For websites built on Shopify, which is one of the more robust eCommerce-centric platforms in the industry, the best way to get found online is organically, through search engines.
Search engine optimization, or SEO, offers the highest ROI and also the highest close rate among digital marketing channels.
Also, SEO improves credibility, authority, trust, and results in a better user experience.
With that in mind, for any Shopify merchants reading this, here are 3 basic yet highly impactful Shopify SEO optimizations you can make to your website, likely as soon as you can carve out a few minutes.
Compress Your Images
This is one of the few Shopify SEO optimizations that does not require keyword research, which means you can effectively do this right away.
It is a technical image optimization that improves page speed – which is not just an SEO ranking factor, but one that will result in a much better user experience.
While there are Shopify apps and plug-ins you can use that can compress your images for you, thereby speeding up your page load speeds, the best way to do this is manually, before you even add images to the website.
Most importantly, there are lots of free image compression tools out there that you can use. Just a few of these are Online Image Compressor, ShortPixel, FreeConvert, TinyPNG and ImageResizer.
Take your pick of them and compress all your images before you upload them to your website.
Add Alt Text to Images
Another thing you can do to improve your images is to enter the image file where you will find the “Alt” data or attribute field; add some target keywords into this field. Ideally, use the same target keywords that you are using elsewhere on the page.
This is a tiny lift, but it is the biggest optimization you can make to your images with respect to getting them to show up in the Image Results of the Google Search Results.
Adjust Your Page Headers
Lastly, add in keywords to your blog posts and page headers and titles anywhere you can, as long as it makes sense to do so. Don’t just stuff them in.
Anywhere you have <h> tags on your website is an opportunity for optimization, as adding keywords to these fields is literally the single biggest and most important Shopify SEO optimization you can make.
In fact, adding keywords to your headers, just that one optimization, can get the page in question to rank for those keywords. That won’t always happen but it can.
One Small Caveat
Two of these Shopify SEO optimizations require you to have keywords prepared, and in SEO, it’s critically important to ensure that you target keywords that make sense.
Ideally, you want to go after target keywords that have transactional or commercial search intent, because when people look for these, their intent is to buy something.
The other thing is that you want enough volume – more than 100 per month if not more – with attainable difficulty scores, generally lower than 20.
Getting Started with a Shopify SEO Agency
While this might sound fairly straightforward, if it also sounds like a lot of work, that’s because it is. Not only is it time consuming to do the keyword research, it is also time consuming to make the optimizations.
For these reasons alone, many eCommerce merchants choose to work with a Shopify SEO agency that knows the industry and understands what optimizations to make and how.
If you don’t have the time to make these optimizations, consider working with a qualified agency and put some time back in your calendar while also improving your website for organic search.
