SEO Tips for Shopify Beginners: Building a Strong Foundation

Although Shopify comes with some convenient SEO functions, many store operators will ignore some SEO points in the early stage. Through this article, you can check which skills have not been used, lay a good foundation in the early stage, reduce the pressure of later optimization, and help improve SEO results!

Ⅰ. Optimize URLs and domain names

If there is no additional modification, the store URL will normally contain a number assigned by Shopify. A seemingly randomly generated number cannot reflect the characteristics of the store and products, and has no memorable points or trustworthiness. Correspondingly, in terms of domain names, if there is no additional purchase, the store will keep the default domain name myshopify.com.

You can buy a custom domain name on Shopify or a third-party platform. Here is a little trick. Choose common domain extensions such as .com and .net, and match them with keywords that reflect the characteristics of your store and products. This will help increase trust. If you want to change the URL at this time, you can modify it in Settings—Domains—Change to a new myshopify.com domain.

Although domain names are not the primary determining factor affecting rankings, low-quality domain names can have an adverse effect. If they are not optimized well in the early stages, later changes may make it difficult for search engines and returning customers to find the website, which in turn may lead to a decrease in store traffic.

Ⅱ. Choose a topic from a technical perspective

Shopify provides a large number of templates and themes. Aesthetics and fit are not the only goals. You also need to consider the store theme's impact on web page loading speed and device compatibility.

Web page loading speed has long been a factor in search engine rankings, both on desktop and mobile! So when choosing a theme, you should consider both speed and appearance. In addition, not only do consumers prefer mobile, but Google also evaluates website content through mobile view, so the store theme and purchase experience should be conducive to the use of mobile devices.

Ⅲ. Optimize web page connection

The various web pages of the site are connected and follow reasonable logic, which not only helps search engines to crawl them smoothly, but also makes it easier for users to understand and visit them in depth.

As a site with product display and sales functions, an independent website needs to reasonably arrange the store homepage, product classification, product details and other pages, which actually means making a logical and easy-to-understand menu navigation. At the same time, pay attention to reducing isolated pages, which means that each page has at least one internal link pointing to it. In addition, it is best to ensure that the path between each web page and the homepage is within four clicks to reduce the difficulty of the page being found by search engines and users.

Ⅳ. Improve your descriptive alternative text

Descriptive alternative text is not only helpful for search engine crawling, but also helps users know the approximate information of the images that have not yet been loaded in advance when the page loads slowly.

However, not all images need to have perfect alternative texts, such as decorative images. In addition, try to make the text concise, easy to understand, and include important and valuable keywords as much as possible, which will also help improve the image ranking.

Ⅴ. Test the User Experience

In order to detect and evaluate the actual visit experience of users in the target market to the store, it is often necessary to simulate the visit conditions of users in different regions, such as checking whether the page loading speed is up to standard, whether the site content is complete, whether each function can be used normally, whether the store purchase experience is good... To obtain more accurate test results, you can use the dynamic lines of IPFoxy proxy and use rotating IPs to simulate the visit conditions of users in different target markets. Its good connection stability and 200+ regional options can easily meet the test requirements.

In short, it is necessary to lay a solid foundation for SEO in the early stages of Shopify website construction and operation in order to save effort and improve efficiency in later SEO work.