Chances are, no matter how niche your product is, there are dozens—if not hundreds or thousands—of competitors out there in direct competition with you. And if your product is less niche—say you’re selling shoes or kitchen utensils, the competition can be fierce, and breaking through the web noise to get your eCommerce page at the top of Search Engine Ranking Pages (SERPs) won’t happen passively. Sure, you may have the most amazing product on the market, but if no one knows about it, your sales won’t reflect your amazingness. Nonetheless, many eCommerce site owners neglect Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to the increasing detriment of their bottom line. With 40% of eCommerce traffic coming from online search, investing in SEO for your eCommerce site is not an optional feature. It’s a necessity—assuming you want to keep up with (and pull ahead of) the competition.

Unfortunately, many eCommerce retailers assume that building their shop on an eCommerce platform like Shopify means they don’t have to worry about SEO. In fact, it’s exactly the opposite! While Shopify has many built-in features to keep it relevant and user-friendly, there are many ways to improve SEO on Shopify and some common pitfalls you’ll need to avoid along the way. Let’s delve into some of those pitfalls (and their solutions) to get you started on how to optimize SEO on Shopify.  

Common Shopify SEO Problems

• Internal Product Links—Product URLs in Shopify can create SEO problems by setting up internal links that go to the wrong URL, and the same product having multiple URLs. Unfortunately, this leads to one product being indexed multiple times by search engines. Luckily, the quick fix to this issue is to go into your themes and modify them to point directly to your product pages. However, this has to be done manually. And, after fixing your product links, you may find that your breadcrumbs are broken and you’ll have to set those manually as well.
• So. Many. Pages.—One of the larger SEO pitfalls for Shopify is that many of the extremely useful functionalities when it comes to organizing your products and your customers being able to filter them to easily find products end up creating unnecessary and content-thin pages that can be detrimental to your SEO strategy. This includes product tags, collections, blog tags, and product types and variants. Luckily, there is a fix! But, like most Shopify fixes, it has to be done manually and can be time-consuming. Setting these links to “noindex, follow” in the theme.liquid file will ensure that crawl time is not wasted by indexing redundant pages.
• Third-Party Apps—There seems to be a never-ending number of third-party apps available to integrate into Shopify to give your eCommerce store pretty much any functionality you can imagine. However, the vast majority of these app developers care little about how their app may affect the overall search engine rankings of your site. Be sure to carefully test and analyze any third-party app you’re considering using to see how it affects your Search Engine Ranking Pages (SERPs).   

While there are some other frustrating issues with Shopify that don’t have fixes or workaround, many of the issues do have solutions. They are, however, frequently fairly technical fixes. One of the reasons Shopify is so popular is because it’s easy to use regardless of your technical expertise—which can make some of the SEO fixes a little overwhelming! Luckily, there are professional SEO agencies that have Shopify specialists. Globe Runner provides advanced expertise in all things SEO—and that includes your Shopify eCommerce site.

Why Globe Runner?

When it comes to SEO and Shopify, Globe Runner is your one-stop-shop! From our experts in content marketing to both on- and -off-page search engine optimization, Globe Runner is rocket fuel for your eCommerce business. From ensuring each of your product and category pages are effectively optimized for organic search to effective link building, Globe Runner can take your eCommerce site to the next level and help you turn customers into loyal brand ambassadors. Check out some frequently asked questions about SEO for Shopify and then get in touch about using SEO on your Shopify eCommerce site to help your product sales take off!

Frequently Asked Questions

Do Shopify tags affect SEO?

While product tags are an extremely useful Shopify tool to organize your shop and help your customers filter and find what they’re looking for, they can create problems for your SEO strategy. The issue? Shopify creates a new page every time you tag a product. This can lead to duplicate content pages as well as wasted crawl time if you haven’t ensured that those duplicate pages are not indexed. Without taking measures to avoid that indexing, product tags can end up negatively affecting your page rankings across search engines.

Do Shopify stores rank on Google?

Absolutely! At the end of the day, Shopify is just a platform you’ve used to build your eCommerce site. Search engines, including Google, don’t care what platform you’ve built your site on; they care about what’s on your site and in that code. If you’re following SEO best practices on your Shopify site, you’ll rank on Google—and if you’re not ranking where you want to be, it’s your optimization, not your platform. If you aren’t seeing the results you like, consider having a professional content marketing agency with experts in Shopify SEO audit your site and recommend changes to improve your rankings. 

Does Google favor WordPress?

Rumors have abounded for years that Google has a heavy bias in favor of WordPress websites. The truth is that Google and other search engines don’t really care about what platform you’re using to build your website. So, why the misconception? Well, to begin with, WordPress is an incredibly popular platform. Over 40% of total websites on the internet are built with WordPress. With that kind of market share, it may sometimes appear that all the top rankings go to WordPress sites—when it’s really just that there are so many WordPress sites to begin with that they’re bound to show up more frequently. Which leads to the second part of why it seems that Google loves WordPress so much . . . WordPress, as a platform, is incredibly SEO-friendly and has many SEO best practices built into the platform, leading in part to its popularity and the ability to rank higher on Search Engine Ranking Pages (SERPs) by doing less than you might have to do to optimize your page on other platforms.  

Is Shopify good for SEO?

Shopify has many SEO features built into the platform, like being easily mobile-friendly and automatically generating XML sitemaps. And, while there are some SEO limitations to being a closed platform, Shopify is one of, if not the, easiest to optimize eCommerce platforms available. However, it’s important to remember that SEO is not about your platform and is never a set-it-and-forget-it endeavor. Consistent optimization of your site—whether it’s on Shopify or another platform—is necessary to keep you on top of the SERPs.

Is Shopify blog good for SEO?

Blogs, whether on Shopify or not, are an important part of content marketing and SEO. Professional content marketing agencies, like Globe Runner, can assist you with making sure your blog strategy enhances your search engine rankings by conducting in-depth keyword research, gap analysis, and competitor research while ensuring every single blog is optimized for the best performance.