How to Trick Shopify and Get Ahead of Your Competitors

With Shopify powering 24% of all eCommerce websites, competition is heating up. Many businesses in your industry rely on the same platform, often with similar features, making it difficult to stand out. Sound familiar?

Perhaps you’ve received expert SEO advice to boost your organic rankings, but Shopify’s technical limitations prevent you from fully implementing those strategies.

In this article, we’ll explore how to tackle various Shopify SEO challenges through non-obvious technical improvement. 

Shopify SEO Problems and Their Solutions

Creating Custom URL Structures

In Shopify's default setup, customizing URL structures is limited, which can hinder your ability to optimize URLs for search engines. A well-structured URL is not just about aesthetics; it significantly impacts how search engines interpret and rank your pages.

To overcome this limitation, we recommend transitioning to a Headless Shopify architecture. Headless Commerce allows you to decouple the front-end from the back-end, providing the flexibility to implement a custom routing system. This approach enables you to design SEO-friendly URL structures tailored to your business, retaining and enhancing the SEO value of your pages.

While Headless Shopify requires technical expertise and a higher initial investment, the long-term benefits far outweigh the effort. By taking full control over URL structures, you can:

• Ensure better keyword integration in URLs
• Simplify navigation for users and search engines
• Improve overall search visibility

For example, if your current Shopify store generates URLs like store.com/collections/shoes, switching to a Headless setup could let you simplify it to store.com/shoes, which is cleaner, more intuitive, and SEO-optimized.

Efficient 301 Redirects During CMS Migration

When moving your store from another CMS to Shopify, one of the most critical tasks is setting up 301 redirects. This ensures that your traffic and SEO equity from old URLs transfer seamlessly to the new ones. However, Shopify’s redirect capabilities are not without limitations.

1. Redirect Limits: Shopify’s plans cap the number of redirects at 100,000. For larger stores, this can be restrictive, especially during a comprehensive migration.
2. Existing Page Conflicts: Shopify often requires existing pages to be deleted (turning them into 404 errors) before setting up a redirect. This extra step can lead to temporary downtime, harming user experience and rankings.

To address these challenges, consider these advanced solutions:

• Custom Redirect Scripts: Use a custom-coded redirect management system to bypass Shopify’s built-in limitations. This allows you to manage redirects more efficiently, especially for high-volume stores.
• Pre-Migration Audits: Conduct a thorough audit of your URLs before migration. Identify critical pages and ensure their ranking signals are preserved.
• Specialized Migration Tools: Leverage tools designed specifically for Shopify migrations, such as Cart2Cart, which streamline the redirect process and minimize downtime.

When done correctly, a seamless migration can prevent ranking drops and even boost traffic as you optimize your new site structure for better performance.

Resolving Content Duplication Issues in Shopify

One of the common SEO challenges in Shopify is content duplication, which occurs when products are accessible through multiple URLs. For instance, a product's default URL might look like /product/..., but the same product could also be accessed via category pages such as /collection/1../product/... or /collection/2../product/... if it belongs to multiple categories. This duplication can confuse search engines and negatively impact your SEO performance.

To tackle this, we implemented the rel="canonical" attribute to guide search engines toward the primary version of the product page. Specifically, we configured canonical tags so that all category-based URLs (/collection/...) point back to the default product page (/product/...). This approach ensures that search engines recognize the primary page, avoiding dilution of SEO value and improving indexing efficiency.

‍

Also read the article: Shopify vs Magento SEO: Which Platform Offers Better Optimization for Your Store?

‍

Shopify SEO Lifehacks 

Let’s take a look at some smart and practical Shopify SEO lifehacks that can help you improve rankings, drive traffic, and increase sales with minimal effort. 

Using AI for Optimizing Meta Tags

Manually generating meta tags for a large product catalog on Shopify can be a time-consuming task. The bigger your product range, the more effort it takes to create the essential SEO meta titles and descriptions for each page.

To address this issue, our partner, Web Systems Solutions, developed Metagen AI — an app for Shopify stores that uses artificial intelligence to automatically generate optimized meta tags. Using Metagen AI saves significant time and enhances the visibility of your pages in search engines, making it especially valuable for Shopify store owners.

Do you also want to partner with Promodo? Read the details 👇

‍

‍

Leverage Structured Data and Schema.org for Better Visibility

Structured data, powered by Schema.org, helps search engines understand the content on your website more effectively. By implementing structured data, you can enhance your store's search engine results with rich snippets like star ratings, prices, product availability, and more. These visual enhancements can significantly increase click-through rates (CTR), leading to more traffic and higher engagement.

How to Implement Structured Data in Shopify

1. Check for Built-in Support in Your Theme: Many modern Shopify themes come with basic structured data support. Start by reviewing your theme’s documentation or consulting your theme developer to see if this feature is already included.
2. Manually Add Structured Data: If your theme doesn’t have adequate support for structured data, you can add it yourself. Here’s how:
   Step 1: Access Your Theme Codesome text
   • Log in to your Shopify admin panel.
   • Navigate to Online Store > Themes.
   • Locate your active theme and click Actions > Edit Code.
3. Step 2: Edit Template Filessome text
   • Open specific template files like product.liquid, collection.liquid, or article.liquid.
   • Insert structured data code in JSON-LD format within <script type="application/ld+json"> tags.
4. Automate with Apps: If manual coding is not your forte, consider using a Shopify app that simplifies the implementation of structured data. Apps like JSON-LD for SEO or SchemaPlus for SEO automatically generate and integrate schema markup for your store.

‍

Pro Tip: Regularly test your structured data implementation using tools like Google’s Rich Results Test or Schema Markup Validator. This ensures that your structured data is error-free and properly recognized by search engines.

‍

Optimize Images and Alt Texts

Optimizing images enhances website loading speed, positively influencing SEO rankings and user experience. Alt texts, on the other hand, allow search engines to interpret image content, improving your website's visibility in image search results. They also provide text descriptions when images fail to load or take too long to display.

Alt texts serve two primary purposes:

1. Boosting Search Rankings: Alt texts make your products discoverable in image searches, increasing organic traffic.
2. Improved Accessibility: They provide descriptions for visually impaired users relying on screen readers, creating a more inclusive shopping experience.

‍

Steps for Image Optimization in Shopify

1. Use Modern Image Formats

Shopify automatically converts images into the WebP format, which is lightweight and supports high-quality visuals. Ensure your Shopify theme supports WebP. If you're using a custom or purchased theme, check the documentation or consult the developer.

2. Compress and Optimize Images

Large file sizes can slow down your website. Compress images before uploading to maintain quality while reducing size.

• Manual Compression: Tools like TinyPNG can compress images effectively.
• Automated Solutions: For bulk image optimization, apps like TinyIMG SEO & Image Optimizer streamline the process directly within Shopify.

3. Bulk Alt Text Management

Adding alt texts manually for a large product catalog can be time-consuming. Use automation tools like Bulk Image Edit to efficiently add or update alt texts. These tools also allow you to create templates that dynamically generate alt texts based on product names, collections, or other attributes.

Best Practices for Alt Texts

• Be Descriptive: Write clear, concise descriptions that align with the product or content shown.
• Include Relevant Keywords: Strategically use keywords to improve search visibility without keyword stuffing.
• Avoid Generic Labels: Replace phrases like “image1” or “photo2” with meaningful descriptions such as “Men's Blue Running Shoes.

‍

Conclusion

In conclusion, launching Shopify SEO requires a combination of technical expertise, strategic insights, and the right tools to stay ahead in a highly competitive market. 

Promodo's deep knowledge of Shopify's unique challenges and our 20-year experience in boosting eCommerce performance allow us to offer effective solutions that truly make a difference. Through our collaborations with our partners, we also launch innovative developments to ensure your Shopify store meets and exceeds SEO strategy expectations. 

‍

Need more leads for your Shopify store?

Enhance online visibility and win more customers with a tailored strategies!

Learn More