At IWD, we’ve been working with Shopify for more than 15 years. Aside from offering Shopify SEO, we’ve also built Shopify sites from scratch, migrated stores over from other eCommerce platforms, upgraded sites to Shopify Plus, and much more. We’ve even built extensions and other tools to help Shopify site owners get even more from this very powerful platform.
This is one of the biggest advantages we offer as a Shopify SEO company. We don’t just do SEO and other important types of eCommerce marketing. Our agency also includes an in-house team of developers who understand Shopify inside and out. As you probably know, SEO is about so much more than just the words you put on each page. It’s also about creating a user-friendly store that customers love and a technically-sound website that is easy for Google to crawl and understand.
So, when you hire IWD, you don’t need to worry about then hiring another company to help with the technical aspects of your store – or worse, choosing an agency that doesn’t even know how much web design matters to your rankings. You’ll have both under one roof!
And while we never push clients to accept other services, it doesn’t hurt to know that your eCommerce SEO agency also has a firm grasp on other vital aspects of running a successful site. Whether you’re concerned about your conversion rate, want to explore email marketing, think an updated search feature would help, or anything else, our firm has the experience you need to reach your highest eCommerce goals.
Contact us and let’s talk about how our team can help your Shopify store conquer Google!
Our Shopify SEO experts know that you can never treat two sites the same way, which is why every one of our SEO strategies is a bit different. That said, the following is a general overview of what the strategy will entail for your Shopify store.
1. Initial Call and SEO Consultation:
Our Shopify SEO services always begin with an initial consultation call when we can delve into the pertinent aspects of your business, market, and store. Our goal is to understand your company, industry, and the dynamics of your online market. This conversation is a great opportunity for us to gain insights into your past experiences with Shopify SEO and any strategies you may have implemented with other agencies. It's a collaborative process where we listen, learn, and lay the foundation for a Shopify SEO plan tailored specifically to your business.
This is not a one-sided conversation, either. We encourage you to ask us whatever questions you have, as well. It’s important to us that our Shopify SEO clients don’t feel as though they have to blindly trust us with their websites. We want you to be 100% confident you’ve made the right choice before moving forward.
2. Industry Research and Discovery:
Once we've engaged in a conversation to comprehend your business and industry specifics, our next step for Shopify SEO involves comprehensive research. From an SEO perspective, we analyze your competitor's websites to discern the factors contributing to their rankings and traffic acquisition.
This crucial phase focuses on understanding the distinct characteristics and dynamics of your specific business sector. Through meticulous research, we will pinpoint the SEO strategies that will be most effective for your Shopify website. This process serves as an initial exploration into key trends, competitor strategies, and potential customer behaviors relevant to your site. Armed with these insights, we will then begin to formulate SEO tactics aimed not only at enhancing search engine rankings for your store but also at directing targeted traffic to the optimal pages on your Shopify website, bringing visitors closer to your checkout page.
Our approach is strategic and targeted, ensuring that SEO efforts go beyond mere visibility and "vanity" metrics. We aim to attract the right audience: the kind that significantly boosts revenue. Following this critical research phase, our agency will present you with a Scope of Work (SOW) detailing the recommended strategy and a quote for the involved services.
3. Full Audit of Your Shopify Store:
Following our conversation, we will conduct an extensive SEO audit tailored to your Shopify website. This comprehensive assessment involves reviewing your Shopify store’s code, delving into its Core Web Vitals, assessing meta tags, and leveraging competitor analysis to identify areas for improvement.
Our Shopify SEO audit plays a pivotal role in uncovering both strengths and weaknesses in your current online presence. It’s why we’re so meticulous in reviewing every relevant element for influencing search engine rankings and user experience.
Technical SEO aspects, such as website speed, mobile responsiveness, and URL structure, will be evaluated to ensure easy crawlability and indexability by search engines. On-page Shopify SEO elements, including content quality, keyword optimization, and meta tags, will be reviewed to effectively communicate page topics to search engines and visitors to your Shopify store. User experience is a focal point, examining navigation, user engagement, and conversion rates to pinpoint areas for improvement. We'll analyze your content strategy for relevancy, consistency, and alignment with your target audience's needs and search intent. This enables us to identify content gaps and opportunities for new content creation, aligning with Google’s EEAT (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) guidelines.
The audit extends to your backlink profile, too, as that influences your Shopify site's authority and trustworthiness in Google’s eyes.
And to ensure accurate reporting of website traffic, conversions, and user behaviors, we'll even double-check your Google Analytics and Tag Manager setup.
Upon completion of the audit, our SEO company will possess actionable insights to drive the desired traffic. This report serves as a roadmap for optimizing your Shopify website, enhancing search engine visibility, and improving the overall user experience, ultimately leading to increased traffic and conversions.
If you have your own in-house SEO team but just want a second pair of eyes to conduct an unbiased review, contact us to schedule your Shopify audit.
4. Technical SEO Cleanup:
Once your Shopify SEO audit is complete, our team can get started with addressing any issues that hinder your site and capitalize on opportunities to quickly boost traffic.
While Shopify is renowned for its user-friendly design and customization, this eCommerce platform can still present technical problems, especially with ongoing setup changes over time. So, our Shopify SEO experts will use their design and development knowledge to examine every aspect of your store to uncover improvement opportunities. This will include conducting a crawl error report to identify indexing issues affecting your website, addressing concerns like missing pages or server errors, and ensuring effective search engine indexing.
Auditing the XML sitemap is crucial for guiding search engines through your site's structure. Your Shopify store must have an accurate and updated map for efficient crawling and visibility. Reviewing the robots.txt file directs search engines appropriately, preventing the indexing of sensitive areas while promoting vital content.
Analyzing HTTPS status codes is essential for identifying loading issues, guaranteeing a seamless user experience, and preserving your site's authority. Evaluating website speed is vital, as slow-loading sites can detrimentally impact user experience and search engine rankings. Speed optimization enhances user engagement and conversion rates. In today's mobile-centric world, reviewing mobile proficiency is key. A mobile-friendly Shopify website is likely to rank higher and attract more users.
Regularly checking for broken internal and external links ensures seamless navigation and upholds the site's credibility. Ongoing maintenance in this area ensures accessibility and user-friendliness. Similarly, eliminating redundant redirects simplifies website navigation, improving crawl efficiency and potentially leading to enhanced search engine rankings and overall website performance. Armed with these insights, our Shopify SEO experts are equipped to enhance your site's functionality, elevate search engine visibility, and drive increased traffic.
5. On-Page SEO Improvements:
Our Shopify SEO services encompass all the necessary on-page optimizations to elevate your store’s visibility and effectiveness in search engine results pages (SERPs). We adopt a comprehensive approach, ranging from meticulous keyword research to dynamic content creation, aimed at producing impactful results.
Specializing in pinpointing highly relevant industry keywords aligned with your Shopify store’s products, we strategically incorporate these keywords throughout your site. This not only contributes to higher rankings but also enhances the potential for converting searches into sales.
Our eCommerce SEO team will optimize header tags, ensuring they are not only rich in keywords but also structured to enhance readability, ultimately driving tangible clicks. Proper utilization of header tags organizes content architecture, providing enhanced usability for both users and search engines.
We focus on structuring your content to increase the likelihood of appearing in Google's featured snippets. This involves crafting clear, concise, and question-focused content that search engines can easily recognize as a direct answer to user queries.
Implementing schema markup is a crucial facet of our Shopify SEO service. This advanced SEO technique aids search engines in comprehending the context of your content, thereby improving how your pages are represented in search results.
Our on-page Shopify SEO services extend to optimizing all images on your store for both speed and search engines. This includes adjusting file sizes for faster loading and incorporating alt tags with relevant keywords, elevating your site's overall SEO performance. With these proactive measures, our Shopify SEO services ensure a robust online presence that attracts, engages, and converts your target audience
6. Content Recommendations and/or Creation:
Our expertise in utilizing blogs to drive relevant traffic is a standout feature of our Shopify SEO services. The true advantage lies in enhancing your website's "authority" with Google, translating into improved rankings for your category and product pages. When ready-to-purchase shoppers search, your Shopify store emerges, primed for conversion.
Blog content is also an absolutely essential tool for creating internal links that enhance website navigation for users and crawlability for search engines. The right anchor text on these links directly contributes to improved rankings for the linked pages. Strong calls to action (CTAs) embedded in blog posts guide readers to various areas of your Shopify website, not only improving click-through rates but also boosting conversion rate optimization (CRO).
Our expertise extends to applying SEO services to B2B sites, too, including blogs. SEO-friendly blog posts can be transformative for Shopify eCommerce stores catering to B2B markets.
If you have an in-house team capable of creating such blog posts, we can assist by offering topic and keyword recommendations or creating outlines for them to follow. These outlines set targets for keyword density, word counts, and subtopics to cover. Alternatively, we can handle the entire content creation process for you. With our Shopify SEO services, we ensure that your blog becomes a powerful tool for attracting, engaging, and converting your target audience.
7. Backlinking for eCommerce:
Backlinks remain a critical way of winning over Google and other search engines. Even with a user-friendly eCommerce website built on Shopify that has all the other “SEO boxes” checked, backlinks are critical for reaching and keeping new ranks.
And yet, backlinking for an eCommerce website is a lot different than doing it for sites focused on other industries. This is why working with an agency that focuses on eCommerce SEO is so important for realizing sustainable results.
So, while we appreciate that blogs can be a fantastic way to earn valuable backlinks, we also know that actively working to acquire them is vital, too. Just as important, we know how to target the right pages on an eCommerce website, so that they have the best possible chance of boosting rankings ASAP.
And we don’t just set and forget backlinks. We will monitor the performance of the acquired backlinks to continually optimize the results of our Shopify SEO strategy, ensuring the best possible results for your eCommerce business.
8. Monthly Reporting:
It’s important to us that you’re always aware of the ROI you’re receiving from our Shopify SEO services, which is why we provide monthly reporting that our team will thoroughly review with you during scheduled calls. Just like our other services, these reports can be tailored to meet your unique requirements.
These reports offer a detailed view of how our Shopify SEO efforts impact your traffic, both on a month-to-month and year-over-year basis. Analyzing both aspects ensures that our strategies maximize the impact on your organic growth, and reviewing progress monthly allows us to promptly adapt to any changes in Google's algorithm.
Additionally, these reports outline the shifts in your keyword rankings, sourced directly from the Google Search Console for accuracy. During these discussions, our SEO team can explore new keyword opportunities to further boost your website's traffic.
Beyond SEO metrics, these monthly reporting calls provide an excellent opportunity to delve into other aspects of your Shopify website. Whether you have Shopify-specific queries, want feedback on other eCommerce initiatives, or are interested in exploring additional services we offer (such as web design or email marketing), these regular check-ins serve as a valuable touchpoint for comprehensive discussions and strategic planning.
While we hope the above information about our Shopify SEO services was helpful, we know you may still have questions about how it works, our unique process, and a lot more. That’s why we’ve added this FAQ. These cover the most common questions we get about Shopify SEO and related topics. Of course, if you have any other questions, feel free to contact us and we’ll get back to you ASAP.
The cost of our SEO services depends on a few factors unique to your business. Some sites are more complex than others and may need more work to see results, at least in the very beginning. However, after our initial audit of your website, we’ll know what SEO work is required to deliver results and will deliver you a quote with our SOW (Scope of Work).
There are a few important factors that we have to consider when looking at the timeline for how long it will take for our Shopify SEO services to start showing results. The first is what you’ve done prior to working with us. The second factor is what your competitors have been doing. If you haven’t invested in SEO before, but your competitors have been for the past decade, it’s probably going to require more work to overcome that kind of head start. Third, it will depend on your budget. The more SEO work we can do every month, the faster we can show you results. We can give you a better answer about an estimated timeline once you review your unique Shopify site, though.
In short, yes. We think Shopify is one of the best eCommerce platforms for SEO. It’s extremely user-friendly and supports a great deal of customization, which helps with everything from driving traffic to driving sales.
That said, Shopify is not without its challenges. For example, it’s notorious for URL structures that don’t lead to the cleanest result – the type we usually love to see for SEO (i.e., everything falls under “/collections/”). That’s hardly a dealbreaker, though, especially for someone who understands SEO. The same goes for Shopify’s filters, which can potentially create the kinds of duplicate content issues you want to avoid at all costs.
Again, these are pretty minor issues, but they also highlight why it’s smart to retain SEO services from an agency that’s very familiar with Shopify.
Soo.. Ready to chat yet??
Soo.. Ready to chat yet??
Soo.. Ready to chat yet??