Shopify is one of the most popular ecommerce platforms. This is primarily due to its ease of use, which allows you to set up a template and get online quickly. Over the last few years, Shopify has invested a lot of effort into improving its core SEO elements, and generally speaking, it’s very well optimised out of the box. However, there are a few things to consider, and we generally recommend immediate attention to a few areas.
Flat Structure
Unlike other platforms, the ecommerce category pages (or collections, as Shopify call them) use a flat structure. So, the collection pages all sit at the top level, and you can’t create any hierarchy within the admin for the collection pages.
This can be particularly problematic when migrating from other platforms, as you must consider how you set things up before making the move.
Unlike tag pages, collection pages are much easier to optimise for search engines and are natively indexable. Therefore, anything likely to have a significant search volume should be a collection.
Our general rule for Shopify is that nouns should be collections, and adjectives should be tags.
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A good example here would be something that’s a type like; maxi dress, wood screws or column radiators. Setting these up as tags is often tempting, but the significant search volume would make them too valuable.
Navigation
If possible, we want to include all collections in the main menu. This would allow users to quickly find and navigate to any collection page, improving the user experience and adding SEO value to these pages.
If that’s not possible, we’ve known some sites to include buttons within the collection descriptions to allow users to navigate to other collections from a collection page. This can be a helpful way of improving internal linking to collection pages.
Optimising Collection Pages
We’d recommend creating a text description for every collection page on the site. Our general advice on content creation is a good place to start before you get stuck in.
By default, Shopify places all descriptions at the top of the collection pages, meaning the more content you add, the more the product grid is pushed down. While we want a good amount of content on these pages, we don’t want to impact the usability of the page, so typically, we do one or three things:
1. Add an expandable read-more box
This allows you to add as much content as you like to the top of the page but hide it behind a read more button, which expands the box. There’s a helpful thread on the Shopify Community pages showing you exactly how to do this.
2. Move content to the bottom of the page
If you’d rather not hide your content, another option would be to move the content below the product grid instead. This has the benefit of keeping the content on the page but keeps it out of the way of the product grid. Again, the Shopify Community come to the rescue here with a simple way of executing this
3. Split the content
Moving things to the bottom of the page has a couple of downsides. One is that it can leave the top of the page looking bare, and people are less likely to see it.
Our preferred solution is to have a short section of content at the top of the page and an explanation below the products. This is a little bit more technically difficult, but there is a video explaining the process here.
Optimising Product Pages
After collection pages, product pages are the next most important place to get the content right. Depending on the market, you’ll find a lot of traffic that goes directly to the product pages. The same rules apply when creating content for product pages.
Product naming.
Shopify automatically fills out a lot of the critical SEO information for products for you, including the page titles, meta descriptions, alt text, H1, etc. But that all relies on getting your naming correct. There are a few rules we follow to ensure this is the best it can be:
- Be Specific: Product titles should be as specific as possible. The goal is to differentiate these pages from the collection pages, so the products should always have an attribute (typically colour or size) in the title to aid this.
- Keep them short: Somewhat at odds with the previous point, but once you’ve included the necessary information, try to avoid adding superfluous language. This has a knock-on effect on page titles, which Google won’t always use on the search results page if they’re too long.
- Make them unique: Typically, you’ll have at least a few similar products, so they often end up being named identically. If you follow the rule of adding the main attribute to the title, this should steer you clear of this, but ensure you are aware of this when naming products.
Set the homepage page title
As part of your setup, you should go to Online Store > Preferences. Here, you will find the section where you can add a page title and meta description for your homepage. While you’re there, be sure to set your Social sharing image to your logo.
For both your page title and meta description, you should include your main keyword, a USP or call to action, and your brand name.
URL redirects
As part of your ongoing housekeeping tasks, monitor the Search Console and redirect any flagged 404s (where possible).
A short note on Search Console: We recommend setting up the ‘domain property type’ in most cases. When you add your site to Google Search Console, they’ll guide you through verifying it through your domain registrar (123 reg, GoDaddy, Ionos, etc.).
If you find 404s in there, your first step is downloading them and mapping them to the correct pages. Ideally, you should redirect pages to a like-for-like product, but a relevant collection page is acceptable if nothing is available. If you are unsure where to redirect 404 pages, it's best to leave them as is rather than redirect them to the homepage or an unrelated page. This can cause more harm than good. Just make sure there are no links from the site to these pages.
Once you have your list of redirects, you will head to ‘Content > Menus’ and then hit ‘URL Redirects’ in the top right corner. From there, you can either add redirects individually or use the bulk upload tool to add them via CSV.
Remember: You don’t need to include your domain name in the redirects, so they should all start with a /.
Keeping on top of things.
It’s essential to remember that websites are constantly changing and being updated, so things inevitably break, minor issues can start to pile up, and despite best intentions, duplication happens across the site. Search Console is a great resource, but there are a handful of tools available to help keep you on track:
- Screaming Frog - Helps run crawls on your website and highlights issues. It allows you to crawl 500 URLs for free or buy a yearly licence for £199.
- SEM Rush / AHREFS - These are both all-in-one SEO tools. They allow you to run regular crawls on your website, track keyword rankings, and access keyword and content research tools. Both cost around £100 a month.
To wrap it all up
That should get you on the right track with optimising your Shopify site for SEO. But if you need more help, our fantastic SEO team at Mabo have a lot of experience with Shopify, so they can help you take things to the next level.
Implementing these tips should help boost your Shopify store's SEO. If you need more help or want to speed things up, Mabo's SEO experts are experienced with Shopify optimisation. We can create custom plans and give you hands-on support to seriously improve your search rankings, increase organic traffic, and raise your online profile.
