SEO for Shopify Sites - I know, I know...

[amp0193]

I know, people on this forum tend to blast SEO as unnecessary, unreliable, and irrelevant.


That being said, it'd be nice to be ranked higher in google search, if there's some basic, common-sense things that I should be doing. My site is 2 years old, is doing 10-15 sales a day (mostly direct search, social media referrals, and google shopping), and I really feel like it should be higher on Google (I'm between page 8 and 10).


What are the things that I absolutely need to be doing to make sure my site is SEO-Friendly. Specifically, my site is run on Shopify.


Assume I know nothing.... because I don't.

 

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[maverick]

Run it through SEO Tools, Software and Articles | SeoSiteCheckup.com - I'm in no way affiliated with them but they have a good (free) tool that gives you a starting point.

 

[Ika]

I don't do SEO, so I can't help you personally - but here are 2 threads that might help:

Really good SEO advice throughout the thread:
SEO in 2017, IT'S ALIVE!

Maybe you can ask him to take a look as he is helping INSIDERS for free:
https://www.thefastlaneforum.com/community/threads/free-seo-advice-2017.74045/

 

[ChrisM]

My suggestion would be to read this.

Its a great beginners guide to what SEO is / how it works from a high level. You'll then have a grip of the basics.

To answer your question what you need to do is (albeit this is overly simplified):

• Make sure the pages of your website is set up so that the keyword (the term people are searching for) is in key parts of the page (H1, URL, Image titles, etc). This will help explain this further.
• Then get links from other websites to your website and the pages of your website you want to rank.

Advice beyond this basic info is subjective. It depends on your site, the competitors, and general trends of that search term (is search of that term growing, or not?).

IMHO, SEO is important, as long as its clear that its a long term strategy and not to be solely relied upon. You won't see results immediately, it will be months. But once you're there, you have targeted traffic getting to your site.

Does this help?

 

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[JAJT]

I'm no SEO expert but google for SEOmoz.

From my understanding that's a pretty solid source for nailing down all the basics you should be doing. Seems like anytime in the past I had an SEO question it was the first resource to pop up and answer it in plain English with no BS.

Although as a non-SEO expert, the best I can say is that it LOOKS like a good source that APPEARS to know what they are talking about but I have no experience to base this on.

 

[maverick]

I'm no SEO expert but google for SEOmoz.

From my understanding that's a pretty solid source for nailing down all the basics you should be doing. Seems like anytime in the past I had an SEO question it was the first resource to pop up and answer it in plain English with no BS.

Although as a non-SEO expert, the best I can say is that it LOOKS like a good source that APPEARS to know what they are talking about but I have no experience to base this on.

Yep, Rand Fishkin (founder of MOZ) is legit. If you run your site through the tool I provided, it will give you a good overview as to what areas need to be tackled. You can then google the specifics to find out what needs to be done. You will end up on MOZ with a lot of these searches.

 

[MarcUK]

What are the things that I absolutely need to be doing to make sure my site is SEO-Friendly. Specifically, my site is run on Shopify.

Hi @amp0193 - Shopify is actually pretty good from an SEO perspective as far as eComm platform goes. I've got a couple of tips you might want to utilise. I could write forever, but only got a spare 10 minutes right now so hope these 3 aspects help you out.

More Keyword Rich Content on Your Categories Pages

In Shopify you can add a description to your category pages, which I assume you know anyway. But what I do is add more content with nice keyword rich text, (not over spamming keywords goes without saying, but LSI versions etc).

Obviously if you were to place that all in the category page content block though it will push your products down the page and below the fold so instead I use an app called MetaFields Editor. This will let you add a new content block under your product listings on the category pages where you can go to town with some great indexable content.

That then means your category page is top and tailed with great SEO content depending on your copywriting skills. Also goes without saying, but also make sure you utilise the Meta Title and Description tags for those category pages.

Discount Code Websites for Backlinks

If people tell you back-links are irrelevant nowadays, please ignore them - it's simply not true. One thing that all the major retailers online have in common is that they are listed on discount code and coupon code websites. Many of these coupon code websites will link to the retailer website, providing a relevant and highly authoritative back-link to you. Having back-links from discount code websites to an eCommerce store is a fantastic and natural looking back-link in Google's eyes - make sense right?

So how do you get them - simples. Create a discount code on your store using the Shopify function, let's say it's AUGUST10. What you will then do is Google "coupon code websites" or "discount code websites" and go submitting this coupon code to them. Many of them will give you the opportunity to place your store URL in there giving you that natural back-link, in a very similar fashion to what Google would expect from an online retailer.

Something else to consider with this strategy is that many of the coupon code websites spider the web looking for discount codes to automatically place on their websites. So it's worth creating a coupon code every month, and writing a blog post about it on your store. The discount code websites will spider the web, find the blog post, and then place that code (and your link hopefully) on their website.

Just as an aside, discount codes also massively help with shopping cart conversions so more reasons to use other than just for SEO.

Using Product Reviews for SEO Keyword Rich Content & Review Schema Mark-Up for CTR

I use this app here: Product Reviews. It lets people leave a review on your product page (you have the ability to publish or not publish so you have the control). There are many benefits to doing this, first up positive reviews are going to help with conversions. But it also places the star graphics in the Schema Mark-up which then appears in the Google listings, which will help with CTR, and of course CTR is a ranking factor - see this example in a Google search result:

Now the other great thing about this and where the real SEO can kick-in is that you can write reviews yourself. So what you could do is go over to Amazon, find reviews on a similar product, re-write it to change it up, and place some more keyword rich text in there then place those on your own products. Then you can publish and back-date the reviews to look natural.

Benefits - you can get real looking reviews to help conversions, the review data stars in your mark-up therefore displaying in search results (CTR!), and start to place more SEO keyword rich text in your product listing that you might not have been able to do with the standard product description field.

Hope this all connects together as I might not have explained it too well.

So those are just 3 tips to start with, I could probably write a load more given more time.

 

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[JAJT]

Discount Code Websites for Backlinks

That's actually a pretty good, simple tip that anyone can do immediately. Thanks for sharing!

Rep+

 

[MarcUK]

That's actually a pretty good, simple tip that anyone can do immediately

Thanks - and I wouldn't normally recommend the likes of Fiverr for SEO - but this is certainly one task you could probably get fulfilled there with no concerns.

 

[cor]

Whether it's Shopify or any kind of website, your best bet is to put together a content marketing strategy. If you want to rank your product pages organically, good luck. You're better off creating content around long tail keywords that share the audience of your products. Tortuga backpacks is a great example of this.

You can SEO the shit out of your site and hope for the best, or be proactive and create content that gets surfaced in low-competition searches.

 

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[exclusives88]

I've been getting decent orders from organic search results which is why I want to start focusing on SEO.

I want to start ranking my collections page where it shows all of variations for one product. On the bottom of the collection page (below the products), I write about what this product is, what they are used for and a video of the product. Within 5 days, the main keyword for this product is ranked #65. Before, it has 0 ranking.

I want to push it to page 1 eventually. What can I do to rank even higher? My idea was to write a blog post and linking back to the collection page. Start reaching out to other domain owners with higher authority to see if they'd want to publish my blog (but not collection page). Is this the right way of approaching? Any other tricks or ideas?

 

[sparechange]

Check out alex Becker on YouTube, he is a Seo guy, and IMO the only YouTube person that's not a broke bum