Just like prepping yourself every morning before heading out to work, you have to prep your Shopify store’s pages. But since you can’t make your store shower, dress, and head out, you need to find a different way to get it ready to sell.
That’s where SEO optimizations come in.
Why You Need To Optimize Titles & Meta Descriptions
If you want potential customers to reach your store and find the products, brands or collections they’re looking for, then you need to install Shopify SEO on page optimizations. SEO optimization is extremely important because, according to 60% of marketers, it can bring in the highest quality source of leads for your entire website. It can also help drive a 14.6% conversion rate, which is any Shopify store’s dream.
SEO On Page Optimizations can help:
- More customers find your brands, products, collections and services
- Increase your overall ranking
- Increase your EAT (Expertise-Authority-Trust)
- Drive conversions
On page SEO optimization consists of creating better titles and meta descriptions around a focus keyword for all your Shopify store’s pages (home, collections, products, & other relevant pages).
It can sometimes even include product page descriptions, but more on this in a separate article.
How To Optimize Your Shopify Pages
These are all the steps you need to follow to optimize your website’s pages:
- Step 1: Get ALL Your Pages
- Step 2: Select The Pages You’ll Optimize First
- Step 3: Find Your Focus Keyword
- Step 4: Start Writing
- Step 5: Start Your On Page SEO Optimization
- Step 6: Review Everything
STEP 1: Get ALL your pages
In order to know what you’re going to optimize first, you need to get the full scope of your Shopify store. You can do this using Screaming Frog, a free tool that allows you to crawl up to 500 URLs.
This is how you do it:
- Go into Screaming Frog
- Type in your website’s URL
- Click Start
- Once the crawling is finished, click Export
- Open the Excel file
- Open your SEO Optimization Workbook
- Go to the “All Pages” tab
- Copy your website’s freshly crawled pages and paste
This workbook will help establish a base for the work you will do later on. For now, all you need to do is copy your store’s ULR and let the app “crawl” your site for you. And don’t worry! We’ll give you this workbook absolutely FREE! You can download it here.
Download Our Workbook Template Here!
STEP 2: Select The Pages You’ll Optimize First
In order to optimize your website’s SEO, you first need to prioritize and select the pages you want to optimize first (AKA, the most relevant ones).
The best way to select them is through hard, undeniable data:
- Log into Google Analytics (if you haven’t set it up for your Shopify store, here’s our full tutorial)
- In the left hand menu, Choose Behavior
- Click Site Content
- Click All Pages
- Review your site’s pages and pick the ones you will optimize*
- Copy the URLs
- Paste them into the “Workbook Tracking” tab of your SEO Optimization Workbook
*We recommend selecting pages with a lot of impressions (and possibly low CTR). If there’s no data then choose your top selling products, your best performing collections or your core pages. These pages may include:
- Home
- Best Sellers
- Important Collections/Categories
- Blog / Blog Posts
- Etc.
If you want more data, search terms or inspiration, you can also go into your Google Search Console (if you haven’t set it up for your Shopify store, here’s our full tutorial). You can also log in to SEMrush and check your top performing organic pages!
STEP 3: Find Your Focus Keyword
We’ve already discussed how to do SEO keyword research for your Shopify store. However, this will be slightly different. You need to choose ONE focus keyword for each page you will optimize and (as its name states) focus on that.
If you’ve already done your keyword research, you can use a few of the keywords from your selected keyword pool as your focus keyword. Or you use a few of the search terms from your Google Search Console reports. Or you can go into SEMrush and look for entirely new keywords. It’s up to you!
Just keep in mind that:
- Search volume matters. How many people are actively searching for this keyword a month will have an impact on your SEO performance.
- Keyword difficulty can affect results. If a keyword is highly competitive, then it’s more likely that you won’t be able to show up in the first page of Google results. It’s better to aim for keywords with a lower keyword difficulty percentage at first.
- Search intent is key. Keywords can tell you much about what a user intends to do. Keywords like “denim jacket”, “cheap denim jacket” and “where to buy a denim jacket” are three very different search terms even though they all share the words denim jacket. The first is a general query, the second is intentionally looking for options within a certain budget and the third shows a clear shopping intent.
For this step, you need to:
- Log into SEMrush
- Go into Keyword Magic Tool
- Select your country
- Type in the keyword you want to research
- Copy the chosen keyword and its search volume
- Paste them into the Title Keyword and Volume columns next to the corresponding URL
- Repeat for the other URLs
Finding the right keywords is like a game where creativity is key! So rack up your brain and search for whatever sounds (and doesn’t sound) right. If you find one that fits your business, has a high search volume and low keyword difficulty, consider it a winner!
STEP 4: Start Writing
Now that you have all the pieces of the puzzle placed into your Workbook, it’s time to hit those keyboards and start writing:
- In the Workbook Tracking tab of your SEO Optimization Workbook, go to the row with the URL you want to edit
- Review your current Title and Meta Description
- Rewrite your Title to include the focus keyword (ideally 55 characters, but you can go up to 65 if needed)
- Rewrite your Meta Description to include the focus keyword (157 characters max.)
This is important because 36% of SEO experts think the headline/title tag is the most important SEO element. The key is to have creative titles and descriptions that will make users want to click and visit your website. Too much text and they won’t read, too little and they may find it boring. Find your writing muse and relay the best aspects about each product, service or page that you’re optimizing!
STEP 5: Start Your On Page SEO Optimization
You have everything planned. Now it’s time to get inside your Shopify setting and optimize your SEO. (Don’t worry, it’s easier than it sounds!)
Follow these steps for each type of page.
Optimize Your Homepage:
- Go into your Shopify store
- Click Online Store
- Click Preferences
- Go to the Title and meta description section
- Copy your new title and meta description
- Click Save
Optimize Your Collections
- Go into your Shopify store
- Click Products
- Click Collections
- Navigate to the collection page you want to edit
- Scroll down to the Search engine listing preview
- Click Edit Website SEO
- Copy your new title and meta description
- Click Save
Optimize Your Product Pages
- Go into your Shopify store
- Click Products
- Navigate to the product page you want to edit
- Scroll down to the Search engine listing preview
- Click Edit Website SEO
- Copy your new title and meta description
- Click Save
*We have a full tutorial on how to optimize your product pages, including best practices and other useful tips.
Optimize Blog Posts
- Go into your Shopify store
- Click Online Store
- Click Blog Posts
- Go into the blog post you want to edit
- Scroll down to the Search engine listing preview
- Click Edit Website SEO
- Copy your new title and meta description
- Click Save
Optimize Other Pages
- Go into your Shopify store
- Click Online Store
- Click Pages
- Navigate to the page you want to edit
- Scroll down to the Search engine listing preview
- Click Edit Website SEO
- Copy your new title and meta description
- Click Save
Zima Media Tip: If one of the pages you want to optimize has images, be sure to include alt tags! This tells Google that your page is relevant to the focus keyword and lets users find you through Image Searches.
STEP 6: Review Everything
The final step is to review and double check. You should always run a spell check and review your setup. We recommend using Grammarly, since it’s also free!
If you want to review that your optimizations are active, you can use MozBar, a free SEO toolbar. It will provide instant metrics of any page you are currently viewing (among other things).
Just keep in mind that these optimizations won’t show up immediately in search results – you need to give search engines some time to get the new version. Also, remember to check that if a recently installed page includes the brand name at the end. If yes, then you should remove it from your custom optimizations because it will show up at the end of every title on its own – and you don’t want duplicates!
And you’re done!
Bonus! Spreadsheet Goodie 😉
In case you missed it before, we want to make this easy for you. This is why we want to give you the workbook we used for this tutorial, completely FREE!
You can start optimizing your Shopify store’s SEO to get more traffic, more leads and more sales as of this moment. Happy optimizing!
One Response
A well-detailed article on “Shopify on page SEO optimization.” Shopify SEO simply means SEO improvements that are more unique to Shopify than other sites. The whole information is the extract of hard-earned experience. I honestly appreciate your skills.