How to optimize your SEO with Shopify?

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) refers to all the techniques used to increase the visibility of your e-commerce site in search engines such as Google, Yahoo or Bing. To generate maximum traffic to your site, the first step is to optimize its technical aspects.

When creating or redesigning your Shopify e-commerce site, you'll need to choose a theme. The theme allows you to customize your online store and access different functionalities. The chosen theme must be visually appealing, facilitate navigation, guarantee the shortest possible loading time and, of course, convert visitors. The theme also plays a major role in your site's SEO.
Make sure your chosen theme is mobile-friendly (responsive web). And if you've created your website theme yourself, make sure it's compatible with mobile devices. Your Shopify SEO will be negatively impacted if it isn't.

Search engines are constantly on the lookout for new data sources for their search results. As such, the "robots.txt" file provides search engine spiders with the pages of your online store that they should display. Note that all Shopify sites have a robots.txt file by default. This file plays a key role in the natural referencing of your store. You have the option of modifying this file and making a few changes, such as adding sitemap URLs or blocking certain indexing robots.

Another essential Shopify SEO file, the sitemap.xml file contains links to your products, pages and collections. This file is used by search engines to index your online store in search results. The sitemap.xml is generated and updated automatically.

Title and description tags are two important elements for the natural referencing of your Shopify store. They are displayed in search results and provide valuable information for the web surfer (and also for search engine spiders). These two tags will encourage visitors to click on the link and visit your store.

The title tag is displayed as a clickable link in search engine results. This title, with a maximum length of 60 characters, must be descriptive, unique and include the page's main keywords. The description tag is displayed just after the title tag in search engine results. Its role is to describe the content of the web page in simple terms to encourage visitors to click.

To optimize the images on your website, you'll need to master the use of Alt tags. Used in HTML code, their role is to describe the appearance and function of an image within a web page. In other words, it's a text that makes it easier for search engines to understand the images in your online store. Don't neglect the weight of the images posted on your site!

To optimally manage your product catalog, redirect URLs can be used to redirect one web page to another. When you modify a URL on your e-commerce site, you can create a redirect URL so that your visitors can systematically find what they're looking for.
As e-commerce catalogs evolve rapidly, your store's URLs are likely to change. So, to maintain their SEO performance, you need to manage your redirects carefully.
Special point: Shopify offers an automatic option with 301 redirects every time you modify a URL on your site. Similarly, any redirects created can be accessed from a redirect manager available on the CMS.

Of course, the content of your product catalog, such as images, titles or descriptions, is important. But don't forget that creating relevant content in the form of blog posts will be just as essential to your SEO. Informative, high-quality content with added value on well-targeted, relevant topics maximizes your chances of ranking well on your target users' queries.

To generate unique, SEO-optimized content, your content must make the most of keywords and integrate them harmoniously into your pages. Don't forget that your content must be original, engaging and regularly updated.