won’t have to deal with any major technical SEO issues.

Ideally, an experienced expert should carry out an SEO audit for you, as the issues can sometimes vary considerably. Only experts with sufficient experience can truly guarantee the highest possible level of optimisation. However, there are a number of general measures that can be implemented even without such a high level of attention to detail.

So let’s talk about the measures that have the greatest impact; we’ll go through the points step by step. The individual aspects are all interlinked. This means that if even one aspect of your Shopify shop is underperforming, your visibility will suffer. 

Conversely, simply by addressing your shortcomings, you can usually see a significant increase in visibility.

Ensure the best possible user experience (UX)

What does UX have to do with SEO? At first glance, not much, which is why this aspect is often overlooked. However, a good user experience is extremely important, particularly in e-commerce. 

It is also a key factor in search engine optimisation. This is because Google evaluates your shop based on user signals and uses this to decide whether your site ‘deserves’ the traffic.

To this end, Google looks at the following metrics:

• Bounce rate: Do visitors leave your website after only a short time?
  
• Time on site: How long do users stay on your site?
  
• Pages per session: Are users able to find their way around your shop?

However, this data is not only important for search engine optimisation; it is just as crucial for your online shop’s conversion rate. Only those who satisfy visitors to their site can hold their own in the market in the long term.

Loading times & Core Web Vitals on Shopify

Following on from UX, page load times are also a key factor for Shopify SEO. Nobody has the patience to wait a long time for a page to load; in fact, it often gives the impression that the shop isn’t working properly. You should avoid this at all costs, otherwise your bounce rate will automatically skyrocket.

You can test your page speed here: https://tools.pingdom.com/

As a general rule, the faster, the better! Fortunately, Shopify shops are usually quite well-optimised when it comes to loading times. 

As well as loading time, you should always keep an eye on your Core Web Vitals. These are metrics that Google has defined as KPIs for user experience. This means you can use the Core Web Vitals as quantitative benchmarks to see how you’re performing in terms of loading times. 

The importance of Core Web Vitals:

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): measures how long it takes for the largest visible content element to load completely.

Interaction to Next Paint (INP): measures a website’s responsiveness to user interactions.

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): assesses visual stability and measures the sum of all unexpected layout shifts.

First Contentful Paint (FCP): measures how long it takes for the first visible content element to load.

First Input Delay (FID): measures the delay between the user’s first interaction and the website’s response.

Time to First Byte (TTFB): measures the time it takes for the browser to receive the first byte of the response from the server.

You can test the Core Web Vitals here: https://pagespeed.web.dev/?hl=DE

Following the test, specific recommendations are also put forward to improve the user experience.

Title tags and meta descriptions

The classic among on-page SEO optimisations. Meta data is often not optimised and is either too long, too short or even missing a keyword. But it is not just the length and the keyword that are crucial.

The title tag is your strongest selling point for encouraging users to visit your page. Accordingly, you shouldn’t just half-heartedly include the keyword plus a generic phrase here.

This really calls for a delicate touch. Place the keyword as close to the start of the title as possible, then try to convey your USP (Unique Selling Point). But also bear in mind the perspective of the potential customer: what do they expect from your message, and can your Shopify shop meet those expectations?

This approach should boost your CTR; if there’s still room for improvement, you should experiment and run A/B tests to find your winning formula. The same applies to the meta description.

With the SERP Snippet Generator, you can check the length of your snippets and see straight away how they will appear in the search results.

Structured data

This is also important for how your site appears in the SERPs. Structured data is a standardised format for providing information about a page and classifying its content. It helps search engines better understand your website’s content and display more relevant results to users. For Shopify shops, this means that your products and content can be displayed more accurately and attractively in search results, which can have a significant impact on the CTR.

Structured data gives you the opportunity to generate what are known as rich snippets:

You can add the data either using SEO plugins for Shopify or in the HTML editor. You can find the relevant code on schema.org.

For your Shopify shop, I recommend that you enter the following details:

• Reviews (Must-have)
• Brand
• Product image (must-have)
• GTIN
• Material
• Category

You can then use the schema.org validator to check whether the implementation was successful. If there were any errors in your setup, the issues will be highlighted and you can rectify them.

Headings for Shopify SEO

This is a matter close to my heart, as virtually no shop has a proper heading structure. Yet it is so simple and, at the same time, so effective.

Headings on the web are marked up using the HTML tags <H1> to <H6>. They follow a hierarchical structure. Every page of your shop must always have exactly one <H1>; this is the main heading and is therefore particularly important. For an ideal SEO setup, the H1 heading should always begin with the main keyword.

All other headings are marked with <H2> to <H6> and may appear as many times as you like. It is important to note that a <H2> must be followed either by another <H2> or by a <H3>. You must not skip any levels in the hierarchy.

<H2> These represent the main topics; the deeper you delve into the relevant topics, the higher the number of your heading becomes. <H1> to <H3> are the most commonly used HTML tags; aim for a keyword density of 75% here to signal what the page is about.

Internal links and menu navigation

Another extremely important aspect that links UX with search engine optimisation. A clearly structured menu from which users can intuitively access all the relevant pages on your website is extremely important to them.

At the same time, internal links distribute what is known as ‘link juice’ across your website. This allows you to specifically control which pages are given greater prominence. You therefore want to link to your most important pages as often as possible.

The easiest way to do this is via the menu and the footer of your Shopify site. You should also include links within each of your topic sections.

Backlinks for your Shopify shop

Alongside technical SEO and content marketing, backlinks are one of the cornerstones of SEO, yet they are often neglected. This is because it is extremely difficult to secure good backlinks, particularly for online shops.

When it comes to link building, many people opt for paid backlinks because of the difficulty involved; unfortunately, this approach is expensive and even contravenes Google’s guidelines. 

The better option is to plan the budget and tackle the low-hanging fruit first. Let’s go through the steps, from the easiest to the most time-consuming.

#1 Listing in directories: Online directories such as the Yellow Pages act as business directories and provide backlinks that are easy to obtain. Whilst these aren’t particularly helpful, they are part and parcel of organic growth.

#2 Links from partners and suppliers: Given the nature of the collaboration, backlinks are a natural consequence here and are therefore easier to obtain.

#3 Existing mentions: If brand awareness is already fairly well established, you’ll regularly come across mentions on other websites. Unfortunately, these aren’t always linked. A friendly email can often result in a link being added at a later date.

#4 Enter into partnerships: Backlinks can also be acquired through partnerships.

#5 Guest posts: With a guest post, you write an article for an external website and, in return, receive a backlink.

#6 PR marketing: This can be carried out in-house or outsourced to an agency. The aim is to build brand awareness and generate backlinks through mentions in well-known magazines.

You can work your way through each step to build an organic backlink profile. Of course, off-page SEO takes time and resources. Nevertheless, it should form part of your SEO strategy.

Content marketing for your Shopify shop

Once you’ve sorted out your on-page SEO and your backlink profile is growing organically, it’s time to develop your content strategy.

Content Strategy

To do this, you’ll need your list of keywords and the customer journey you created earlier. First, you should identify 3–5 topic areas and group potential posts into these categories.

Clusters are important because you want to become a reliable source on these topics in Google. To achieve this, it is important to define these areas clearly. This is the best way to be recognised as an authority on these topics.

Once you have clustered your topics, you can identify what are known as ‘pillar articles’. These should reflect the main topics and provide a general overview of the subject. Each of the 3–5 pillar articles is followed by several sub-articles, which may in turn have further sub-articles, provided the topic allows for this. 

This structure ensures optimal linking between the articles. The pillar articles link to all sub-articles within the cluster, and vice versa. Over time, this creates a content tree. 

Make sure you provide enough content for every possible touchpoint with potential customers. Prioritise highly specific keywords that are a perfect match for your products. Try to plan content that doesn’t yet exist, but which is relevant and offers people help. 

Finally, you need to decide how often you want to publish new articles. Ideally, you should aim for two or more articles a week, but you can still achieve good results with just one article a month. The important thing is to create new content regularly. So choose a frequency that you can stick to.

Content creation for Shopify SEO

Next comes the hard work. Once your Shopify content strategy is in place, it’s time to get typing! Stick to SEO best practice when writing, but above all, give your readers what they want. Only if your readers are satisfied with your content will your article stand a chance of securing a good ranking in the long term.

Creating Shopify SEO content using AI tools

I would also like to touch briefly on AI tools here, as artificial intelligence is already an integral part of many processes and is here to stay.

AI has also become an indispensable part of my workflows. However, I only use it to assist with research, structuring or brainstorming. Content generated entirely by AI is not yet good enough – at least not yet – to be a genuine alternative.

The new secret weapon for SEO: YouTube

Did you know that YouTube is already the second-largest search engine? As future AI features such as Google Bard could reduce the visibility of businesses in Google’s search results pages, it is even more important in SEO to provide content that cannot simply be replicated.

YouTube videos present an excellent opportunity in this regard. As both Google and YouTube are part of Alphabet, this creates wonderful synergies. For example, people searching can also find YouTube videos via Google Search. At the same time, an already good blog post can be made even better by a YouTube video on a related topic. Furthermore, professional YouTube content goes a long way towards building brand loyalty.

It therefore makes sense to integrate your own SEO strategy with YouTube content and to be prepared for the latest marketing developments as early as possible.

Synergy effects in Shopify marketing

Shopify SEO is, of course, just one of many Shopify marketing measures. For a comprehensive marketing strategy, all marketing channels should be coordinated. This can create synergies that drive greater growth. For SEO, it is particularly important to attract a large number of users to the site, who will then send positive signals to Google.

Marketing channels that work particularly well with Shopify SEO:

• Pay-per-click marketing
• Email marketing
• Pinterest
• YouTube

These channels allow you to direct traffic specifically to new pages, such as Shopify landing pages, new products or your Shopify blog.

Conclusion: SEO for Shopify – greater visibility through relevant rankings

Search engines are a key component of e-commerce, which is why SEO is of significant importance to every online shop. Identifying key keywords and generating revenue from traffic through a professional customer journey is the art to which Shopify SEO agencies have dedicated themselves. However, SEO success can also be achieved in-house. It is important to have an expert on hand who has an overview of the situation and can provide support if necessary.

Shopify SEO FAQs