Make your webshop visible in the search results: tips and tricks for SEO in Shopify

Get the basics right: webshop SEO for dummies

Before you throw yourself into more complicated technical SEO disciplines such as canonical tags and structured data, you first and foremost need to get all the basic SEO on your webshop right. A bit like a builder putting up a house doesn't start thinking about meticulous aesthetic details until he has poured the foundations and built the frame.

But what do I actually mean by basic SEO, or webshop SEO for dummies, as I've somewhat arrogantly chosen to call it?

I mean the down-to-earth SEO measures that you absolutely have to be able to tick off if you have any hope at all of getting your webshop good rankings in the search results.

Basic SEO on your webshop

• Correct H tags on your homepage and collection and product pages
• Unique meta/page titles and meta descriptions (meta tags) on your homepage and important collection and product pages
• ALT tags

These are some of the first things Google examines closely when the search engine hands out rankings in the search results. So make sure they're optimised.

What are H tags?

An H tag (or a header) is a piece of HTML code that defines a piece of text as a heading. That way, it tells Google what a subpage is about, just as the headline and subheadings in a news article tell readers what the article and its individual sections are about.

H tags come in several levels, from H1 to H6, where H1 is the most important and H6 the least important. And just as a newspaper article has one headline and several subheadings, a subpage on your webshop should have one H1 and preferably several of the lower levels of H tags.

• The H1 is the landing page's “angle”: it describes and frames what the page is about overall
• The H2s are supporting but important information
• The H3s are nice to know, but not necessarily need to know, and so on

Want to learn a bit more about H tags and how to use them? Click here.

How do you create H tags in Shopify?

You don't need to be an HTML whizz, a coding genius or a web wizard to create H tags in Shopify. Shopify has a simple, user-friendly text editor that makes it easy to insert, edit and tag text on your collection and product pages.

To tag headings in the text on a collection or product in Shopify, do the following:

• Click Products > All products or Collections
• Search for and click the collection or product you want to edit
• Copy-paste or write your text in the text field
• Choose the heading level you want in the Formatting drop-down menu (“Heading 1” corresponds to H1, “Heading 2” to H2 and so on)

When you highlight a piece of text and click “Heading 2”, for example, the formatting will change so that Google reads it as an H2.

Be aware that Shopify will often automatically give the text in the title field an H1 tag. So to avoid multiple H1s, as a rule you shouldn't give headings in the text field itself H1 tags.

What are meta tags?

You've almost certainly come across meta tags before. Meta tags are the information in search engine results that describes the content of a website or subpage. A meta tag consists of an SEO title (also called a page title or meta title) and a meta description.

It looks roughly like this:

How do you create meta tags in Shopify?

You do that in the text editor too. Scroll all the way to the bottom of the text editor and click Edit website SEO.

You can then write your page title and meta description. Below, you can see the text editor for one of Amplify's webshop clients, which sells makeup. Here, I'm editing the meta tags on a collection page for blush.

Tip: Want to make sure your meta tags aren't too long and also encourage potential customers to click through to your webshop? Then try Amplify's meta tags tool.

What are ALT tags?

ALT tags (also known as ALT text or alternative text) are text in the source code that tells Google and other search engines what an image shows. Google is pretty “clever”, but not clever enough to understand images. So the otherwise all-knowing search engine needs a little help to understand the images on your webshop. Because the more Google knows about a collection or product page, the more likely your webshop is to get good rankings in the search results.

And that's where ALT tags come into the picture, quite literally! So make sure you give your images relevant ALT tags.

If you have a very large webshop, writing ALT tags for all your images can seem like an overwhelming task. Fortunately, with AI automation flows (Programmatic SEO) you can generate and upload thousands of ALT texts at once!

How do you create ALT tags in Shopify?

• Click Products > All products
• Search for the product or collection you want to ALT tag
• Click the image you want to tag under the Media section
• Click Add alt text
• Write your ALT tag
• Click Save alt text

Hey presto: Google now knows what the image shows. And that makes it more likely that the search engine understands what the rest of the page is about.

You can (and should) create ALT tags for all the images on your collection and product pages. But remember to give them unique ALT tags.

If your webshop sells tools, for example, you shouldn't give all your hammers the ALT tag ‘hammer’. Instead, create variations such as ‘hammer’, ‘carpenter’s hammer’ and ‘rubber mallet’ if you need to ALT tag several products in the same category.

ALT tags won't be visible on the webshop itself. But they will be visible in the source code, and that's exactly where Google looks. Below, for example, you can see the source code of the blush collection page mentioned earlier. Here, Google can read that an image has been given the ALT tag ‘blush’.

Write unique collection and product copy

I can't stress it enough: Content is king online, on your webshop too. H tags, metadata and ALT tags may be an important part of Google's vocabulary. But Google is also pretty good at understanding ordinary human language, so good that text is one of the most important factors in Google's equation when the search engine hands out rankings in the search results.

Let's say you have a collection page with red shoes on your webshop. You've got lots of products there, but no text that says you sell red shoes. Google will therefore struggle to understand that the page is about red shoes. Because even if you have the basic SEO under control, Google will still rank pages with in-depth copy higher.

In other words: if you want to make your webshop visible on Google, you need to get typing and write user-friendly SEO copy for your product and collection pages. And it's a no go to copy text from your competitors. Google penalises duplicate content with poor rankings.

But webshop copy doesn't just matter for SEO, it matters for your customers too. Having a webshop with no information about the products is like having a physical shop where the staff can't be bothered to tell customers about the products.

Tip: Does the thought of a blank document give you sweaty palms, or do you just find writing copy for your webshop a dull, bread-and-butter job? Then it's a good idea to structure your copy using the following template, which makes it both easier and quicker to find the angle and write webshop copy:

• Introduction to the collection or product
• Buying guide
• Benefits and advantages of the products
• Answers to common questions about the product, where Answer the public can be worth its weight in gold
• Benefits and advantages of buying from your webshop in particular
• Call to action: what do your customers need to do to get their hands on the product?

Tip: At Amplify, we have professional copywriters who are happy to help you write engaging, SEO-friendly and user-friendly content for your webshop. But if you're just looking for inspiration to write good web copy, I can warmly recommend reading the following posts:

• SEO checklist: How to structure great landing page copy
• 5 pitfalls to avoid as a copywriter
• 15 practical tips for writing a (good) landing page

Create landing pages for important keywords: filters don't help your SEO

Shopify has an excellent filter function that makes it easy for your customers to narrow down their choice of products based on personal preferences. On a collection page with red shoes, for example, you could set up filters so your customers can sort by parameters such as brand, model or price.

And that certainly benefits your users, but not your SEO! The problem with the filter function is that you're not making use of the SEO potential that can lie in creating separate collection pages for the individual filter parameters.

For the sake of the example, let's say you run an online wine and spirits shop. You've created a collection page with wine and set up filters so your customers can find their favourite wine based on parameters such as:

• Type: Red, white, rosé or sparkling wine (etc.)
• Country of origin: French, Italian or Spanish wine (etc.)
• Region: Burgundy, Amarone Della Valpolicella or Rioja (etc.)
• Grape variety: Cabernet Sauvignon, Malbec or Merlot (etc.)
• Price: Under DKK 50, under DKK 100, under DKK 200 (etc.)
• Alcohol content: Alcohol-free or alcoholic wine

The page is optimised for the rather broad and generic keyword ‘wine’. That means the H tags, metadata, ALT tags and copy on the page are optimised so the page gets found when people google ‘wine’. And filters don't change that.

(Keep that last sentence in mind. I'll come back to filter functions in the next section.)

This means, for example, that you won't be found for high-volume keywords such as ‘red wine’, ‘Italian wine’, ‘Amarone Della Valpolicella’, ‘Cabernet Sauvignon’ and ‘alcohol-free wine’. So you miss out on a lot of potential traffic and revenue.

According to the SEO tool Ahrefs, ‘alcohol-free wine’ is googled no fewer than 1,500 times a month, and it's relatively easy to get into the top 10 for the keyword.

That gives us the following equation:

• high search volume + low difficulty = low-hanging fruit!

So of course you need a landing page with your range of alcohol-free wine. And of course you optimise that landing page based on my first two tips. That way, you increase your chances of being found for ‘alcohol-free wine’ many times over. And with 1,500 potential customers a month, there's good reason to.

But does that mean you should choose landing pages over filters? The answer is a resounding no! The filter function in Shopify is very important for user-friendliness on your webshop, and user-friendliness (or UX) also affects SEO. So filters and landing pages are by no means opposites; on the contrary, they support each other.

Bonus knowledge for you if you sell well-known brands

If you sell well-known brands in your market, you should seriously consider creating landing pages for high-potential keyword combinations of generic product collections and specific brands.

For example:

• Hästens beds (monthly search volume: 400) for the webshop that sells beds
• Nike running shoes (monthly search volume: 1,100) for the webshop that sells sports equipment
• PH lamps (monthly search volume: 2,500) for the webshop that sells lamps

Not sure which keyword combinations to go for? Then do (or have someone do) keyword research. It will tell you which keyword combinations have high potential.

Get your canonicals right on pages with filters

As mentioned, Google penalises duplicate content with lower rankings. But that doesn't just apply to content from your competitors, it applies to your own content too.

So what exactly do I mean by that? Why would you copy your own content? Of course you don't use the same text, images, ALT tags, meta tags and H tags for two completely different products or collections. Let me return to Shopify's filter function for a moment to explain what I mean.

In the image below, you can see part of a product page on a webshop selling beauty and health products. Notice that the quantity of the product is set to 200 ml by default.

Shopify has given the product page the following path (the part of the URL that comes after the domain name):

/collections/iles-formula/products/iles-formula-serum

But now notice what happens to the path when a customer uses the filter function to choose the product in the 1000 ml variant:

/collections/iles-formula/products/iles-formula-serum?variant=33744616914989

Because of the filter, the path is now extended. That's potentially problematic, because the new URL essentially tells Google that a new product page has been created. And in terms of content, the “new” subpage is completely identical to the original, so it counts as duplicate content!

This is a particular risk on collection pages with many filter parameters (such as the wine webshop in the previous section), where you can end up with as many URLs as there are filter combinations.

So how do you stop Shopify's otherwise excellent filter function from harming your rankings on Google?

The answer is canonical tags and canonical URLs!

What is a canonical tag?

A canonical tag is a piece of code written like this:

A canonical tag lives in the section of your webshop's source code and can be used, among other things, to define canonical URLs.

What is a canonical URL?

A canonical URL (or canonical web address) is the URL that has been chosen as the “master” of a set of duplicate pages, for example the many “duplicate” pages that a filter function creates (in the eyes of search engines).

Or in Google's own words:

A canonical URL is the URL of the page that Google thinks is the most representative of the identical pages on your site.

Source: https://support.google.com/webmasters: Search Console Help

In other words, a canonical URL is the version of a page that Google should crawl.

However, it's important to tell Google which URL is the canonical one, otherwise the search engine will choose an arbitrary version itself.

Modern eCommerce platforms such as Shopify automatically give your pages canonical tags when you create collection and product pages. So as a rule, you don't need to add canonical tags to your preferred canonical URLs yourself.

But I'd still warmly recommend double-checking that your webshop's canonicals are in order, especially if you use an eCommerce system other than Shopify. That way, you avoid these 3 SEO (horror) scenarios:

• Duplicate content!
• Google crawling a less relevant version of the page
• Google crawling hundreds of filter-generated URLs on your website, getting confused and showing a competitor with their canonicals in order in the search results instead

How to check the canonicals on your webshop

You can check the canonical tags on your Shopify webshop in one of the following ways.

1. Look in the source code

• Open any collection or product page in your browser (on desktop – it doesn't work on mobile and tablet)
• Right-click anywhere on the page and click inspect
• The page's source code will now pop up in a new window
• Press control/command + F to search the source code, and type “canonical”

If the page's URL has been given a canonical tag, it will appear in the URL after the yellow highlight.

Now try using the filter function so the URL changes, as in the earlier example, and repeat the same process. You should now get the same result when you look in the source code: the URL after <link rel=”canonical” href= should be unchanged despite the filter. That means the original URL has been set as canonical.

And then all is well: Google will only take the canonical URL into account.

2. Check it with an SEO crawler

If you want a more general overview of the canonicals on your site, it's a good idea to use an SEO crawler such as Screaming Frog. It gives you an overview of all the canonicals on every subpage of your webshop.

I won't go into more detail about the application here, as you can read much more about it in the post “Seven tips for improving your SEO with Screaming Frog”.

3. Check theme.liquid in Shopify's admin panel

Finally, you can look in the theme.liquid file in the section in your webshop's admin panel.

• Click Actions > Edit code under Online Store > Themes
• Select theme.liquid and search for “canonical”
• If all is well, you should see the following (see yellow highlights):

Is there no canonical tag in the section already? Then simply copy the following piece of code into the section:

For more information about canonical URLs and tags on your Shopify webshop, it's worth following Shopify's guidelines and best practice.

Give your page and URL structure a health check

The page structure of your webshop should make it easy for your customers to find what they're looking for. Because that will also make it easier for Google to find your webshop.

In a supermarket, you don't expect to find the cat food in the fruit and veg section, just as you don't look in the butcher's section if you need an extension lead.

In the same way, you need to make sure your webshop is divided into “departments” that make it easy for your customers to find the product they need, and that, not least, make it easy for Google and other search engines to crawl your webshop.

So make sure your page structure is simple and easy to navigate. Ideally, it should look something like this:

• Homepage > category > (any subcategory) > product page > product

So page structure matters, but URL structure matters just as much. Your paths should ideally match your page structure. In other words, they should be as simple as possible. For example, the URL of a product page with men's shoes should be something like:

• www.webshop.dk/collections/herresko

Shopify generates URLs itself when you create collection and product pages, so the path will be identical to the name of the collection or product. So if you've named the collection herresko, Shopify will automatically give the page the path /collections/herresko.

If you still want to change the URL manually for search-engine-friendly reasons, you can easily do so in the URL and handle field in the Edit website SEO section under the individual product or collection.

Use schema.org: structured data makes you visible in the SERP

Have you ever noticed that some of the results on Google's results page (SERP) are more detailed than others?

For example, in the result below from the bike shop Saxil Cykler, you can see both the price and the stock status of the popular Hövding bike helmet. That way, Google users get more information than the SEO title, URL and meta description, which is the information normally shown in a search result (snippet).

A search result like that is called a rich snippet. And it makes your webshop stand out more in the search results, partly because it is visually different from the other results, and partly because it gives potential customers relevant information about a product before they've even visited your webshop.

And that benefits the user experience, SEO and click-through rate alike.

How do you get a rich snippet?

You do it with structured data.

Structured data is HTML that tells Google and other search engines exactly what a website is about. My colleague Peter has already written an excellent introduction to structured data, so I won't go into more detail about what structured data is here. But it's perhaps more interesting to know what it does, and not least what it can do for your webshop's visibility in the search results.

Structuring data yourself takes a fair amount of technical understanding, but fortunately there are tools to help, such as this Schema Markup Generator. Here, you can choose a Schema.org markup that suits your type of business. If you have a webshop, it makes sense to choose Product.

You can then specify various parameters you want to tell Google and potential customers, such as stock status and price as in the example above. Based on the parameters you specify, the markup generator will generate a JSON-LD script. You can then test and implement your schema code in your webshop's source code (typically in the collection.liquid or product.liquid file).

You can use structured data for many different purposes, for example to show reviews in the search results, so your customers know whether your webshop is worth a visit.

Of course, this requires you to get your customers to review your business on Trustpilot, Google, your webshop itself and other platforms, and ideally, of course, you want good reviews.

Here, for example, I've structured a schema (the most universal vocabulary within structured data) for displaying reviews:

{ "@context": "https://schema.org/", "@type": "Product", "name": "", "image": "", "aggregateRating": { "@type": "AggregateRating", "ratingValue": "5", "ratingCount": "299" } }

When it comes to structured data for webshops, it's dynamic. If a product sells out in your webshop, the stock level will also change in the structured data, provided, that is, you've set it up correctly and according to the guidelines.

The same goes for the price of your product if it goes on offer or is reduced. So you don't have to change anything manually, which saves you a lot of time.

Blog like crazy!

If you've read my post “Why your business should write blog posts”, you already know 5 good reasons to write blogs with tips and tricks about your products. If you haven't read it, I can briefly sum up what a blog on your webshop can do for your SEO:

• You catch customers early in the buying journey
• You get found for long tail keywords
• You increase your chances of backlinks

Firstly, you catch customers early in the buying journey. Your potential customers may not even know that your products can meet their needs. So you need to help them along a little. And a good way to do that is by blogging about your products.
That way, you guide potential customers further through the decision phase.

• For the makeup retailer, it could be good advice on how to apply makeup that lasts
• For the wine merchant, it could be good advice on how to choose wine to go with food
• For the health shop, it could be a post about the benefits of collagen powder

That's exactly why a blog is also the perfect platform for getting found for keywords people use when they google based on a problem. These will typically be so-called long tail keywords, i.e. longer, highly specific search terms. For example:

• Breathable raincoat with a high hydrostatic head
• Supplements for skin and nail care
• Breathable compression running socks

In the early part of the buying journey, people don't search for products; they search for solutions to their problems.

You may well have a health webshop that sells collagen as a supplement. But your potential customers won't find your webshop if they don't know that collagen is an important component of the skin, and that collagen powder can therefore help firm up the skin.

So it's a good idea to write a blog post about skin care, then talk about collagen and link to a relevant product page.

It also gives you plenty of opportunity for internal link building, which also strengthens your SEO. And speaking of link building: if you write really good, informative blog posts, there's also a chance that other websites will link to your site. In other words, you lay the groundwork for getting strong backlinks.

How to create and edit a blog in Shopify's admin panel:

• Click Online Store > Blog posts
• Click Manage blogs
• Click Add blog
• Name the blog
• Blog like crazy!

Want to know more about SEO for Shopify webshops?

Are you a bit too busy running your webshop to play SEO specialist? Or does SEO for your webshop seem a little too complicated?

Then contact Amplify on 70 60 50 28, or write to me directly at ak@amplify.dk