When we’re looking to purchase something online these days, our first instinct is to go to Google or other search engines so that they can recommend the best results for our query. But how do search engines know what to choose and then present it to us? Why is Site A recommended higher on the list of results than Site B? All of those questions can be simply answered by one thing called SEO, also known as Search Engine Optimization.

SEO is an umbrella term for all the ways you can use to showcase your eCommerce shop across search engines. Some ways can be on-hand such as curating your SEO handle and content on your Shopify product page manually and some might be more social-media geared with campaigns and targeted redirects, which we would recommend as part of a longer marketing strategy.

For today’s blog, we’ll focus more on the on-hands method of curating your content on Shopify as this is the first step in getting your eCommerce more organic foot traffic. But first, what are some of the benefits of SEO?

SEO builds trust and credibility - by showing up higher in the results of the organic search, it cements the fact that your site or your brand is something to be trusted.

Recent surveys show that most people don’t make it past the first page of results so being ranked higher from an SEO perspective will not only improve your site’s visibility but also bring more organic traffic.

SEO can also help with your customer’s experience with your eCommerce website; with your optimized SEO data right on Shopify, you can create an easily navigable, clearly searchable site with relevant internal linking and related content.

You can also shift and play with your copy or your call to actions to match your SEO data and bring a feeling of consistency. Getting clients to click to your site is imperative but getting them to stay and checkout is really the ultimate goal and the right SEO strategy can help you get there!

So how can you optimize your online store for search engines? Here is some prep work to have handy before we get started on Shopify.

Have a list of relevant keywords for your products and brand. What are some of the search terms that your desired clientele might use? Search engines are looking for relevancy when crawling multiple sites so getting your content relevant to the potential searches being made will be a key strategy.

If you do not have a list of keywords ready, research on keywords that could work for your brand is recommended. You can use a site like Moz’s Explorer. Review competitors in your field and see what targeted keywords they use to capture clients. Share your product or brand with a small list of friends and family and ask them what they would type in their search engines if they were looking for your product.

Sometimes when we are too familiar with our brand and product, it is easy to set up the relevant keywords as something that we personally want to search but that can be counterintuitive as possible clients don’t often think like the brand owner.

Now that you have that handy, here is how to optimize your SEO tactic on Shopify!

The best way to optimize your SEO content on Shopify is through the page editor when you go to your products list. You can now add your now-curated list of keywords into your content, including page titles, descriptions, and image alt text and to make sure that your URLs and file names match the content. While that is all true, let’s dig further so that we can give you some tips and tricks we’ve learned along the way!

First, try to write different product descriptions for each of your products using your targeted keywords whilst showcasing the features the client is interested in. This will give your products the best chance of ranking in the search engines and improving your conversions while you’re at it.

Pro tip: use the “Sales By Product” report that can be found in your Shopify Analytics which can help prioritize which are the most important products to start adding content to. You can find this report in Analytics > Dashboard > Top Products By Units Sold.

Another important thing to pay attention to is your menu titles - they should describe the contents of your products as it will be the product for your client’s desired search result.

Pro tip: Make your photo file names match your descriptive titles to ensure the search engines are able to capture your information that much faster. As you can’t change your file names in Shopify, ensure that your file names are updated to match your titles before you upload them onto Shopify.

Most search engines re-index information every 48-72 hours so do allow some time between product updates to track if the traffic has increased or decreased over a specific period of time.

Want more pro tips on how to improve your SEO? Startup Slang is here to help! Contact us below and we’d be happy to help surpass your current rating on search engines.