Your Complete Guide To SEO For Shopify

Want your Shopify store to rank higher in search results and win more customers? Our complete guide to SEO for Shopify has the actionable tips and strategi
Lawrence Hitches
May 28, 2024

Want your Shopify store to rank higher in search results and win more customers? Our complete guide to SEO for Shopify has the actionable tips and strategies you need. 

Want your Shopify store to rank higher in search results and win more customers? Our complete guide to SEO for Shopify has the actionable tips and strategies you need. 

You’ve built a beautiful Shopify store with incredible products. But you can’t wait for shoppers to stumble across it. To attract visitors to your online store and win those all-important sales, you need to rank high in the search results. 

That’s where search engine optimisation comes in. 

While Shopify has some in-built SEO, there are proven tactics you can use to optimise your Shopify store and get the best visibility. Some are easy on-page tweaks; others are long-term strategies you must invest in over time.  

In this Shopify SEO guide, we’ll cover everything you can do to improve your Shopify business’s ranking. 

Let’s dive in. 

Table of Contents

  • Introduction to SEO for Shopify
  • Why SEO Matters for Shopify Stores
  • Step-by-Step Shopify SEO
  • Advanced Shopify SEO Tips and Tricks
  • Securing Your Shopify Store with HTTPS
  • Summary

Introduction to SEO for Shopify 

The main goal of SEO for Shopify is for your online store to be found when someone types a search term into the search engine. The aim is to get your website as high as possible on the search engine results page to give you the best chance of winning click-throughs. 

To do this, you need to optimise your store so that search engines know exactly what your store is about and think that your store is the best result for the search. 

Here’s the good news: 

Shopify online stores have some built-in SEO, meaning a few things are taken care of automatically, including:

  • Auto-generated canonical tags are added to pages to prevent duplicate content from appearing in search results.
  • Your website’s sitemap.xml and robots.txt are automatically generated.
  • Themes automatically generate title tags that include your store name.
  • URL redirects are automatically created for product or collection page URLs when you click the ‘create a URL redirect for’ box.  

But this is by no means comprehensive. 

Therefore, to give yourself the best chance of ranking in search results, you must ensure you’re ticking all the Shopify SEO boxes. 

Why SEO Matters for Shopify Stores

According to Google, 51% of shoppers use Google to research a purchase they are going to make online. 

If you want to grow your Shopify store, you need to get in front of these ready-to-buy shoppers when they are looking for your exact products. 

Here’s why SEO matters for Shopify stores:

  • Shopify SEO increases the long-term visibility of your store. 
  • It helps you reach customers who are actively seeking to buy your products.
  • It drives quality traffic to your site, which leads to improved conversion rates.
  • In the long term, SEO for Shopify helps you sustainably grow your business.  

Can You Do SEO On Your Own, Or Should You Hire An Expert?

The answer is… it depends. 

Some Shopify SEO tactics are quick and easy to implement. However, other strategies require more time and expertise, which is where a reputable SEO agency can help. 

For example, link-building requires a long-term strategy combining digital PRcontent creation, outreach, measurement, and more. Working with an expert SEO agency, you can ensure you are earning backlinks from authoritative sites that people trust and respect.

How Long Does It Take To See Results From SEO?

It’s no secret that achieving SEO rankings takes time. Typically, you’ll start seeing some results between 4 and 12 months. Depending on your strategy and investment, it can take up to a year to see consistent improvement.

For example, consider how competitive your keywords are. If you’re targeting competitive keywords, it will take longer to achieve good rankings. 

Also, how much resource are you investing in your SEO strategy? The quality of the SEO professionals working on your plan and the amount of budget you invest play a significant role in how quickly you see results. 

The bottom line?

Shopify SEO is a long game. Don’t be disheartened when you don’t see immediate results—know that every tactic works behind the scenes toward a bigger goal. 

To give you a helping hand, we’ll walk you through the SEO tactics and tools you need. 

Step-by-Step Shopify SEO

Optimising Site Structure

Your Shopify site architecture is critical to SEO success.

When we talk about Shopify site architecture, we’re talking about how you organise your website’s content – the pages and posts. 

Think about when you visit a site and the content is clunky. The way it is organised and linked doesn’t make sense. 

You’re not going to spend long on the website.

On the other hand, when the site’s layout is SEO-friendly,, the structure is easily navigable and flows naturally. Visitors tend to spend more time browsing the website, which helps your search rankings.

A simple Shopify site architecture also helps search engines to crawl the content and pages, which is how they rank your site. 

How do you optimise your site structure for search engines?

Shopify has various built-in elements to help, including a logical hierarchy of content categories, an easy-to-understand structure for URLs, and pages without iframes (which Google advises to use only when really necessary).

The key to optimising your site structure is to focus on your shoppers and how to meet their needs. Nearly 40% of people will stop engaging with a website if the content or layout is too confusing.

Choose a logical SEO-friendly site layout that means your homepage is only a couple of clicks away from products. 

For example:

Homepage > Category Pages > Product Pages

Or

Homepage > Category Pages > Subcategory Pages > Product Pages

Internal links are another tool to improve your site structure. 

They help with navigation optimisation, meaning visitors can navigate your website more easily and help Google index your URLs.

However, it’s essential to ensure there’s a purpose behind each internal link. The goal is to provide value to users rather than overwhelm them with too much information. 

Building your URL structure

When it comes to setting up URL hierarchies on Shopify, things can get a little tricky. Shopify can be somewhat limiting if you’re trying to create child pages off collection pages.

For example, if you have a collection page for t-shirts and want a child page for short-sleeve t-shirts (like this: /collections/t-shirts/short-sleeve-t-shirts/), it may not always be possible depending on your theme or how your site was built. As a workaround, you may need to place child pages closer to the root domain. While this can make your site structure less tidy, it can actually help with site authority and make it easier for search engines to crawl and index your pages.

URL Slug Optimization

Every page on your Shopify store has a URL slug, and you want to make sure it’s optimized for SEO. Your slug is essentially a brief summary of what your page is about, and it’s also a small but important ranking factor for search engines.

  • Keep it descriptive and easy to read: Make sure to include your target keyword whenever possible.
    • Bad: https://www.yourstore.com/collection/item-35672
    • Better: https://www.yourstore.com/collection/pink-running-shoes

Enhancing User Experience

User experience and SEO are intertwined. Your SEO will only succeed if your Shopify store has a good UX. 

More importantly, a bad UX will drive potential customers away. Nobody wants to spend time browsing a slow, clunky, and difficult-to-navigate site. 

Another way of thinking about user experience is as user engagement – is your site set up to engage users and keep them on it for longer?

Here are some other vital things you can do to improve your Shopify UX:

  • Choose a responsive design so your Shopify store works and looks great on any device.  
  • Create menu options that are easy to understand and for customers to narrow down. A big part of a great user experience is ease of navigation. More than half (61.5%) of all visitors leave websites with poor navigation. On the other hand, Forrester Research reported that a well-thought-out, frictionless UX design could raise conversion rates by up to 400%. Your menu titles can help by describing their contents and being in an order that makes sense. 
  • Use breadcrumbs to show users the path they have taken through the site. 
  • Add a search bar to help visitors find what they want.
  • Speed up your page loads. Site speed improvement is an essential UX element that impacts SEO – we’ll delve into it more later. 

It’s important to consider not only how users are visiting the site but also what is accessible to Google bots to maximise crawlability on the platform. Some Shopify themes can be JavaScript heavy, which can slow down the site and potentially cause crawling or rendering issues for Google bots. 

That said, Shopify sites are generally user-friendly and are one of the best CMS platforms to create a UX-focused site. 

Keyword Research for Shopify Stores

Now that your site structure and UX are optimised, it’s time to work on your keywords. 

Targeting the right keywords is a critical part of your Shopify SEO success. 

To find your target keywords for ecommerce, think about the search queries your ideal customers are making. 

Ideally, you want to create a list of keywords that covers:

  • Primary keywords: 1-2 words that most directly relate to your brand and products. 

For example, if your Shopify store sells tents, your primary keywords might be “camping tents” and “family tents”.

  • Secondary keywords: Secondary keywords are generally synonyms or close variations of the primary keyword. They help your content rank for a broader range of keywords and closely related subtopics. 

For example, secondary keywords for the tent store might be “lightweight camping tent” and “hiking tent”.

  • Longtail keywords: These are longer phrases that are more specific to what your potential customers might be searching for. These are often phrased as questions. 

For example, “what’s the best camping tent for a family of 4?”

Longtail keywords catch visitors further along the purchase journey – shoppers who know what they want and are ready to buy. They can also capture people in their final research stages who are looking for the answer to a direct question, which could be a blocker if they cannot find the answer. You’re more likely to win a sale if you can rank for these terms and answer the questions your customers are searching for. 

How do you know what keywords to target? 

Go to Google’s Keyword Planner.

Google Keyword Planner is one of the free keyword research tools, and it’s easy to use. 

Simply put in the search term that you think your potential customers will type in when they’re trying to find something in your store (e.g., “family tent”).

Google Keyword Planner will return lots of results and help you choose the exact keywords that will help you rank your store. 

When you type in the keyword, the tool will present a search terms analysis: 

  1. How many monthly searches people are doing for the exact keyword you typed in (aka search volume)
  2. Other relevant keywords and their search volume

From here, you can choose your primary and secondary keywords to rank for. 

Your primary keyword will have the most volume and the most relevance. Your secondary keywords will support this, so they must have good volume and relevance to the primary keyword. 

Here are some more excellent keyword research tools to use:

Now that you’ve determined the keywords you want to rank for, it’s time to implement them in your Shopify store. 

Product Page Optimisation Techniques

How can you make your product pages soar up the search rankings?

There are lots of elements to your product page optimisation, but here we’re going to focus on the three most important:

  • Product descriptions
  • Images
  • Title tags and meta descriptions

Let’s tackle them one by one:

 

  • Create unique SEO-optimised product descriptions

Product descriptions are essential in getting your Shopify site in front of ready-to-buy shoppers. 

Think of your product description as a virtual salesperson. It should explain what the product does and – most importantly – why someone should buy it. A detailed, accurate, and engaging product description will do much more than help you rank in search results – they can persuade visitors to buy. 

Put your keyword research to work in your product descriptions. Product names often have lower search volumes but target people who already know what they are looking to buy and therefore are closer to the end of the funnel. This makes targeting product terms highly valuable to your strategy. By including them in your product descriptions, you can rank higher for relevant keywords and drive more organic search traffic to your website, directly to the final stage in their journey. 

Another tip for product descriptions is to make your text unique. Using duplicate content on your Shopify site can impact search rankings and result in a sitewide traffic loss. Particularly avoid copying and pasting descriptions from manufacturers and suppliers, as Google will only show the site who posted the content originally in search results. This is a common SEO mistake that many ecommerce sites make and making your PDPs unique could be what sets you apart from your competitors. 

Having unique product descriptions also gives you an opportunity to shout about your USPs. Convince people to purchase from you rather than from your competitors with help from your product descriptions. 

  • Optimise product images 

Images are crucial to SEO success. Just like the text on your pages, search engines crawl the names of files on your Shopify store to help rank your pages. 

You might have hundreds of images on your Shopify store, but Google will only know what they are about if you optimise them. 

To ensure search engines can read your files, name each image file according to the content rather than a generic image file name. 

For example, use 5person-family-tent.jpg rather than IMG1123.jpg.

Here’s the catch—you can’t change file names in Shopify. You need to name the files before uploading them or replacing old ones with new, renamed ones. 

Next, write descriptive alt tags (also known as alt text or alt descriptions) to explain each image’s content. In addition to helping search engines understand image content, alt text serves as an explanation for visually impaired users when a browser can’t or fails to render an image.

Shopify makes it easy to add alt tags . The trick is to keep it brief and descriptive—125 or fewer characters are recommended. 

It can take a bit of practice to get them right, so check out HubSpot’s useful guide on how to write effective alt texts for your images. 

The quality of your images can also have a major impact on user experience. Many people return items that do not match the description or are not what they expected. Better-quality images that truly represent the product help you reduce that chance. 

 

  • Write SEO-friendly title tags and meta descriptions. 

 

The first challenge is to appear high in the search results. Next, you must convince shoppers to visit your site over your competitors. 

That’s where meta descriptions and title tag optimisation come in. 

Title tags and meta descriptions are the text shown in the search engine results to encourage users to click the link and visit your store. 

Here’s how to optimise your Shopify title tags and meta descriptions:

  1. Write for humans first. Clearly describe the content on the page and make it interesting enough to click.
  2. Keep title tags under 70 characters, and ideally under 60. Backlinko found title tags with 40 to 60 characters have the highest click-through rate – an 8.9% better average click-through rate than those that fall outside this range.
  3. Include your target keywords near the beginning. This proves to search engines that your site matches a searcher’s term.
  4. Use primary and secondary keywords in your meta description, but don’t overload it (remember the first tip above). 

Building High-Quality Backlinks to Your Store

Backlinks are when another site links to your Shopify site. Search engines can see that you’re worth linking to when you have many quality backlinks. They take every good backlink as a sign that you are a high-quality and trustworthy site, which can help you rank higher.

But we’re not talking about just any backlinks. 

You need to ensure the backlinks your site attracts are from reputable, high quality, and relevant sites. 

While backlinks have always been important to SEO, Google now places less emphasis on the number of backlinks you have – and more on the quality of those links.

In other words, focus on quality over quantity. 

How do you gain backlinks?

Link building is an off-page SEO strategy, which means it is something you cannot simply tweak on your website – it takes place off your website. 

While word of mouth and link building can happen over time, there are five key link building strategies you can use to speed it up:

  1. Work out what sites you want to earn links from. Consider suppliers, manufacturers, key influencers, industry media, brands, and more. Email your contacts to ask if they will link to your store. 
  2. Ask for mentions to become links. Use mention.com to find any online sites where your store is mentioned without being linked. Reach out and ask them to add the link.
  3. Investigate your competitors. Who are your competitors getting links from? Use Moz’s Link Explorer or other tools like Semrush and Ahrefs to investigate and use this for ideas.
  4. Write quality content. This is where your content marketing comes in. You need to give other sites something worth linking to. Other sites want to link to you if you have unique, engaging content. 
  5. Write guest posts. Look for relevant guest post opportunities and repurpose some of your content for their website. 

Content Marketing Strategies for Shopify

Content marketing is essential for your Shopify SEO. It helps your pages rank higher in search results for their target keyword, increases your website’s authority, helps with link building, and brings more value to your customers. 

Look at it this way: adding a blog to your website can increase your chances of ranking in search results by as much as 434%.

Knowing what content your ideal customers want to read and watch is vital. The more useful and valuable your content is seen to be for your audience, the higher Google will rank you. 

Blogging for ecommerce encourages visitors to stay longer, helping to improve search engine rankings while pushing shoppers through the purchase funnel. 

This is where you need to put your research hat on. 

There are plenty of tools out there to help with content creation ideas – start with these two:

  • Buzzsumo is easy to use. Simply type in your keyword or site, and see which content gets the most views and shares. (This is a paid tool, but it offers a 30-day free trial.)
  • Answer the Public helps you discover the questions your potential customers are asking. For the tent store, you’d type in “camping tents” and choose your region and language. The tool will return lots of questions, such as “Are pop-up tents good for camping?” and “What types of camping tents?”, which you can develop into unique content that your target audience will love. (This is a paid tool, but you can create a free account to get three daily searches.) 

Finally, ask your customers what they want to learn about. Send out a survey to your email list or ask on social media. 

Now that you’ve compiled a list of potential content topics, it’s time to think about content creation. How will you turn them into unique, helpful, and fun blog content for your online store?

For our camping tent store, we could have a series of short videos reviewing different tents, a long article explaining the types of tents and their applications, inspirational articles listing the best places to camp on Easter weekend, and so on. 

Always remember that any content you produce for your website should be helpful, high quality, and have a purpose. If it does not tick all of these boxes, then you should reconsider creating it. 

What Are Topic Clusters and How to Build Them

A topic cluster is a smart way to organize content by grouping related web pages around a central theme. Not only does this method make your site easier for both users and search engines to navigate, but it also boosts your authority on the topic you’re covering.

What Makes Up a Topic Cluster?

  • Pillar Page: This is the main page that covers a broad topic in-depth. For instance, if you’re focusing on “hiking shoes,” your pillar page would cover everything about that topic.
  • Cluster Pages: These are the supporting pages that dive deeper into specific areas related to your pillar topic. For example, you might have pages dedicated to “zero drop boots” or “steel toe hiking boots.”

How to Build Your Own Topic Clusters

Step 1: Pick Your Core Topic

Start by deciding on a broad subject area you want to be known for, like “digital marketing” or “healthy living.” This will be the foundation of your pillar page.

Step 2: Research Related Subtopics

Once you’ve got your main topic, break it down into smaller, more specific subtopics. You can use tools like Google’s Keyword Planner, Ahrefs, or Ubersuggest to help you figure out which areas to focus on for your cluster pages.

Step 3: Create Your Pillar Page

Next, put together a detailed, long-form article or guide on your broad topic. This should be your go-to resource on the subject and should link to all the cluster pages that cover related subtopics.

Step 4: Develop Your Cluster Content

Now, create individual pages for each subtopic. Make sure these are thorough, useful, and offer valuable insights. Interlink these pages with your pillar page and also link them back to each other where it makes sense to strengthen your internal structure.

Step 5: Optimize for SEO

Ensure your content is optimized by naturally including relevant keywords, tweaking meta tags, and creating descriptive URLs. Tools like Yoast SEO or Moz can be a big help in making sure your pages are SEO-friendly.

Step 6: Monitor and Adjust

Use analytics tools to track how your topic clusters are performing. Keep an eye on key metrics like page views, bounce rates, and the time visitors spend on each page. Use this data to refine your strategy and improve underperforming pages.

Step 7: Rinse and Repeat

Keep building out new pillar pages and clusters. The more you expand your content library, the more authority you’ll build in different areas, giving your site even more visibility.

By following these steps, you’ll be able to use topic clusters to boost your site’s rankings, making it easier for users to find you and stay engaged.

 

Leveraging Shopify SEO Apps and Tools

We’ve already discussed how Shopify has some in-built SEO features to help you get off to a solid start. There are also lots of good paid and free SEO tools you can use to implement your SEO strategy. 

Here are some of the best paid tools for SEO analysis:

  • Moz for a complete SEO tool to discover keywords, optimise content, fix technical SEO issues, etc.
  • Ahrefs for a complete SEO tool suite for research, audits, tracking, etc. (provides some free tools, too). 
  • Semrush to track keywords, explore competitor sites, and more (also offers free tools).

Free SEO tools:

SEO plugins for Shopify:

There are over 230 SEO plugins for Shopify. From image optimization to page speed optimization and content creation, there’s something for everything.

Here are some you can use today to supercharge your Shopify SEO:

Shopify Finder for SEO

Shopify Finder is a comprehensive ecommerce product research app.

You can use it to:

  • Surface in-demand products from across the Shopify and AliExpress ecosystem based on profit and order trends
  • Reveal the specs behind your competitors’ products, including pricing and order data
  • Discover the shelf life of the hottest products to plan your next offer

Shopify Finder provides up to 150 daily Shopify database queries. After a free trial, it costs $29/month.

Schema Plus for SEO

Bypass manual schema implementation with Schema Plus for SEO.

Schema Plus for SEO was developed by ex-Google engineers and provides seamless implementation for structured data.

The app has an intuitive user interface, which makes it easy to use.

After a seven-day free trial, the app will run you $14.99/month.

Tiny SEO Image Optimize, Speed

Improve the speed of your Shopify store with Tiny SEO Image Optimize, Speed.

This app provides several useful features for boosting the speed of your Shopify store and keeping it optimized, including:

  • Image compression and lazy load configuration
  • Broken link detection
  • Alt text generator

The app is free to install. There are also paid options for advanced features.

There are also a variety of apps and plugins for basic website additions such as site search or filtering options for your ecommerce store.

For the best and most recent app recommendations, check out the Shopify app store.

SEO plugins for Shopify:

There are over 230 SEO plugins for Shopify. From image optimisation to page speed optimisation and content creation, there’s something for everything. 

There are also a variety of apps and plugins for basic website additions such as site search or filtering options for your ecommerce store. 

For the best and most recent app recommendations, check out the Shopify app store

Advanced Shopify SEO Tips and Tricks 

Ready to take your Shopify SEO to the next level? Follow these advanced Shopify SEO tips and tricks. 

Mobile Optimisation and Responsive Design

Is your store mobile-friendly? A mobile-friendly and responsive store design contributes massively to your UX, improving your ranking. 

If Google sees pages load slowly on your Shopify store or your site isn’t mobile responsive, it’s less likely to recommend your website in its results.

And it’s not only search engines you should be thinking about.

Consumers want to visit online stores on their mobile devices. Smartphones account for over 70% of retail website visits worldwide, and mobile ecommerce revenue is projected to reach $728.28 billion in 2025.

The good news is that every theme on the Shopify Theme Store is mobile-friendly. 

If you want to double-check your store’s mobile optimisation, use Semrush’s website checker tool. You can also use Google Search Console for mobile usability metrics. 

Site Speed

How fast is your site loading? 

It’s no secret that customers care about website speeds. Today, people expect your site to load instantly, especially when using mobile devices. The slower your Shopify site is, the less likely people are to stay to browse and buy your products. 

Your site speed is also a big deal for your SEO. Google wants to serve pages with a good user experience, which means fast pages are considered an advantage when it evaluates page experience.

How fast is fast enough?

The best practice for page speed is under two seconds. 

To check your site, run it through PageSpeed Insights. You will see how fast your site is and a list of improvements you can make to help speed up your online store on mobile and desktop. 

Here are some quick fixes to speed up your Shopify store:

  • Disable unused apps

Too many apps could be slowing down your store. Shopify recommends using a maximum of around 20 apps.

Do an app audit on your store – do you have apps you’re no longer using? 

To remove unnecessary apps, go to your Shopify Admin and click “Apps” followed by “Apps and sales channel settings.”

Then hover above the apps you’re not using and click “Uninstall.”

  • Compress images 

Online stores love showcasing beautiful product images, but there’s a catch: images are the biggest cause of slow sites. 

High-quality images often have large file sizes. When the webpage loads, these images must be downloaded from the server to the user’s device, slowing down the site speed. 

The solution? 

Compress your images. 

For every new product image you upload, use TinyJPG or TinyPNG to compress it while retaining its high quality. 

For existing images, Crush.pics or Image Optimiser are two Shopify apps worth investing in. 

As a bonus, both apps also help you automatically rename image files and alt tags. 

You can also use a combination of Shopify’s inbuilt CDN and a CDN overlay like Cloudflare to help compress your images and ensure they are being served in next gen formats.

  • Use fewer images

Do an image audit. Are your images providing value to your customers or helping them understand your products better? 

If not, no matter how much you like the image, hit delete. 

Technical SEO Considerations for Shopify

In this Shopify SEO guide, we’ve covered on-page and off-page SEO tactics. 

Technical SEO gets into the details of your website’s code to make sure your site is set up in a way that is easy for search engines to access, crawl, and index:

  • Crawlability refers to the ability of search engine bots to access and read your online store’s content. If search engine bots cannot crawl your Shopify store, it won’t appear in search results.
  • Indexability refers to the bot adding your content to a central index, which search engines use to determine what pages and content to display in search results.
  • Accessibility covers server performance, HTTP status, site security, and more. It refers to how easy your site is for humans and bots to access. 

Technically, this type of SEO falls into the domain of on-page SEO because it includes elements of your website that you can control. 

We recommend that technical SEO be done by SEO professionals because it involves working with and tweaking your site’s code. As the name suggests, it’s complex and technical. 

The first stage of technical SEO, which the best SEO agencies will help you with, is a technical SEO audit. 

An audit can help uncover issues like slow site speed, under-optimised metadata, broken links, 404 errors, orphan pages, incorrect canonical URLs, etc. These can impact your site’s performance over time. An agency will help prioritise these issues and devise a strategy and timeline to correct them. 

Why Structured Data Matters and How to Add It to Your Shopify Store

Structured data, also called schema markup, is super important for helping search engines better understand and present your website’s content. It gives search engines a clear idea of what’s on your page, making your store more visible online and potentially leading to enhanced search results.

Why Structured Data is Essential

When you include structured data, search engines can create rich snippets—those extra bits of info like ratings, prices, or stock availability—that show up directly in the search results. These snippets make your Shopify store stand out, giving potential customers more reasons to click through. Not only does this improve the user experience, but it can also boost your rankings and click-through rates.

Key Types of Structured Data for Shopify Stores

  • Organization Schema: Tells search engines about your business details.
  • CollectionPage Schema: Displays your product collections in a more effective way.
  • BreadcrumbList Schema: Helps with navigation by showing breadcrumb trails.
  • Product Schema: Adds rich details to individual products, increasing visibility.
  • Article Schema: Enhances how blog posts or news articles appear in search results.

How to Implement Structured Data on Shopify

Option 1: Use a Shopify App

  1. Browse the Shopify App Store and find an app that supports structured data.
  2. Install the app and follow the instructions to automatically integrate the schema markup into your site.

Option 2: Add Structured Data Manually

Step 1: Generate Your Schema Markup

  • Use tools like Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper to create the necessary code.

Step 2: Add Schema to Your Shopify Store

  • In Shopify, head to your admin dashboard.
  • Click “Online Store” and then “Themes.”
  • Select “Edit Code” by clicking on the three dots next to your theme.
  • Search for your product template file (it might be called “product-template.liquid” or “main-product.liquid” depending on your theme).
  • Paste the schema markup you generated at the top of this file, then save your changes.

Step 3: Validate Your Schema

  • Run a site audit tool to ensure your schema markup is correctly applied.
  • Review the results under “Markup” in the “Overview” tab and fix any errors if needed.

Step 4: Fix Any Errors

  • If your audit shows issues, correct them and rerun the audit to make sure everything’s good.

By adding structured data, you’re giving search engines the tools to better understand and showcase your Shopify store.

This doesn’t just improve your search visibility—it can also lead to higher engagement, more clicks, and ultimately, more sales.

Securing Your Shopify Store with HTTPS 

impact SEO, but they are still essential to improving your user experience and building trust. 

And trust is essential for building customer confidence and boosting conversions on your site. 

The key thing to add to your Shopify store is an SSL certificate.

Even though Google’s John Mueller has stated that an SSL certificate doesn’t boost SEO, it is essential for any website requiring users to enter personal information, like online stores. 

An SSL certificate, which stands for Secure Sockets Layer, is a digital certificate that authenticates a website’s identity and creates an encrypted connection between a website and a browser. It plays a vital role in the secure transfer of data across the Internet and enables your site to use HTTPS, which is more secure than HTTP. 

While many users won’t notice the difference between an HTTP:// and an HTTPS:// web address, most browsers warn users of unsecured websites, which results in lost traffic.

SSL certificates are provided for free for all domains that are added to Shopify. You cannot use third-party SSL certificates with your Shopify store. 

Summary 

With all the tactics and tools we’ve shared in this Shopify SEO guide, you have everything you need to get started with your SEO plan. Remember, SEO is not a one-and-done strategy. SEO changes almost every day, so you need to stay on top of the latest algorithm updates and continuously measure and make improvements to guarantee your store’s ranking stays high. 

That’s where it pays to work with a professional SEO team like StudioHawk.

At StudioHawk, SEO isn’t a side hustle – it’s our bread and butter. We know the nuances and have mastered what really matters when it comes to SEO that drives results. 

Get started with our free SEO Master Plan. You’ll have a free consultation with one of our Senior SEO specialists who will provide you with an in-depth audit, traffic analysis, roadmap, and more. Sign up now!

Our SEO Services.

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Technical SEO

Great SEO starts with solid foundations. Our in-depth website audit will help us uncover any “behind the scenes” technical issues that are hindering your SEO.


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eCommerce SEO

In the world of eCommerce, competition is fierce. Our eCommerce SEO specialists have mastered what works and will help you reach more shoppers with credit cards in hand.

 

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Local SEO

With 4 out of 5 customers turning to search to find local information, our local SEO services will help your business show up at the right place, right time.

 

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Enterprise SEO

Great SEO starts with solid foundations. Our in-depth website audit will help us uncover any “behind the scenes” technical issues that are hindering your SEO.

 

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Link Building

Our link-building campaigns use ethical, 100% white-hat techniques to build high quality backlinks to your store. This shows Google you’re a trusted authority and worth putting higher in the search results!

 

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Digital PR

StudioHawk can help to minimise the loss of traffic to your new domain or CMS. We map and implement redirects, provide recommendations, help with site structure, monitor traffic, and report to you on the progress and any impact on your organic traffic.

 

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Small Business SEO

Forget generic SEO services. Every small business is different, and things change quickly. Our specialist small business SEO experts will tailor a unique SEO strategy that works best for your business, budget and niche.

 

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International SEO

We’ll find your audience whenever they are in the world. We’ll craft masterful campaigns that cater to their linguistic and cultural nuances and help grow your brand globally.

 

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