How does SEO differ for Shopify stores compared to other platforms?

Built-in Features for Shopify SEO

Compared to other platforms, you may find Shopify doesn't give you the control you need over the coding and design, but they do offer excellent SEO options, ensuring that you use SEO best practices which are kept up to date with Google guidelines. 

The themes have SEO friendly designs, in addition to the range of built-in SEO features you can take advantage of, that may not be available on other platforms. These include:

• 301 redirects
• Automatically generated robots.txt files
• Automatic sitemaps
• Canonical tags
• Metadata support
• SSL certification
• Structured data support

Other SEO Suggestions

In addition to the excellent built-in SEO features provided by Shopify, there are SEO elements that should be carried out, helping your store climb to the top of search results, reaching your target audience, and encouraging them to visit your store.

Keyword Placement

The right keywords are instrumental to your SEO success. It's important that keywords are carefully and thoroughly researched and analysed, keeping your target audience in mind. The placement of your selected keywords must also be done with great care. Recommended keyword placements in your Shopify store includes:

• Image ALT tags
• Meta descriptions
• Page titles
• Product descriptions
• URL's

Site Structure

It is important that you improve your store for your visitors and search engines. Google prefers an organised, easy to navigate, and fast loading website, as it provides the best user experience (UX). With a well-optimised store, search engine crawlers can crawl and index your website easier, helping to improve your ranking. When it comes to optimising your store, you want to keep the following in mind:

• Navigation menu – helps visitors find what they are looking for quickly. The Shopify built-in tools can help you to create a category hierarchy
• Image optimisation – with solid descriptions, your images are important when appealing to your audience. Large pictures slow down your store, so ensure they are compressed, while adding ALT text to help crawlers crawl your site effectively
• URL structure – your URL catalogue needs to be structures and logical. Shopify makes it easy when creating URL's, helping you make them user-friendly
• Internal links – internal links are essential for search engines and your audience, helping them understand how one page of your store relates to another. They should be used throughout your content and product descriptions, ensuring users can find what they are looking for with ease.

Conclusion

Shopify offers excellent SEO features that are not always offered by other ecommerce platforms. When you master Shopify SEO you can enjoy a higher ranking, reaching your audience, boosting brand visibility, while driving quality traffic to your store. Genie Crawl has an expert team of designers and writers who can bring your store to life, helping you reach your audience and drive traffic to your store. Call us now to find out more or complete our online contact form and take advantage of our free evaluation and quote.