As any eCommerce business owner knows, Shopify is the ultimate place to list your products online. But in a sea of online retailers, it can be hard to stand out from the crowd. The best way to do this, of course, is to climb the rankings for your selected keywords, get the best visibility possible on your Shopify site, and have top-notch creative content if you’re looking to grow your business.
As with any website, understanding SEO is the key to optimizing your place in the search rankings. In the case of Shopify, the higher in the search rankings you are, the better your sales funnel on your product listings.
So how can you optimize your Shopify listing to be seen above the rest? soona works with thousands of Shopify merchants and businesses. So, we know a thing or two on how to optimize your listings both on the SEO side of things
We’ve put together the ultimate guide to optimizing your Shopify listing to boost sales. In this guide, we’ll be running through 5 ways you can shoot to the top of the search rankings, and increase visibility and revenue for your online store. These are:
- Keywords
- Product titles and descriptions
- Shopify store structure
- Product images
- Categorization and labels
So, let’s get into it!
What is SEO for Shopify?
Before we run through how to use SEO tactics to optimize your Shopify store, we must first understand what SEO is, and how it relates to your Shopify product listings.
Standing for Search Engine Optimization, SEO is the practice of optimizing your website against a search engine’s [such as Google or Bing] criteria, to place higher in the rankings for chosen or keywords. At its very base level, we can use keywords in our content to tell the search engine that our website is relevant for content around those keywords. For example, a pizza restaurant would want to focus on keywords “pizza”, and “restaurant”, rather than irrelevant keywords like “burgers”.
{{shopify-ad="/external-components"}}
So where does Shopify come into the SEO equation? As with any website, it’s important to optimize your Shopify store – and product listings – for search engines. This can be done through your product titles and descriptions, your page structure, your URLS, and so much more. We’ll give tips on how to optimize each of these as we go through this guide.
Keywords
Now that we understand the premise of SEO, we know that the first step to getting your website higher in the rankings is to select which keywords you wish to optimize your pages for. Choose keywords that are both relevant to your products and your audience. For instance, if you’re just starting out, continuing the pizza restaurant example, choosing “pizza” as your main keyword can set you up for failure– with so much competition, your keyword will be just a drop in the ocean against big players. In this case, you might want to choose a longtail keyword such as “build your own pizza restaurant”. This effectively creates a niche, singling out customers who are looking specifically for a pizza place that allows them to build their own pizzas, rather than a pizza joint in general. That in turn increases your chance for a conversion, as they will be more invested.
Pro Tip: long tail keywords are those which are longer and more specific. It’s a best SEO practice to include high volume (many searches), longtail (niche) keywords in your keyword strategy.
Pro Tip 2: If you’re feeling stuck, choose one “seed” keyword to start, pop it into a generator and start widening its reach
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Product Titles and Descriptions
As with any online retail listing, be it on Shopify, Amazon, or elsewhere, the product is only as good as its title and description. This is the key information that potential customers need when making their buying decision – and will sway those customers, if done effectively.
Now that you know about keywords, and how it affects your place in the search rankings, you can likely guess our next piece of advice! Be sure to include keywords in both your title and description, which both highlight your product, and contain key information that potential customers need when choosing what to buy.
Title
Be sure to place your brand name at the beginning, and then follow with topline information:
- Product name
- Important descriptor (such as the color, the size and dimensions, or the material)
- Important features (this would be its defining feature which makes it stand out from its competitors)
When creating your title, try to avoid putting it entirely in capital letters, and exclude unnecessary information that might deter customers, or is included elsewhere, such as the price.
Once you’ve chosen your title, take a moment to step back and consider it through the eyes of potential customers. Is it unique enough to stand apart from the competition? Does it include your differentiating features and all necessary information that a potential customer would need before they click?
It’s important to review your product listing through the eyes of the customer and adjust as your audience and trends shift.
Product Descriptions
When drafting your product description, keep the guidelines for writing product titles in mind, but simply expand! Include the keywords you want to rank for and speak about them in greater detail. Remember, the potential customers that are reading your description have already clicked on your title because they deemed it fit to their needs and wish to know more – so give them more!
One way you can give more information is to demonstrate how the customer might use your product. For instance, if you’re selling picture frames, you might paint a picture of a mother hanging a photo of her children in the family room, or an art collector displaying their prized pieces in a home gallery.
As with the title, make sure to keep your product descriptions up to date – including the keywords you use – as trends, and customer needs, change. If you’re feeling stuck for time, you can also use an optimization tool. We’ve listed the best product description generators on the market.
Shopify Store Structure
H1, H2, and H3 Tags
A little bit more on the technical side of SEO, it’s also important to keep your H1, H2, and H3 tags in mind when optimizing your Shopify product listings.
While you might have a title at the top of your product page, this isn’t necessarily the information that Google, or other search engines, are taking into consideration when they rank your page for the selected keyword. In other words, you need to ensure that you’re speaking the search engine’s language when you structure the content on your page.
Use H1 tags for your most important keywords, then H2 for your second-tiered keywords, and so on.
Duplicates
One of the ways search engines can bump you down is if you have duplicate content. This goes for product page content, meta titles, and meta descriptions. This is important to consider if you have a store that sells similar products. For instance, a clothing store might have multiple product pages for “white t-shirt”, as they have this item in three sizes. To avoid this penalty, try using meta titles such as “white t-shirt, small”, “white t-shirt, medium”, and so on.
Unprofitable Products
As with Amazon, the performance of your products on Shopify is considered when your store is ranked by search engine. If you have many “dead” products - or those that are not as profitable as the rest - it might be a good strategy to take them off of your store for a time, so as not to jeopardize the chances for your other products to take off. Sometimes, you can be penalized on this criterion for sold-out products, too.
URLs
One of the great things about Shopify is that it allows you to customize your page URLs. Edit your product page links to be easily readable and identifiable to search engines. Another thing to keep in mind is to include a keyword in your URL, if possible, as well.
SKUs
SKUs, or Stock Keeping Units, are a way to categorize your product listings. As with all the criteria we’ve discussed so far, this can also play a part in how your products and Shopify store rank online. Ensure that these are unique, as you don’t want to run into a similar issue as the duplicate content we talked about, earlier in this article. Again, it’s important to clean up your SKUs and ensure that your “white t-shirt, small”, has a separate SKU to your “white t-shirt, medium”.
.jpg)
Learning about Shopify Product Photography
As an eCommerce store owner, you might say that your product images are a crucial part of your website – and you would be right! One of the most important parts of your product listing, and heavily weighted in the potential customer’s buying decision, you need to ensure that your product images are accurate, relevant, and reflect your product in the best possible light.
However, it’s not only important to show your product off to your customer. Search engines consider your images when they rank your website, and rank the images themselves, in turn! If a customer is looking for a pair of brown boots, they might search on Google images, for instance, so that they can find the exact pair of boots they want. The order in which the images appear in search is the same process as how websites appear on the main search. So, it’s important to add metatags or alt-text to your images that contain your keywords, as well. Deep-dive into optimizing your images in our ultimate guide to Shopify product photography.
To set your images up for the best chance at a high ranking, and thereby your Shopify store by proxy, follow these tips:
- Choose high-resolution images
- Be consistent when choosing image sizes
- Use multiple images to show your product at different angles
- Optimize your image sizes – use compressed images to reduce loading time
Optimize your images using Listing Insights
Meet Listing Insights - a groundbreaking leap forward in ecommerce visual optimization. You can now harness the power of AI to gain valuable data about how your creative performs on your Shopify store!
Here’s how to get your first soona score:
- Integrate your Shopify storefront with the soona dashboard via Product Catalog
- Receive your soona score– a comprehensive visual content score that assesses your product listing
- Unlock targeted creative recommendations to improve your product listing’s performance
This feature will come available January 23. Until then, you can join the waitlist to receive actionable optimization insights.
Categorization and Custom Labels
Organizing your eCommerce store in a way that is optimized for search engines can be daunting, especially with so many products to categorize. Luckily Shopify has an easy-to-use method for this through their labeling system. Using labels is both important for your store’s SEO, as well as the customer experience and overall UX of your Shopify store. By using labels effectively, customers can find exactly what they’re looking for – and if you incorporate those keywords we talked about, these search engines can find what they’re looking for, too!
Using the same example we discussed earlier, you can break up your items by “women’s t-shirts” and “men’s t-shirts”. Or, you could use “small t-shirts”, “medium t-shirts” and “large t-shirts”.
Choosing labels in accordance with your keywords is especially important, as it plays a significant role in how the search engine ranks your content. If you want to sell your white t-shirts, make sure you’re using the keyword “white t-shirt” in your label, so that the search engine picks it up, rather than something like “t-shirts”, for example. Always be vigilant to categorize your products effectively. It’ll save some hassle in the future!
Here are a few simple ways that you can use labels and tags effectively on your Shopify store, and boost sales for your online retail business:
- Use your keywords – as we discussed, using keywords in your labels creates a consistent experience for both your potential customers and the search engine
- Use multiple tags – don’t limit yourself to one tag! Try to optimize for multiple, so that you have more chances to rank
- Adjust as needed – keep an eye on how your product listings are doing in the search engine, and modify and update as needed
So, there you have it! If you ensure to optimize your Shopify product listings in the five ways we ran through above, you’ll be ranking high in the search engines in no time. One final tip, before we leave you to update your product pages – review your Shopify product listings regularly, so that you can identify any gaps that might arise as trends change and your audience and product offering shifts.
Keen to keep optimizing? For more information on how to optimize your Shopify store, understand the best image sizes, or your product listing on other major online retailers, such as Amazon, visit our content hub, The Checkout, to get all your ecommerce tips & tricks on how to successfully grow your business.
As any eCommerce business owner knows, Shopify is the ultimate place to list your products online. But in a sea of online retailers, it can be hard to stand out from the crowd. The best way to do this, of course, is to climb the rankings for your selected keywords, get the best visibility possible on your Shopify site, and have top-notch creative content if you’re looking to grow your business.
As with any website, understanding SEO is the key to optimizing your place in the search rankings. In the case of Shopify, the higher in the search rankings you are, the better your sales funnel on your product listings.
So how can you optimize your Shopify listing to be seen above the rest? soona works with thousands of Shopify merchants and businesses. So, we know a thing or two on how to optimize your listings both on the SEO side of things
We’ve put together the ultimate guide to optimizing your Shopify listing to boost sales. In this guide, we’ll be running through 5 ways you can shoot to the top of the search rankings, and increase visibility and revenue for your online store. These are:
- Keywords
- Product titles and descriptions
- Shopify store structure
- Product images
- Categorization and labels
So, let’s get into it!
What is SEO for Shopify?
Before we run through how to use SEO tactics to optimize your Shopify store, we must first understand what SEO is, and how it relates to your Shopify product listings.
Standing for Search Engine Optimization, SEO is the practice of optimizing your website against a search engine’s [such as Google or Bing] criteria, to place higher in the rankings for chosen or keywords. At its very base level, we can use keywords in our content to tell the search engine that our website is relevant for content around those keywords. For example, a pizza restaurant would want to focus on keywords “pizza”, and “restaurant”, rather than irrelevant keywords like “burgers”.
{{shopify-ad="/external-components"}}
So where does Shopify come into the SEO equation? As with any website, it’s important to optimize your Shopify store – and product listings – for search engines. This can be done through your product titles and descriptions, your page structure, your URLS, and so much more. We’ll give tips on how to optimize each of these as we go through this guide.
Keywords
Now that we understand the premise of SEO, we know that the first step to getting your website higher in the rankings is to select which keywords you wish to optimize your pages for. Choose keywords that are both relevant to your products and your audience. For instance, if you’re just starting out, continuing the pizza restaurant example, choosing “pizza” as your main keyword can set you up for failure– with so much competition, your keyword will be just a drop in the ocean against big players. In this case, you might want to choose a longtail keyword such as “build your own pizza restaurant”. This effectively creates a niche, singling out customers who are looking specifically for a pizza place that allows them to build their own pizzas, rather than a pizza joint in general. That in turn increases your chance for a conversion, as they will be more invested.
Pro Tip: long tail keywords are those which are longer and more specific. It’s a best SEO practice to include high volume (many searches), longtail (niche) keywords in your keyword strategy.
Pro Tip 2: If you’re feeling stuck, choose one “seed” keyword to start, pop it into a generator and start widening its reach
Product Titles and Descriptions
As with any online retail listing, be it on Shopify, Amazon, or elsewhere, the product is only as good as its title and description. This is the key information that potential customers need when making their buying decision – and will sway those customers, if done effectively.
Now that you know about keywords, and how it affects your place in the search rankings, you can likely guess our next piece of advice! Be sure to include keywords in both your title and description, which both highlight your product, and contain key information that potential customers need when choosing what to buy.
Title
Be sure to place your brand name at the beginning, and then follow with topline information:
- Product name
- Important descriptor (such as the color, the size and dimensions, or the material)
- Important features (this would be its defining feature which makes it stand out from its competitors)
When creating your title, try to avoid putting it entirely in capital letters, and exclude unnecessary information that might deter customers, or is included elsewhere, such as the price.
Once you’ve chosen your title, take a moment to step back and consider it through the eyes of potential customers. Is it unique enough to stand apart from the competition? Does it include your differentiating features and all necessary information that a potential customer would need before they click?
It’s important to review your product listing through the eyes of the customer and adjust as your audience and trends shift.
Product Descriptions
When drafting your product description, keep the guidelines for writing product titles in mind, but simply expand! Include the keywords you want to rank for and speak about them in greater detail. Remember, the potential customers that are reading your description have already clicked on your title because they deemed it fit to their needs and wish to know more – so give them more!
One way you can give more information is to demonstrate how the customer might use your product. For instance, if you’re selling picture frames, you might paint a picture of a mother hanging a photo of her children in the family room, or an art collector displaying their prized pieces in a home gallery.
As with the title, make sure to keep your product descriptions up to date – including the keywords you use – as trends, and customer needs, change. If you’re feeling stuck for time, you can also use an optimization tool. We’ve listed the best product description generators on the market.
Shopify Store Structure
H1, H2, and H3 Tags
A little bit more on the technical side of SEO, it’s also important to keep your H1, H2, and H3 tags in mind when optimizing your Shopify product listings.
While you might have a title at the top of your product page, this isn’t necessarily the information that Google, or other search engines, are taking into consideration when they rank your page for the selected keyword. In other words, you need to ensure that you’re speaking the search engine’s language when you structure the content on your page.
Use H1 tags for your most important keywords, then H2 for your second-tiered keywords, and so on.
Duplicates
One of the ways search engines can bump you down is if you have duplicate content. This goes for product page content, meta titles, and meta descriptions. This is important to consider if you have a store that sells similar products. For instance, a clothing store might have multiple product pages for “white t-shirt”, as they have this item in three sizes. To avoid this penalty, try using meta titles such as “white t-shirt, small”, “white t-shirt, medium”, and so on.
Unprofitable Products
As with Amazon, the performance of your products on Shopify is considered when your store is ranked by search engine. If you have many “dead” products - or those that are not as profitable as the rest - it might be a good strategy to take them off of your store for a time, so as not to jeopardize the chances for your other products to take off. Sometimes, you can be penalized on this criterion for sold-out products, too.
URLs
One of the great things about Shopify is that it allows you to customize your page URLs. Edit your product page links to be easily readable and identifiable to search engines. Another thing to keep in mind is to include a keyword in your URL, if possible, as well.
SKUs
SKUs, or Stock Keeping Units, are a way to categorize your product listings. As with all the criteria we’ve discussed so far, this can also play a part in how your products and Shopify store rank online. Ensure that these are unique, as you don’t want to run into a similar issue as the duplicate content we talked about, earlier in this article. Again, it’s important to clean up your SKUs and ensure that your “white t-shirt, small”, has a separate SKU to your “white t-shirt, medium”.
Learning about Shopify Product Photography
As an eCommerce store owner, you might say that your product images are a crucial part of your website – and you would be right! One of the most important parts of your product listing, and heavily weighted in the potential customer’s buying decision, you need to ensure that your product images are accurate, relevant, and reflect your product in the best possible light.
However, it’s not only important to show your product off to your customer. Search engines consider your images when they rank your website, and rank the images themselves, in turn! If a customer is looking for a pair of brown boots, they might search on Google images, for instance, so that they can find the exact pair of boots they want. The order in which the images appear in search is the same process as how websites appear on the main search. So, it’s important to add metatags or alt-text to your images that contain your keywords, as well. Deep-dive into optimizing your images in our ultimate guide to Shopify product photography.
To set your images up for the best chance at a high ranking, and thereby your Shopify store by proxy, follow these tips:
- Choose high-resolution images
- Be consistent when choosing image sizes
- Use multiple images to show your product at different angles
- Optimize your image sizes – use compressed images to reduce loading time
Optimize your images using Listing Insights
Meet Listing Insights - a groundbreaking leap forward in ecommerce visual optimization. You can now harness the power of AI to gain valuable data about how your creative performs on your Shopify store!
Here’s how to get your first soona score:
- Integrate your Shopify storefront with the soona dashboard via Product Catalog
- Receive your soona score– a comprehensive visual content score that assesses your product listing
- Unlock targeted creative recommendations to improve your product listing’s performance
This feature will come available January 23. Until then, you can join the waitlist to receive actionable optimization insights.
Categorization and Custom Labels
Organizing your eCommerce store in a way that is optimized for search engines can be daunting, especially with so many products to categorize. Luckily Shopify has an easy-to-use method for this through their labeling system. Using labels is both important for your store’s SEO, as well as the customer experience and overall UX of your Shopify store. By using labels effectively, customers can find exactly what they’re looking for – and if you incorporate those keywords we talked about, these search engines can find what they’re looking for, too!
Using the same example we discussed earlier, you can break up your items by “women’s t-shirts” and “men’s t-shirts”. Or, you could use “small t-shirts”, “medium t-shirts” and “large t-shirts”.
Choosing labels in accordance with your keywords is especially important, as it plays a significant role in how the search engine ranks your content. If you want to sell your white t-shirts, make sure you’re using the keyword “white t-shirt” in your label, so that the search engine picks it up, rather than something like “t-shirts”, for example. Always be vigilant to categorize your products effectively. It’ll save some hassle in the future!
Here are a few simple ways that you can use labels and tags effectively on your Shopify store, and boost sales for your online retail business:
- Use your keywords – as we discussed, using keywords in your labels creates a consistent experience for both your potential customers and the search engine
- Use multiple tags – don’t limit yourself to one tag! Try to optimize for multiple, so that you have more chances to rank
- Adjust as needed – keep an eye on how your product listings are doing in the search engine, and modify and update as needed
So, there you have it! If you ensure to optimize your Shopify product listings in the five ways we ran through above, you’ll be ranking high in the search engines in no time. One final tip, before we leave you to update your product pages – review your Shopify product listings regularly, so that you can identify any gaps that might arise as trends change and your audience and product offering shifts.
Keen to keep optimizing? For more information on how to optimize your Shopify store, understand the best image sizes, or your product listing on other major online retailers, such as Amazon, visit our content hub, The Checkout, to get all your ecommerce tips & tricks on how to successfully grow your business.
