What is Shopify SEO?
Shopify has some built-in tools for SEO, such as the ability to redirect URLs and create blogs. Whilst this is useful, it can also create SEO issues with duplicate content.
Some of my SEO recommendations for Shopify are:
- Remove any duplicate URLs, including paginated URLs
- Create blog content for keywords. To help with website authority, keep these informative.
- Add structured data! This is a must. Product, Article, & BreadcrumbList need to be added at a minimum.
- Compress, rename, and ensure images all have alt tags. You can use an app like crush.pics or manually make the changes.
- Apps regularly slow down your site and can cause code conflicts. Remove unnecessary Shopify apps to reduce this impact.
- Resolve site errors. This might seem obvious; however, there are often site errors that are not easy to see. Resolving the errors can greatly increase your search engine rankings.
Duplicate content
Duplicate content occurs when similar content exists on two separate URLs. Search engines cannot determine which of the two pages should be the canonical version (The most important). As a result, the pages compete against each other for keyword ranking.
Robots.txt file
Shopify does not allow you to adjust the robots.txt file, which can be very limiting as the robots.txt is the easiest way to control Google’s crawl of your website. As a result, I recommend the Sitemap & No-Index Manager App for your robots.txt management.
Adding the “noindex” tag
Shopify does allow you to add the “noindex” tag by adding code to your theme.liquid file.
{% if template contains 'search' %}
<meta name="robots" content="noindex">
{% endif %}
As well, if you want to exclude an entire template, you can use this code:
{% if handle contains 'page-handle-you-want-to-exclude' %}
<meta name="robots" content="noindex">
{% endif %}
Structured data
Product structured data
Shopify sites will benefit from expanding the Product structured data. This involves adding structured data to define each product.
Article structured data
If you use Shopify’s blog functionality, you should use “Article” structured data. As a result, my clients have seen their ‘Articles’ used for Google Discover and the “Interesting Finds.”
BreadcrumbList structured data
BreadcrumbList structured data provide users with easy-to-use internal links and help Google better understand your website’s structure.
Keyword optimisation
Shopify allows you to optimise your title tags, meta descriptions, and URLs. These are key areas for SEO and should be optimised where possible. For example, to adjust these elements, navigate to the page you wish to update:
Shopify blog
Shopify includes the ability to create a blog, which allows you to have a place where you can create informative content. That is to say, blogs provide you with an opportunity to elaborate on the keywords you are targeting for your store. Additionally, blogs allow you to display an authoritative website for those keywords by providing valuable content.
Shopify apps
Shopify apps add code to your site. As a result, adding a large number of apps will slow down the site. In short, I recommend you regularly audit your installed apps and remove any that are not adding value.