You’ve set your Shopify store, which looks good; and, you just received your first order. Perfect! Now, the next thing to do is to attract more visitors through Google and turn them into customers. How do you do that?
Imagine that when people are searching for some products/services that match the ones provided by you, and your Shopify store appears at the top of the search results. Won’t it increase traffic to your website? Of course, it will.
However, it is not easy to make your website rank high on Google. You need the help of a Shopify SEO agency to do plenty of things to improve your online store and make it rise up the Google ranks.
1. Register Your Store (Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools)
If you are serious about the SEO of your Shopify store, then it is essential to tell search engines about your website so that they regularly crawl it. The easiest way to do it is to register your online store with Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.
It doesn’t matter which platform you used to develop your online store, register your store to make search engines crawl it.
While registering the store, ensure that you consider both the www and non-www version of the website. In addition, get it registered even if it’s the site’s secure and non-secure version (http:// and https://).
2. Submit the Sitemap of Your Shopify Store
After you’ve registered your online store with Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools, the next step is to submit the website’s sitemap to these services. Submitting the XML sitemap ensures that your site is indexed securely and accurately.
If you have a Shopify store, then it automatically generates the sitemap for you. All you need to do is to submit the sitemap URL (http://www.domainname.com/sitemap.xml) to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.
Step to submit the sitemap:
- Go to the website’s dashboard
- Click ‘Sitemaps’
If you are not sure how to do it, hire a good Shopify SEO agency to register your website and submit its sitemap on Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.
3. Get Secure Socket Layer (SSL)
Search engines give preference to sites with ‘https://’ over ones with ‘http://’; it is because the former comes with the secure socket layer (SSL). Websites with SSL are secure. On the other hand, sites with the SSL are opened with a warning message, which tells visitors that the site is not secure to open. As the warning message may encourage visitors to leave the website, please ensure that your online store is safe to browse. Get an SSL certificate for your store.
When you’ve a Shopify store, you get an SSL certificate with the subscription. All you need to do is to activate it. Below are some ways to do it:
- Go to your Shopify site’s dashboard
- Click on Sales Channels
- Select Online Store
- Choose Domains
If you are moving your online store to Shopify, securing your website with an SSL certificate can be a challenging task. Here, you need to do some technical work to ensure that you don’t affect the current search engine rankings of your website. Instead of handling the job on your own, hire a good SEO agency that offers specialized Shopify SEO services. You’ll find the best seo companies listed in your country or niche online.
4. Improve the Speed
Honestly, nobody likes an online store that takes several minutes to load a page. Today, there are more than 20 million eCommerce sites around the world. Apart from that, the modern-day Internet is fast. It means people have lots of options when one website doesn’t load in just a few seconds.
It doesn’t matter if your online store has the best products/services at cost-effective prices, people won’t shop from it when the site doesn’t load quickly.
When it comes to increasing the speed of your Shopify website, options are limited. It happens because when you have a Shopify store, you don’t get the freedom to get your hosting. In addition, you don’t have many templates to choose from.
However, there are still a few things you can do to make your website load fast:-
- Compression tools, such as Tiny Png, help reduce the size of images you are adding to your site.
- Avoid using custom code or external scripts
- If there are Shopify apps that you are not using right now, remove them.
- Although sliders can be attractive, they affect the speed of your site. If possible, do not use sliders.
5. Engage Visitors with Your Store
The time an average user spends browsing a website is called ‘Dwell time’. Ask the best Shopify SEO agency, and you come to know that the more time one spends on a website, the more likely a website performs well on the search engine. It is because ‘Dwell time’ makes search engines believe that users are satisfied with your website.
Here are some ways to engage people with your online store:
- Write creative, useful content that engages people. In addition to website content, add informative blogs that tell visitors about your products or services.
- Ensure that your website is easy to navigate.
- Use internal linking to take visitors to different pages of your website. It will make them spend more time on the site.
- In addition to quality images, add informative videos to your website. It will make visitors spend more time on your website.
6. Do Keyword Research
When it comes to improving performance, one of the best ways is to add keywords that people are searching for. Here, you need to work with a Shopify SEO company. Experienced professionals of the agency use a range of tools to do keyword research and find the right keywords for your website.
While doing keyword research, the company does different things:
- It finds keywords around products/services people are searching for on the Internet.
- It analyzes the volume of searches on particular keywords.
- It figures out how difficult it is to make a keyword rank on the search engine.
After this, the agency uses the collected information to determine how to use different keywords to rank the website higher on search engines and generate traffic for the store.
7. Pay Attention to Page Titles
Title is one of the key elements of a webpage. Although not all visitors pay attention to the page title, search engines consider it as a key piece of information to understand what exactly the page contains.
When working to improve the rankings of your Shopify website, ensure that its page titles aren’t vague in nature. They should have a combination of focus keywords and information.
While working on your website’s page titles, ensure that you pay attention to the homepage titles and other pages.
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Engaging Meta Descriptions
In addition to the page title, work on your website’s meta descriptions. A well-written, engaging meta description is capable of encouraging people to click on your website’s link on the search engine. While writing the meta description of your site, you need to consider a plenty of things, such as:
- Ensure the characters are under 180
- The information is accurate
- The description contains keywords
Paired with the meta title, the description part is visible on the Internet and tells people about your services/products even when people haven’t clicked on to visit your website.
If you have already written the meta description of your web page but it doesn’t have a keyword, go to the backend section and edit it to add the required keyword.
Conclusion
In the modern Internet-friendly world, your Shopify store can help take your business to the next level on the Internet. All you need to do is use some useful SEO tools and strategies. If you aren’t aware of them, hire a reliable Shopify SEO agency. The company and its experienced professionals can use their skills and expertise to improve your site’s rankings on search engines. Partner with the best professionals and watch your online store reaching new heights of success.
All the best!
