Shopify SEO Toronto

Shopify SEO Toronto: Best Practices Guide for Small and Medium Businesses

What Is Shopify SEO?

Shopify SEO refers to a broad set of actions business owners can take to improve their store’s online visibility for organic search results on search engines like Google.

The process of optimizing a Shopify website involves a wide range of techniques to help search engines better understand and index the content of your store. This helps visitors find your products online without the need for paid advertising.

Business owners can leverage Shopify’s native SEO features and make other optimizations to drive organic traffic and generate more sales.

We’ll address the most important SEO changes you should be making to your storefront later in this article.

Why Is Shopify SEO Important to SMEs?

All business owners want more sales and want to spend less money to generate new business.

This is where Shopify SEO comes into play.

When you optimize your store content so that search engines can recognize what you offer, you have a better chance of driving visitors to your website organically.

Here are the most common benefits we see for ecommerce clients that improve their Shopify SEO practices:

Despite the advantages of having an optimized Shopify store, a lot of business owners don’t make the necessary investments.

The fact that Shopify SEO isn’t so straightforward creates huge competitive advantages for the businesses that commit to this channel. After all, the easier something is to get wrong, the more rewarding it is to get right.

8 SEO Shopify Best Practices

Based on our hands-on experience implementing effective Shopify SEO strategies for clients, dNOVO has learned what does and doesn’t work when it comes to making improvements.

Rather than overwhelm you with complexity and technical minutia, we’ve boiled this guide down to the most effective SEO practices to grow store traffic and close more sales.

After this, you’ll be ready to begin as soon as today.

Summary

1. Hire Shopify SEO experts
2. Build an intuitive site structure
3. Focus on user experience
4. Target relevant keywords
5. Optimize pages in Shopify
6. Follow technical SEO recommendations
7. Improve your store authority with links
8. Rank higher with content marketing

1. Build an intuitive site structure

“Site structure” refers to the organization of product and category pages across your Shopify store.

A simple internal site structure doesn’t just help consumers navigate your store but also makes it easier for search engines to understand and categorize your offerings.

Here’s a helpful visualization of an intuitive site structure.

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As you can see above, the homepage links to two category pages which then link to subcategory pages and then to individual products.

For example, a cosmetic product company might have a homepage that links to category pages including Toners, Moisturizers, and Cleansers with specific products then linked within each category page.

Or take our client, Geary Market, for instance. Prepared food boxes are cleanly organized by category, making shopping and search engine navigation easy.

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Straightforward navigation improves conversion rates while also sending signals to search engines that your site is well-structured and credible.

2. Focus on user experience

Good Shopify SEO practices aren’t solely about satisfying search engines.

Beautiful design and a seamless user experience not only drive sales but also send signals to the search algorithms that visitors to your page are satisfied.

Here are some quick wins to ensure a positive user experience on your website:

• Boost site speed by using a fast Shopify theme
• Optimize and compress images
• Remove any applications you are not using to reduce wasteful code
• Make sure your store is adapted for mobile shopping

Having a mobile-friendly website is especially important for Shopify stores considering over 40% of ecommerce purchases are made via mobile devices.

3. Target relevant keywords

Organizing your site’s content and product pages to center around relevant keywords is at the core of SEO for Shopify.

Ensuring pages are rich with keywords that indicate what you’re offering means that search engines can understand which phrases your store should rank for.

It might seem like the right keywords should be self-evident. After all, if you’re an online toy store selling board games, your store is likely targeting the keyword “board games” without much intention.

However, keyword research can add a lot of value if you determine that the search phrase “4-player board games” receives more search volume and is less competitive.

Keyword choice is a key part of all client engagements, and dNOVO prioritizes frequently used search phrases to organize Shopify stores.

For example, here is how we structured a previous client’s product navigation to center on important keywords for auto parts:

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Try to get inside your buyer’s head and ask – What search terms would I use to find the product I’m looking for?

Often, you can find customer insights in forums, product reviews, or via keyword research tools.

4. Optimize your pages in Shopify

Shopify’s platform makes it easy to optimize pages with SEO details directly.

This includes adding title tags and meta descriptions for your homepage, collection pages, and product pages.

Here’s what this looks like within Shopify’s software for a homepage:

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Shopify gives you similar fields to optimize your product and collection pages as well.

If you have a small site, it should be relatively easy to make sure this information is filled in for every page. For larger sites, business owners can prioritize adding details to top-selling products first to give them a boost in search rankings.

Another optimization worth making is including alt text for product images to give search engines and visually-impaired users a description of the graphics on your store.

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All of these details give search engines key information about your product offerings and make it more likely that your store appears in search results.

5. Follow technical SEO recommendations

Good technical SEO practices ensure search engines index and read the content of your Shopify store properly.

The first check business owners should make is to confirm that search engines like Google are indexing your store for search results in the first place.

Most Shopify stores shouldn’t have an issue, but you can check that your website is being indexed by creating a Google Search Console and Google Analytics account. This highlights any indexation issues that you can fix.

There is, however, one technical SEO issue that commonly arises from having Shopify pages with similar information.

Non-canonical URLs are created when the same page on your store can be accessed via different URLs or when multiple pages are created with nearly identical information. This often happens with Shopify stores that sell one product in different colors, for example.

When Google crawls your site and sees what looks like duplicated content, it can hurt your search rankings.

The way around this is to set a canonical URL, directly indicating to search engines which pages should be indexed as the authoritative source of information.

6. Improve your site authority with links

Backlinks (links from external domains to your website) are an important factor in search engine ranking algorithms.

Links to your site from other authoritative sources send signals to search engines that others trust your content and therefore improve your chances of ranking organically.

Link building could be an entire guide on its own and is one common issue that dNOVO can help you with. However, to keep it simple, here are a few ideas for different link-building campaigns:

Remember, building links is about creating relationships with other parties in your industry and looking for natural opportunities to interact.

We would strongly advise against obtaining backlinks in an unnatural way, like paying someone to put them on their site.

This can ultimately backfire if search engines detect that the referring domains are not relevant to your industry or are deemed untrustworthy.

7. Rank higher with content marketing

Earlier, we covered how to optimize your Shopify store with relevant keyword and SEO information.

However, there is much more space to target valuable keywords when you think outside of short product descriptions and title tags.

Content marketing, especially long-form blog or video content, that addresses topics or questions potential customers might have about your offerings is a great way to rank highly in search results.

One practical way to do this is to include additional text and explanations on your top-selling product pages or collection pages.

For example, if your business sells mid-century modern furniture over the internet, your collection page could include additional information about the history, style, and definition of mid-century modern furniture.

Search engines can recognize the extra value you are providing and reward that in the form of higher rankings.

8. Hire Shopify SEO Toronto experts

We’ve covered keyword and page optimizations, technical SEO considerations, and multiple strategies you can take to build authority in the eyes of search algorithms.

While none of these techniques are too difficult in isolation, building an effective SEO strategy that ticks all of the boxes can be complex and time-consuming.

Business owners who are focused on the day-to-day operations of their business might not have the headspace to revamp their Shopify SEO, even if they understand the long-term benefits of ranking organically in search results.

That’s where Shopify SEO experts like dNOVO can step in to execute an effective marketing strategy on your behalf.

Let us handle your Shopify SEO and build you an organic traffic engine that drives sales for years to come.

Shopify SEO FAQs

Still have SEO questions about your Shopify store?

See if we’ve answered your concerns below and be sure to reach out with any problems we can help solve.

“Does Shopify have built-in SEO?”

Yes, Shopify has some built-in SEO features to help optimize your store for search engines.

These include:

• Customizable title tags and meta descriptions: You can edit your homepage, collection pages, and product pages to include important information for search engines that highlight relevant keywords and explain your website’s offerings.
• Clean URLs: Shopify automatically generates URLs for your site pages and also gives you the ability to edit URLs to your liking. Including clear keywords in your page URLs can improve search engine rankings.
• Mobile-friendly design: Shopify themes are designed to be mobile-friendly which Google has acknowledged is an important ranking factor.
• Blogging platform: Shopify has a built-in blogging engine that you can use to enhance your SEO efforts with content marketing.

While Shopify does provide features to improve your store’s SEO, it’s important to invest in strategies that are not included, such as building backlinks from other reputable domains and ensuring clean technical SEO practices.

“Do Shopify tags help SEO?”

Yes, Shopify tags that organize your store’s product details and other information help with SEO.

Tags and titles that are dense with relevant keywords are likely to improve your chances of showing up in search results.

Tags also make it easier for visitors to navigate your store and find the products they are looking for.

This has a direct impact on sales and conversions by sending helpful signals to search engines that your store is user-friendly.

Focus on using descriptive tags that accurately reflect the content of your pages and products and avoid overusing tags or including irrelevant keywords.

“Is Shopify SEO different from other SEO?”

The basic principles of SEO apply to all internet properties regardless of if the website is an ecommerce store.

Search engine algorithms crawl and index website data to categorize and display pages that best satisfy search intent. The goal of SEO, therefore, is to optimize a site’s content and structure to make it more visible and appealing to search engines.

The goal of Shopify SEO is no different. However, the techniques to accomplish this objective differ and include things like leveraging Shopify’s built-in SEO features.

Shopify SEO (and ecommerce SEO in general) also faces unique challenges that other business models may not have to worry about:

1. Ecommerce websites generally have more pages than websites for service-based businesses or brick-and-mortar stores, making SEO updates and improvements a heavier lift
2. Ecommerce stores have to contend with changing product availability, making staying up-to-date on SEO more difficult

So, although the core tenets of SEO apply to all websites, optimizing a Shopify store for search engines may involve unique considerations and challenges.

“Where do I put keywords for Shopify SEO?”

There are several places to put keywords for Shopify SEO.

These include:

• Product titles: Using descriptive and keyword-dense titles for your products makes it clear to search engines what you are offering.
• Product descriptions: Including relevant keywords in your product descriptions help search engines understand what your products are about. However, make sure your descriptions sound natural to the human ear.
• Image alt tags: Keywords can also be associated with product images to describe what the image is displaying.
• Meta tags: Fill meta descriptions with an explanation of what each page is about to make it easier for search engines to categorize your store.
• URLs: Keywords should also be included in URLs. Generally, it’s good advice to keep URLs relatively short and to avoid unusual numbers or symbols.

Besides the places listed above, there isn’t a restriction about where else you can include keywords on your website.

For example, navigation elements, helpful blog posts, or additional page text can also be appropriate places to use keywords to help educate visitors and search engines.

“How long does it take to rank with Shopify SEO?”

The time it takes to rank with Shopify SEO varies widely depending on many factors, including the competitiveness of your niche, the quality and relevance of your content, and the authority of your website.

In general, it takes from several weeks to several months to see significant improvements in your search engine rankings.

Often, this is because search algorithms need time to crawl and index your site while interpreting signals about the relevance and quality of your website.

Additionally, it takes longer to rank for keywords or search terms that are highly competitive. Achieving high-ranking positions may be difficult without longer or more valuable content.

Lastly, we shouldn’t forget that Shopify SEO is an ongoing process that requires regular updates and optimizations. If you want to improve your store’s organic ranking, SEO isn’t a set-it-and-forget-it type of investment.

“How much does Shopify SEO cost?”

The cost of Shopify SEO depends on a host of factors, including the extent of optimizations you want to make and the size of your ecommerce store.

Additionally, you have to consider how you want to receive Shopify SEO services:

1. DIY: Are you going to make all SEO improvements yourself? In this case, the cost is minimal but the time investment is large.
2. Consultant: Are you going to make most SEO improvements yourself with the help of outside advice? In this case, the cost is somewhat higher than doing it yourself but time can be saved and pricey mistakes avoided.
3. Outsourced Agency: This option costs the most but saves you the most time and headaches as a business owner.

Additionally, it’s important to determine whether you need targeted SEO services to update product information and page details or whether you desire ongoing content marketing to target competitive keywords and grow traffic over time.

dNOVO offers Shopify SEO packages that range from $1,500 to $10,000 depending on your unique business needs.

“What are the four types of Shopify SEO?”

The four types of Shopify SEO refer to the different components of a successful SEO strategy:

1. On-page SEO: This involves optimizing the content that appears on your Shopify store pages and making them friendly for search engines.
2. Off-page SEO: This involves building high-quality backlinks to your store from other domains in order to improve your organic rankings.
3. Technical SEO: This refers to optimizing the technical aspects of your Shopify store such as site structure, site speed, responsiveness, and indexation issues.
4. Local SEO: If your Shopify store serves a specific geographic area, local SEO can help your business show up in local directories or map searches.

By focusing on all four types of Shopify SEO, you can help improve your site’s search engine rankings and drive more traffic to your store.

“Is Shopify as good as WordPress for SEO?”

Both Shopify and WordPress are capable of supporting an effective SEO strategy.

Shopify is an ecommerce platform with a range of built-in SEO features to make stores more visible to search engines.

WordPress, on the other hand, is a flexible content management system that can be used for different business models beyond ecommerce.

Both platforms also offer helpful SEO plugins and apps to make improvements easier.

With the right investments and strategy, Shopify is as good as WordPress for SEO.

Drive Organic Traffic and Reach New Customers with Shopify SEO

Shopify SEO is an effective long-term strategy to bring organic visitors to your store through search engines.

With Shopify SEO, you can reach new customers organically without the need for paid advertising when your store ranks highly for relevant search terms.

For this reason, SEO is a powerful marketing channel for your business to consider.

Get help from Shopify SEO experts in Toronto, Canada with dNOVO, and book a free consultation to see how we can help your business grow!