Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is one of the tools that you can use to help visitors find you online. SEO is a very big topic and there are people who specialize in this area. Chances are you're not an expert in this area, and trust me, neither am I. However, you can still implement a few things to help boost your chances of ending up in search engine results. Here are a few basic tips that you can implement:
Add a meta descriptions to every page, product and collection:
Your meta description is that little descriptive paragraph at appears underneath your page title. Ideally, you want this to be a summary of the content on the page and should include some descriptive key words related to the products/content in that particular page/product/collection. To edit your meta descriptions, access the back-end of the page/product/collection as if you wanted to change the name. Then scroll to the bottom where you will see a section to edit the meta description.
Submit a sitemap to Google Search Console:
If that sounds like gibberish to you, don't worry. It sounded like Gibberish to me too. Shopify Help Center provides a pretty easy step-by-step process you can follow to do this. Check it out here.
Use descriptive names for products:
I know it's tempting to be poetic with your product names - especially when there's a connection to a story. However, the experts have advised that this is not good for SEO. What you want to do with your product names is consider what users will actually search for? Are they more likely to search for "The Gabby Dress - Pistachio" or "Green Babydoll Dress"? When your product name is a clear description of the item it helps them to rank higher in results.
BONUS: this will help with on-site search as well as visitors to your website will most likely search based on a color they can easily remember as opposed to a fancy name/color that you created.
Product descriptions should cover as many details as possible:
When it comes to product descriptions the same rules apply to product names. Sure, you can get fancy with the description and make the language more fun. But don't forget to include the details. Is the sleeve full of volume? Does the slit of the skirt go all the way to the hips? What are the product materials? Your customer can see these things by looking at the images, but Google only "sees" the text information on your site. So try to make sure that the product descriptions have all of the relevant details that someone would possibly search for.
QUICK TIP: adding in all this information will mostly likely make your product descriptions very long. This would have your customer scrolling your prouct pages forever...and this is terrible for user experience. My solution to this is to use the metafields provided by Shopify. These will help to break up your information and enhance the viewing experience for your product pages, while still giving Google all of the information it needs.
Be intentional URLs:
Sometimes it's much easier to just duplicate a page, product, blog or collection. It saves time and helps you work so much efficiently setting up your store. What you probably didn't realize is that the URL of that copied product says "...copy-of-xyz". This is bad for SEO because your yellow dress that you want to rank when someone searches for yellow dresses is now saying "...copy-of-blue-socks". My tip is: whenever you duplicate anything on your store, scroll to the bottom where the metadescription and URL is and make sure it has the proper name. If you've already shared this link with others (messages/emails) you could leave the box checked for redirecting to your new link. Otherwise, just delete that old link completely.
Optimize all media (images, videos, and documents):
When it comes to images and videos you want to ensure that the file sizes aren't too large. I know that you want to showcase the best possible quality, but viewing on most screens don't require super high-definition. Find a comfortable middle ground that doesn't compromise viewing quality but still enhances site load speed.
You should also try to give your files relevant descriptive names. For example, consider renaming product images using the name of the product instead of the default string of numbers that the camera created when you took the photo.
Always populate the ALT text. This will help to convey the “why” of the image as it relates to the content of a document or webpage. Screen reading software will read the ALT text aloud, and it is indexed by search engines. It also displays on the page if the image fails to load.
These are my very quick and easy SEO tips you can implement on your website. There is a lot more that goes into SEO and if you ever decide to hire an expert they would go even deeper into this. However, if you're a beginner and you're doing this all on your own practicing these will help to improve your search rankings.