Free, high quality, consistent.
This is the exact kind of traffic that every
e-commerce entrepreneur wants.
And today you're going to learn how to make it happen
by learning the basics of search engine optimization.
Welcome back to learn with Shopify.
I'm your host Tyler, and today you're going to learn
how to use SEO to increase sales and grow your brand.
I am so excited to share with you some simple techniques
that every online business owner should be practicing.
when it comes to learning SEO, the entire subject can make
some business owners feel like they don't know where to start.
Between intimidating industry jargon and constantly evolving
search engine updates, the subject of SEO to a beginner can feel as
unapproachable as trigonometry.
But it doesn't have to be that way.
It's a shame that so many miss out on free, predictable
high quality traffic, because SEO wasn't explained in a way
that felt easy to understand.
So today I'm gonna explain the basics of e-commerce SEO
in a way that feels simple and is above all actionable.
If you're completely new to the subject, you might be
thinking what even is SEO?
Search engine optimization is the process by which content
is created and enhanced in a way that makes finding them on
search engines, like Google, YouTube, Yahoo, and Bing easier.
When you type a search term into Google, the search engine
results page sometimes called a SERP for short, gives us a few
paid ads and 10 organic unpaid search results below them.
The goal of SEO is to rank within these 10 organic search results.
The crown jewel being the number one ranking.
As you'll know from your own experience, searching things on
Google, the vast majority of people never click past the first page.
Just how many don't?
A study from a few years back found an astonishing 95% of
Google users never click past the first page, as it turns out,
the best place to hide from your customers is on page two of Google.
For websites lucky enough to gain the first position on a
search engine results page, they gain an astonishing 32.2% of
traffic for that search term.
When thousands of people are searching for that particular
term every month, this can translate into a lot of people
landing on your website.
And if you're targeting the right search terms, this can
translate to a lot of sales.
There are three basic categories of search terms.
The first is navigational.
These are the search terms you type in when you're trying to
navigate to a specific website, like when you're looking
for amazing digital growth strategies, so you type in learn
with "Shopify YouTube channel."
The second is informational.
These are the types of search terms you use when trying to gather
knowledge or conduct research.
Like when you type in how to build an eCommerce site, or what is SEO?
And then there's transactional.
These are the types of search terms you type in when trying
to take a commercial action.
Like when you want a fresh new pair of kicks, so you type
in .Buying Nike shoes online.
Now that we have a bit of background knowledge on
SEO, let's get into how we actually get started.
Since a user's journey begins with a search term, it probably won't
surprise you that our process begins with keyword research.
When conducting keyword research, content marketers
and publishers often care most about informational keywords.
And that's because informational keywords
often get a ton of searches.
Side note; the number of times that users search for a given term is
called 'search volume.' However, as eCommerce entrepreneurs,
it's a bit different.
We're less concerned with vanity metrics, like the number of
visitors and more concerned with the quality of those visitors.
Let me be clear.
Having a lot of traffic is great, but we want people coming
to us for the right reason.
We're looking for visitors who are most likely to
buy what we're selling.
That's why we want to rank for commercial keywords that show
buying intent, like best standing desk or buy waterproof tent.
Since it's, by far the most popular search engine on the
planet, I'm going to be showing you how to conduct keyword
research using Google, but you can use similar processes on
other search engines as well.
Our process of finding the right keywords begins with the
autocomplete feature of Google.
The auto-complete feature is a great resource for finding what
is known as long tail keywords.
Long tail simply means keyword phrases that are
three or four words long.
Another great resource for keyword ideas is the related
searches section at the bottom of the search engine results page.
These sections can be absolute gold mine for keyword ideas and
are a great place to get started.
Amazon also has their own auto-complete feature.
Use a search term that's relevant to the product you
sell, and Amazon will give you a bunch of ideas for keywords
and product category names.
Here's a pro tip when using this process on either Google
or Amazon, keep an eye out for long tail keywords.
These are the key phrases that are three to four words in length,
and they are highly specific.
And as a result, they often have lower competition and
higher conversion rates.
These strategies are great if you're just starting out.
But if you have a little bit of money to invest, I
highly recommend getting a subscription to a keyword tool.
Keyword tools like SEM rush can really make finding
better keywords, easier.
SEM rush is such a powerful tool for finding keywords and
conducting a competitor analysis.
Simply type in the domain name of the competitor into the search bar.
Scroll down and you can see so much useful information, like
what keywords they're ranking for by country, their keyword
trend, their search engine results page features, and more.
Go to the dropdown and click organic research, scroll down, and
now you can see all the keywords that your competitor ranks for.
You can even see their top position changes.
Then click on the tab that says competitors.
And now you'll see a list of websites that you can use
to mine more keywords from.
Now click the sidebar that says gap analysis, simply
put in the competitor's name.
And once it loads scroll down and click the tab
that says unique keywords.
Now you can see a list of all the keywords that your competitors are
ranking for that your site isn't.
Now that you have a large list of keywords, it's time to whittle
them down, to find the keywords that will be most valuable for you.
Here are four factors that you should measure
your keywords against.
Keyword search volume.
The higher the search volume, the more potential traffic.
Competition the lower the competition.
The more likely you are to rank for that search term.
Relevancy.
How relevant is your product page or category page to
the given search term?
Don't try and trick search engines, the Google gods see all.
And intent.
You want to make sure your keywords shows buying intent.
These types of keywords often have higher conversion rates.
Factors like page authority and domain authority give you
insight into how difficult it will be to outrank the current
results, the higher this number, the tougher time you're going
to have, but the lower, the all entitle number, the better.
All entitled essentially means competition.
So the lower the competition, the better chances you have to rank.
You might be surprised to find out that the design of your
site affects a lot more than just your user experience.
It also affects how easily search engines can find the
product pages on your website.
It's really important to take the time to get this right, as it's
going to save a lot of time and heartbreak later down the road.
Make sure that your site structure is simple, but easy
to scale as your site grows.
Every page of your site should be as few clicks from
your homepage as possible.
You don't want your users having to spin in circles or
click the back button to get where they're trying to go.
The further away your product pages are from your homepage, the
less authority they will have.
Less authority essentially means less likely to rank and less
visible because search engines see them as less important.
I'll talk a little bit more about authority later
when we discuss backlinks.
So stay tuned.
Here's a pro tip, be highly selective of which levels of your
website structure are indexed.
To put it simply, the index is essentially the database that
powers search engines use the supply and demand principle to
choose which categories, filters and attributes are worthy of
indexing before indexing a page.
Make sure to answer these three questions.
How relevant is the query that is used for the search?
Does your audience search for the term enough to compensate the time
and effort to index that page?
And do you have enough relevant products, services, and offerings
to be featured on that index page?
Here are some really common mistakes that e-commerce
SEO beginners make.
Unlike blogs, eCommerce sites often have a lot less rich content.
Arbitrary product and attribute filters can make this a lot worse
as they'll create pages that only have a few products on it,
with really thin descriptions.
These random product and attribute filters can also
cause content duplication issues, which is exactly as
straightforward as it sounds.
This is when the same content can be found on
multiple areas of your site.
Search engines absolutely hate it when you have overly similar
content featured on multiple pages.
This is because search engines aren't sure which content they
should rank, and as a result, they can penalize pages or
sometimes domain names altogether.
Shopify makes avoiding content duplications so much easier by auto
generating canonical tags for you.
A canonical tag is essentially an invisible sign that tells
Google which page is the master version and which one
you want them to look at.
It's highly recommended that you add these tags as you don't want
Google ranking the wrong page, or getting frustrated and diluting
your ranking ability altogether.
If you're not on a platform like Shopify, that automatically
generates these tags for you, you can generate them manually
and add them in, using a snippet of code, into your HTML header.
Now that you've laid the foundation for your SEO success, it's time to
optimize your two most important pages, your product pages and
your product category pages.
Now, if you're using Shopify, one of the beautiful things
about this platform is that this is going to be so much
easier, because it generates these four things automatically.
Canonical tags are automatically generated, which we spoke
a little bit about before.
Sitemap.XML and Robots.TXT files are also automatically created.
A Sitemap.XML file is essentially a roadmap to your website.
Robots.TXT files tell Google bots which webpages to crawl.
Title tags that include your store name are also included,
and this is great for SEO.
Social media, linking and sharing options are also included.
Truth be told, those things can be pretty annoying to do yourself.
So I highly recommend going with the platform
that does them for you.
Once those things are complete, here are the next things
that you need to optimize.
A title tag is essentially just a fancy name for the blue
clickable headline that appears when you conduct a Google search.
An amazing title tag will include the following a hook
that grabs your reader by using emotion and curiosity.
Click through rate is really important to Google, so make
sure your title tag is engaging.
A primary keyword and if possible, a long tail variation.
Try front-loading your title with your primary keyword as
it's sometimes a ranking factor.
Make sure it's short and sweet.
You'll need to be below 60 characters to ensure your title
tag doesn't get cut off on the search engine results page.
Make sure that your title tag is descriptive of the qualities
of your blog post or page.
For a blog post that's in depth try using words like ultimate
definitive guide, or step-by-step.
For a product page, make sure that you described the product fully,
like five piece barbecue sets.
For a product category page, make sure that you describe the items
and the ideal customer, like three piece suits for groomsmen.
Also, if your platform doesn't do it automatically after your
headline, it's a best practice to include your brand name
using the naming convention, pipe symbol, brand name.
Also make sure that all the title tags on your websites are unique.
If they're not Google may ultimately penalize
you in the long run.
Meta descriptions are basically just the paragraph
that appears beneath the blue headline on Google.
When writing meta descriptions, you'll want to make sure that you
include your primary keyword and any relevant secondary keywords.
However, the most important part is that the meta
descriptions are enticing enough that a user clicks through.
So don't jam them full of unnecessary or repetitive keywords.
Next, we have your URL.
Your URL should include your primary keyword phrase and
it should be short, no longer than three or four words.
Getting rid of stop words like the, and at is a great call.
You'll also want to make sure that it matches your
title as closely as possible.
And also, it should be unique enough from other URLs on
your site that search engines aren't going to get confused.
Now let's talk about images.
When including images, it's important to note
that original images can help your page rank better.
Now, if you don't have thousands of dollars to spend on professional
camera equipment or hire a photographer, don't worry.
Just check out our video on how to shoot product photos on your
cell phone, and that will give you everything you need to get started.
Beyond having original images, it's really important that
you optimize them correctly.
We'll start with the alt text.
The alt text provides a description of the contents of the photo.
It's really important that you fill this out, as it helps Google
understand what is going on the image and how to rank it correctly.
While you do want to include keywords in the alt text, make
sure that you accurately describe what is going on the photo, as it
does help the visually impaired.
Also the file names of your media files need to
include the primary keyword.
Make sure to never upload a nondescript file name,
like the ones your camera or computer will auto-generate.
Now let's talk about header tags.
It's really important that header tags are used properly
as they help Google understand the order of importance
when crawling your webpage.
H1's , H2's, and H3's should always be used in a hierarchy
with H1 being at the top and H5 being at the bottom.
Use header tags on your product descriptions.
Not only do they make it easier on the eyes, but they
also help Google bots more effortlessly crawl your site.
Here's a pro tip, save H1's for your primary keyword
and then use H2's and below for secondary keywords and
long tail keyword phrases.
Let's talk about another best practice, writing
rich product descriptions.
If there's anything that search engines hate, it's obscurity.
If you're writing overly short product descriptions,
you're not giving your product pages a fighting chance.
That's why you need to write rich product descriptions that
include reviews to help potential customers, and Google understand
what you're really selling.
If you want tips on how to write product descriptions that actually
sell, check out this video here.
Let's not forget about internal linking.
The longer that you can keep a visitor on your site, the larger
chance you have of snagging a sale, including relevant links to other
pages on your site is a great way to help your customers browse so
they can discover other information and stumble upon other products
that they might find valuable.
In your anchor text, the words where you should we
place your link, make sure to include the keyword verbatim.
Internal linking can be used to drive customers to
product pages, categories, and even educational content.
Here's a pro tip, if you understand your audience's decision making
process, create content that helps them through the various
stages in the buyer journey.
Also, don't go too crazy with internal linking.
One or two links every few hundred words is more than enough.
Finally, let's talk about backlinks.
We spoke a bit about authority earlier on in the video, and
I think the most interesting way to explain it is to give
a brief history of Google.
The basic concept of Google was created by Larry Page and Sergei
Brin, when they were working on a thesis project that attempted
to organize the entire internet.
So after downloading the entire internet, Yes.
You heard that correctly.
They proceeded to find a better way to make search engines work.
Rather than simply drawing results by keyword, they believe that the
highest quality information could be surfaced if webpages were given
authority, similar to the way that academic papers are given authority
based on the number and quality of citations, except in this case,
citations are called backlinks.
While there are hundreds of other ranking factors
used in their algorithm.
Google uses the quality, relevancy, and number of backlinks to judge a
site's quality and trustworthiness.
As a result, new sites have less authority in the eyes of Google.
While time can fix this, building backlinks can be a great way
to get search engines, to recognize your authority faster.
respected .com, .gov, and .edu sites will provide
you the most authority when they give you a backlink.
However .com's are probably the most accessible place to start.
One of the best ways to approach building backlinks
is to focus on partnerships.
Look for other websites that are closely related to your
niche and find the ways that you can exchange mutual value.
Guest post can be a great way to build backlinks, provided that the
content is relevant and provides your audience with real value.
As a pro tip, you can analyze competitor's
backlinks using SEM rush.
This is a great way to unearth backlink
opportunities in your niche.
Another way that you can build backlinks is
through press mentions.
While building your own press lists can be labor intensive
and hiring a PR firm can be incredibly expensive.
Here's a simple growth hack that anyone can do.
Sign up for helpareporter.com and you'll get a daily
digest of reporter requests right to your email.
When you see a lead that matches your brand story, respond
to the email with a pitch.
If you get an interview, make sure to ask the journalist for
a backlink to your website.
Lastly, be weary of backlinking services.
Sometimes they can try and sell backlinks based on
quantity rather than quality.
And this can really hurt your SEO overall.
Invest time in creating quality backlinks.
It will really help you out in the long run.
SEO is a rabbit hole that is incredibly deep and techniques
are constantly evolving.
Hopefully this video has given you a strong enough
foundation in e-commerce SEO for you to get started.
Got anything in your business journey that
you could use help with?
Well, comment below and we'll make a video happen so that
we can set you up for success.
Don't forget to smash that like button so that more
entrepreneurs can get empowered by the information we're sharing.
Remember, we aren't just a channel.
We're a movement of online business owners with big plans.
Thanks so much for joining me on Learn with Shopify, I'm your host
Tyler and I'll see you next time!