Shopify SEO Best Practices Our Experts Use (+ Checklist and Examples)

Shopify SEO best practices can help your store rank and drive relevant traffic. Learn our strategies, mistakes to avoid, and best tools to use to make it happen. Free downloadable checklist included.

We put together this SEO guide to help you learn the top strategies and best practices to get the most out of your Shopify site.

Continue reading to learn SEO tips geared specifically toward Shopify store owners.

14 best practices for Shopify SEO

There’s no one right way to do SEO, especially with business needs being so drastically different. However, there are tried and true best practices for carrying out your SEO strategy and ecommerce marketing plan.

We’ll review top best practices and SEO steps before discussing the tools you’ll need to make this all happen.

1. Conduct keyword research
2. Optimize product pages
3. Improve site structure
4. Use SEO-friendly URLs
5. Optimize for mobile
6. Enhance page load speed
7. Create high-quality content
8. Use internal linking
9. Collect customer reviews
10. Use social media integration
11. Handle out-of-stock products properly
12. Avoid duplicate content
13. Perform regular SEO audits
14. Don’t ignore local SEO

1. Conduct keyword research

Without keyword research, it’s harder to build content that ranks and attracts the right audience. Identifying the most relevant keywords helps you get closer to your target customer in search engine results pages (SERPs).

So look for high volume and low keyword difficulty to have a better chance of ranking.

Start by brainstorming broad topics related to your biz. Then, whip out your trusty keyword research tools (Google Keyword Planner, Semrush, or Ahrefs) to uncover specific keywords with high search volume and low competition.

Let’s say you’re selling organic skincare products online. You may start with broad topics like “organic skincare” and “natural beauty products.” But diving deeper into your tools, you discover gems like “best organic face moisturizer” and “natural anti-aging serum” — highly relevant keywords with solid search volume and less competition.

After finding your target keywords, sprinkle them naturally throughout your website’s content, meta tags, and URLs.

2. Optimize product pages

Although keyword research is an important part of ecommerce optimization, you’ll want to optimize your product pages for an optimal user experience as well.

Make sure you have:

• High-quality product images with accompanying alt text
• Detailed product descriptions on product landing pages
• Headers, title tags, meta descriptions, and content optimized with target keywords
• Call to actions (CTAs)
• Other buttons that make adding to their shopping cart easier
• Related products (for a little upselling)

For larger online stores with lots of inventory, you can take a programmatic SEO approach. This allows you to:

• Automate product page creation: Use software to generate optimized product pages for each item in your inventory, complete with relevant keywords and meta tags.
• Optimize product variations: If you have multiple product variations (e.g., different sizes or colors), programmatic SEO can create unique, optimized pages for each variation.
• Streamline content creation: Focus on high-level strategy while the software handles the grunt work of creating optimized product pages.

As a final note, make sure to have a user friendly and appealing website design for the maximum effect.

3. Improve site structure

Your website should be easy and intuitive to navigate. If it’s not, explore ways to make the navigation experience easier. If you need help deciding how to improve your site structure, ask an objective third-party outsider, like a friend or family member, and gather their feedback.

Having a clear hierarchy of web pages beyond the homepage can help Google bots crawlers understand your website.

For instance, in an ecommerce website, organizing pages into category pages and collection pages like “Men’s Clothing” and “Women’s Clothing” with subcategories such as “T-shirts” and “Dresses” helps Google bots crawl and index content efficiently.

This structured approach improves indexing and enhances user navigation, improving the overall website performance.

4. Use SEO-friendly URLs

Make sure your permalinks are short and keyword-rich. Try to avoid long and complicated URL slugs and shoot for concise and relevant ones. This can also help prevent you from having to change a URL later.

For example, if you want to keep product pages for a recurring seasonal product evergreen, keep the URL evergreen as well (e.g., /unicorn-slime-limited-edition vs. /unicorn-slime-2023-limited-edition).

In this example, we take out the year in case we want to repurpose this page in the future.

5. Optimize for mobile

Mobile-friendliness is a topl ranking factor the Google algorithm.

Even though desktops and tablets have an ecommerce conversion rate of 3.6% and 3.4%, mobile devices account for 58% of online purchases. Mobile leads generate over 60% of online traffic to ecommerce sites, which is why having a mobile optimized site is more important than ever.

So be sure you optimize your online shopping experience for mobile users first by:

• Select a mobile-responsive Shopify theme that adjusts to different screen sizes
• Compress images and videos to reduce mobile loading times
• Streamline navigation menus for easy access on mobile devices
• Implement Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) for faster mobile page loading
• Simplify the checkout process by minimizing form fields for mobile users
• Use legible fonts and larger button sizes for better mobile readability and usability
• Test your store on various mobile devices to ensure optimal performance
• Place a prominent search bar for easy product discovery on mobile
• Optimize product pages with clear images, concise descriptions, and visible call-to-action buttons for mobile users
• Track mobile performance metrics through Shopify analytics to make informed optimizations

6. Enhance page load speed

Whether you’re a WordPress site using Shopify (and Woocommerce), or a full Shopify site, you may need to explore plugins that improve site speed. Compressing and minifying images, caching your website, using fast-loading themes, and minimizing heavy scripts can drastically improve these areas of SEO.

If you’re unsure what your current site speed is, use tools like PageSpeed Insights or HubSpot’s Website Grader. These tools give you a list of actions to improve website speed.

7. Create high-quality content

Content marketing goes hand-in-hand with SEO — so create a content-centric SEO plan to connect with shoppers.

“We made sure the content we made was based on keyword research,” says Drew Mansur, co-founder and director of Tilecloud. “Our keyword research covers terms users are searching for, what the page ranks for, and suggestions from SEO content editor tools.

Because of constant algorithm updates, we’ve had to change our category content numerous times and iterate it accordingly. Although keywords are important, note that we write content that speaks to our audience, and don’t keyword stuff. We also focused on long-tail keywords; although they have lower search volume, they’re less competitive and are still very relevant.”

Craft content that’s SEO-rich, well-structured, and fully optimized to attract the right shoppers. And always consider search intent to see how your content resonates with readers and how it’ll rank.

If your content engages your audience well, this can contribute to your website’s authority and rankings.

8. Use internal linking

Internal linking is a process that links to other pieces of content you’ve already published on your site. You can use semantic SEO (using related keywords, such as “digital marketing tips” for a “digital marketing guide” post). The concept is to use the relevant keywords as anchor text for the link to the post, letting people and search engines know what the link is about.

The goal is to guide readers to other resources that’ll help them along their informational and navigational journey.

To support informative content, Nazmul Hasan, co-founder and CEO of Microters says, “I find 10 important informative keywords for each product. Then, I connect these pages together with links. It’s essential to link from the 10 supporting content pages back to the main product page. This strategy helps most of the products rank well on Google within a few months. Using relevant links from related content is powerful and makes it easier to rank on Google without needing lots of backlinks.”

Be sure to make these other resources relevant to the topic. It distributes authority across your online store, keeps bounce rates low, and increases time spent on page.

9. Collect customer reviews

Customer reviews and testimonials remain one of the pinnacle’s of generating ecommerce sales. In fact, 9 out of 10 buyers make their decision based on a review.

Without good product reviews, it’s a bit harder to convince people to buy your product. After you make a Shopify sale and the item is delivered, send follow up emails asking for product reviews.

Genuine reviews not only influence new potential customers to buy your product, it also adds fresh, new content to your website.

10. Use social media integration

We know managing social media feels like another huge task in an already growing list of digital marketing needs. And although social media activity and engagement isn’t a ranking factor in Google’s eyes, general relationship building with your social media followers influences how you rank in Google.

So choose the right social media channels and consistently post relevant content that engages your followers.

11. Handle out-of-stock products properly

If you want to get people to the checkout page, don’t delete product pages for items that are currently out of stock. Instead, inform your users that you’re hurtling through time and space to get more product for them. This can help prevent abandoned carts.

If you’re regularly out of stock in your online store, try setting up a day for full restocks. This preserves the value of the page, contributes to average order value (AOV), and gives your followers and dedicated shoppers something to look forward to and shows potential customers your value.

Consider asking shoppers to sign up for an email notification for when your product is back in stock.

12. Avoid duplicate content

Google penalizes duplicate content on sites, which means lower (or no) rankings for your pages. Unfortunately, Shopify sites battle with this issue because there are products published to multiple categories.

To prevent this from triggering a duplicate content penalty, you can use canonical tags to tell Google which version is the original, so it ignores the others. This page will rank in Google, driving organic traffic to your Shopify store.

13. Perform regular SEO audits

To know how your website performance, content, SEO, and overall marketing strategies are faring, regularly monitoring and analyzing progress.

You can use site audit tools in platforms like Semrush and Ahrefs to assess the health of your site and current positions. This helps you make tweaks to any technical or on-page SEO issues that may arise as time goes on.

You can even use tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console to see who’s clicking on your content, how long they’re on your website, and how often they convert.

14. Don’t ignore local SEO

If you have a Shopify business that operates on a local or regional level, don’t skip out on local SEO tactics. Rather than targeting international or national SEO, this method of SEO helps you target local customers.

Performing local SEO may involve optimizing your Google Business Profile and Google Maps, including locally targeted keywords and phrases in your content, and ensuring unity for directories across the web.

Semrush is a great SEO tool for supporting your local SEO efforts. It has a listing management, heatmap, review management, and rank tracking features built into the platform.

If you’re already bombarded with the evergoing list of digital marketing tasks, but still want to invest in local SEO, reach out for a free consultation with HawkSEM.

What is Shopify SEO?

Shopify search engine optimization (SEO) is a marketing strategy to improve online visibility for an ecommerce site hosted by Shopify’s platform. It uses targeted keywords your customers use to find your products, so they’re more likely to click on your links.

“As an agency we enjoy using Shopify as a platform, it’s almost like the WordPress version but for e-commerce websites,” says Rambod Yadegar, President of HawkSEM. “It has a lot of properly structured SEO principles right out of the box like automatic site maps, friendly URL structures and mobile friendliness.”

9 benefits of investing in Shopify SEO

Wondering whether ecommerce SEO is worth your time and money? Here’s a look at the top benefits Shopify SEO offers:

1. Increased conversions: By adding SEO-rich content on Shopify or improving on-page and off-page SEO strategies, you can focus your messaging and boost the likelihood of converting searchers into customers. Increased visibility of your product pages and brand can lead to higher conversion rates.
2. Cost-effective: Unlike paid advertising methods, SEO can be incorporated into digital marketing for ecommerce using a minimal budget — unless you’re hiring an SEO agency to support your SEO needs. As your SEO efforts improve rankings, you can use paid advertising methods a bit less.
3. Improved organic traffic: Keyword research is a huge part of SEO, and with it’s help, you can craft content that improves your online visibility and targets people more accurately.
4. Brand credibility: First impressions matter and ranking higher in search results can indicate to online shoppers that you’re a trustworthy source. Well-implemented SEO can also improve brand authority in your industry.
5. Competitive advantage: For businesses competing for attention online, investing in SEO helps claim that attention. If you’re marketing for a small business, for example, there’s a good chance competitors aren’t using SEO to increase growth. If that’s the case, you have the advantage in your industry.
6. Long-term impact: Paid advertising can be a costly and short-lived tactic. The positive results of SEO, however, can last years beyond implementation. If your content is useful and evergreen, it’ll continue to drive traffic year-round.
7. Strengthened user-experience: SEO isn’t limited to just improving website growth through keyword research. SEO also contributes to the overall user experience and website design. Improving site speed, page performance, load times, product page layouts, mobile-friendliness, and other aspects of technical SEO can directly impact your results.
8. Better SEO tracking and results: Using tools like Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Semrush, or Ahrefs can analyze the progress and performance of your ecommerce store. UTM parameters is also useful for tracking where traffic comes from.
9. Understanding of consumer behavior: With SEO tracking tools, you can better understand consumer behaviors, such as which keywords they search for, how they move through your site, and where they drop off without completing a purchase. You can even examine SEO data around cart abandonment rates to understand what’s happening and how to improve the overall checkout process.

Shopify SEO features and limitations

In Shopify, there are many built-in SEO features to help you succeed in marketing your ecommerce store, such as the following.

Shopify SEO features

• Customizable title tags and meta descriptions
• Automatic sitemap generation
• Editable robots.txt File
• Canonical URL tags
• Mobile responsiveness
• SEO-friendly URL structures
• Integrated blogging platform
• Alt text for images
• SSL certificates
• 301 redirects

Shopify Limitations

• Limited URL structure customization
• No AMP support
• Slower loading speeds for some themes
• Limited control over robots.txt
• Restricted access to server and code
• Limited blogging capabilities
• Dependency on apps for advanced SEO features

“Assuming that all of your SEO is buttoned up because of Shopify’s platform is not the right approach,” explains Yadegar.

“Content, title tags and layouts need to be optimized to ensure you’re getting the most out of your SEO, if not, by default every Shopify instance is the same. So you won’t stand out that way, nor will you get rankings.

For SEO, Shopify isn’t the most agile platform, but it gets the job done when it comes to metadata updates and regular optimizations. It gets hard when they want to improve page speed though.”

But Shopify’s limitations doesn’t stop us from helping brands achieve online success. For example, we helped Timbuk2 boost its revenue by 50%.

Knowing what features are available and what limitations you may experience can help you decide where you need to supplement your SEO strategy.

Common mistakes that hurt Shopify SEO

Even with a strong understanding of SEO and a great plan, it’s still possible to make SEO mistakes. You can either learn from them on your own, or heed our advice.

As you embark on your Shopify SEO journey, avoid the following:

• Ignoring the initial SEO setup
• Keyword stuffing
• Duplicate content
• Plagiarism
• Poor URL structure
• Lack of mobile optimization
• Lazy keyword research
• Overuse of Shopify apps
• Omitting link building
• Ignoring image optimization
• Low-quality content
• Failure to use headers effectively
• Slow page loads

SEO tools for Shopify websites

Thankfully, there’s an abundance of SEO apps to help with SEO forecasting and succeeding online:

• Google Analytics: Track and analyze website traffic and user behavior
• ConversionIQ: Improve website conversion rates through data-driven insights and artificial intelligence
• Google Search Console: Monitor and optimize website performance in Google search results
• Google PageSpeed Insights: Evaluate and improve website loading speed for better user experience
• Ahrefs: Conduct comprehensive backlink analysis and SEO research
• Semrush: Perform keyword research, track rankings, and analyze competitors
• Yoast SEO for Shopify: Optimize Shopify store for search engines with SEO best practices
• Ubersuggest: Generate keyword ideas, analyze content, and track rankings
• Moz Pro: Access SEO tools for keyword research, link building, and site audits
• Screaming Frog: Crawl websites to identify SEO issues and improve site structure
• SEO Image Optimizer (Shopify tool): Optimize images for SEO to enhance website performance
• KW Finder: Discover long-tail keywords and analyze search volume and difficulty
• BuzzSumo: Find popular content and influencers to enhance content marketing strategies
• Spyfu: Research competitors’ keywords, ad campaigns, and SEO strategies
• Plugin SEO (Shopify tool): Automatically optimize Shopify store for better search engine visibility
• Majestic SEO: Analyze backlinks and monitor website authority for SEO insights

Rather than investing in Shopify Plus SEO, you can use any of these tools to get your SEO up and running.

A free Shopify SEO checklist to boost your rankings

To help organize the steps of implementing your SEO Shopify best practices, here’s a convenient Shopify SEO checklist to get your process started.

14 SEO best practices to remember

☐ Perform keyword research

☐ Optimize product pages

☐ Improve site site structure

☐ Optimize for mobile

☐ Create quality content Quality

☐ Gather reviews and testimonials

☐ Manage out of stock items effectively

☐ Perform local SEO

☐ Run regular site audits

☐ Avoid duplicate content

☐ Use internal linking

☐ Enhance page speed

☐ Use SEO friendly URLs

☐ Create a consistent social media schedule

The takeaway

Shopify SEO is a crucial element for any ecommerce store wanting to thrive in SERPs.

Effective and measurable Shopify SEO isn’t a singular project but a continuous effort which involves regular monitoring, audits, content updates, attention to detail, and proactive adaptation to evolving SEO trends.

Using HawkSEM’s expert SEO tips and proven approaches can help you achieve and maintain high visibility in the competitive ecommerce landscape.

For help with your Shopify SEO, contact us for a free consultation today.