Shopify is one of the top-rated ecommerce solutions which enables a store owner to setup an online store with built-in features, countless themes and the most important an effective framework. If you’ve chosen Shopify platform for your online business, then you’ve done your research well and are aware of the capabilities and features the platform boasts about.
Understanding importance of SEO and its impact on my business.
Today, when most of the businesses are moving online and ecommerce is booming thanks to the robust platforms powering it, there is nothing holding back your business from success and a generous profit. But success never comes easy! It’s one thing to build; it’s another thing to make it work. Your Shopify website design team has built an online store which you think meets all the prerequisites but what good is a website if there is no traffic coming in. That’s where SEO comes in. If SEO is an unfriendly term, it simply means Search Engine Optimization. Google and Bing, the two primary search engines work on a lot of algorithms which push the most referential content to the top. It’s well understood that any user will click on the top few links with lesser chances of going to the second page of SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages). Until unless your Shopify store is not SEO optimized for Google and Bing, there are very low chances of your business picking up any pace.
Here, we learn a few tips on how to optimize an online store and to have your site feature on top of the pages. The more visible your business is, the more traffic you will receive. Shopify is an SEO friendly platform which is equipped with the necessary features to help you rank your website on top however it still requires a little work to make it fully SEO optimized.
Keywords are important
Many a times we take keywords lightly. These small phrases of three to five words can really change your business operations. Stronger the keyword is, stronger is the SEO optimization. In order to use the right keywords in your product descriptions, website content, you need to invest some extra time to research on various aspects. Firstly, know the kind of products you are selling. Now think like a customer who would be searching for a particular item, what specific words he would type in order to search for it. Before you finalize the keyword, make certain that the keyword is relevant and has an adequate monthly search. There are various tools online like Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush, Keyword Tool and many more which can help you with the right statistics. If all this seems like a hassle, you can opt for professional SEO services that are skilled in website optimization.
Optimize your pages
Once you have your keywords ready, it’s time to use them for meta tags, title tags, descriptions and also in your URL. Meta description should be relevant and engaging enough which will make the users click on the link. Google and Bing not only use the content while indexing your site, the algorithms use the images too. Therefore it is important to have an image description also known as alternative text or alt text. Well written alt tags will help images to appear in various searches thereby increasing the CTR (click through rate) for your site. This step is technically more advanced than keyword research. If you’re up for some challenge go ahead and make some changes or else you can push the envelope to the experts who deliver a complete range of Shopify ecommerce website development services.
Connect your store’s sitemap with Google and Bing
Before you submit the sitemap, it’s beneficial to register your Shopify site on Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. By registering your site on these major search engines you are enabling your site to get crawled which means that the search engine will recognize your site and might index it which then increases the chances of ranking in searches. Further to this, submit your sitemap which is a file containing all individual pages of your website. A sitemap enables the search engines to index and appear in relevant searches. Shopify stores can automatically generate the XML file for your sitemap.
Build backlinks directed to your store
Backlinks are a great way to increase traffic to your site. Ranking your page is all about building trust for your website. The more relevant the content is, more is the traffic and the time spent on the site before the user decides to go back to the search results. All these factors increase your chances to rank higher. Having backlinks for your website is like creating a network of relevant data spread over various websites. This can be through mentions on social media, citations, blogs etc. When it comes to security, search engines are very particular about it, therefore it’s advisable to have an SSL certificate if you want your site to get an added advantage on rankings on both the search engines.
Maintain best practices
For any business to launch or sustain, social media is the most important tool to communicate with its audience. It’s another channel to push out information about various products and have the social media accounts linked back to the online store. If you’re looking at increasing traffic through paid mediums, then social media accounts can help you reach a wider audience. Additionally, the main reason SEO gets hampered is due to slow speed. Like consumers, search engines too prefer fast loading websites and give it more preference. Boost the speed of your website by reducing the size of the images, using common fonts and lesser custom codes. Investing in Google paid ads is also another tool through which you can attract a wider audience and also gain some credibility by Google.
Lastly, if these tips are incorporated for your Shopify website design, not only will your business yield results but gain visibility and traffic as well. One way to ensure that you’ve ticked the right boxes in building and sustaining your site is to take assistance from professional SEO services or connect with experts who provide Shopify ecommerce website development services. It’s not every day you build your business from scratch for that reason the right tools need to be used effectively.
