SEO, also known as Search Engine Optimization, is the practice of increasing both the quality and quantity of website traffic, as well as exposure to your brand, through non-paid (also known as "organic") search engine results.

Understanding what people are searching for online, the answers they are seeking, the words they’re using, and the type of content they wish to consume is key to creating great SEO content.

SEO is also one of the only online marketing channels that, when set up correctly, can continue to pay dividends over time.

If you provide a solid piece of content that deserves to rank for the right keywords, your traffic can snowball over time, whereas advertising needs continuous funding to send traffic to your site.

Search engines have three primary functions:

• Crawl: Scour the Internet for content, looking over the code/content for each URL they find.

• Index: Store and organize the content found during the crawling process. Once a page is in the index, it’s in the running to be displayed as a result to relevant queries.

• Rank: Provide the pieces of content that will best answer a searcher's query, which means that results are ordered by most relevant to least relevant.

There are many factors that can make your online store appear higher in search results, including:

• the number of natural (not paid or social media) links pointing to your store from other websites
• the authority of the website based on engagement and other factors
• the age of your domain name
• the website structure and content that is optimized for search engines

‘Dwell time’ is a phrase used by SEO experts to refer to the length of time a user spends on a website before returning to search results.

There is generally consensus in the SEO community that the longer your dwell time, the more likely your content is to perform well in search results — because it indicates to search engines that it is satisfying user queries.

So, it makes sense to create your Shopify site in a way that retains attention for as long as possible.

Here’s how you can do this.

1. Create genuinely great content — whether that means writing engaging, in-depth blog posts or showcasing fantastic product images, give people a reason to hang around and take a further look at your store!
2. Use a simple navigation structure that makes it easy for users to get from one part of your website to another.
3. Make use of internal linking — for example, add ‘see also’ resources or ‘suggested further reading’ call to actions (so that visitors can spend more time on your site digesting not just the first page they landed on, but other content too).
4. Encourage people to leave comments on your blog posts (and to read them).
5. Embed videos on your pages (watching them can take your visitors a while!).

These are small tips and tricks that will help the SEO on your site; no worries if you’re not an expert on SEO as Startup Slang is always there to help you for all of your business needs. Contact us here and we’ll be able to audit your site and optimize your SEO to ensure that you’re reaping the benefits of your hard work!