How to optimize your Shopify store for SEO.
Hi, I'm Clarice Lin, the ROI doctor who helps small businesses and online store get more
sales and customers by getting on Google and YouTube page one.
In today's video, I'm going to talk about what exactly is SEO?
What's this buzz about?
And why is it important for your Shopify store?
And how is it going to help you get more customers and sales?
What exactly is SEO?
SEO stands for search engine optimization, it
has a lot to do with Google search engine itself.
Most people want to be found on Google search, because that's the number one search engine
where people go to look for answers and solutions and to buy products and services.
So you want to be able to be found on Google search results when people type a search query
into search.
So when someone says you want your store to be optimized for SEO, basically, the outcome
of that means that you want to be found on search when people are looking for your products.
That's what it basically means.
There's a lot of mystery started around SEO itself, basically, because Google doesn't
tell anyone what how exactly the search algorithm works.
How do they decide who is placed on search results page one, page two, page three?
How do you decide if you are on position 1, 2, 3, they don't really share the details
on how their logic works, how their algorithm actually decides, make this decision.
So if someone is searching for a query in the US, or if someone's searching for a same
query in Singapore, how do they decide which website or which URL to place on the search
results?
They have published a number of guidelines and suggestions on how you should optimize
your store to be found on Google.
But they don't really have a particular checklist step by step where you can follow down to
the tee to make sure you are found on page one.
And hence, there are a lot of people who try to cheat the algorithm by trying to hack or
buy their ways into getting on page one, which is actually not a good idea, because you could
get blacklisted.
And that would mean that your store might never even appear on Google search results.
However, don't worry, in the later part of this video, I'm going to explain what you
can do or how you can, which part of your store should you improve on so you can increase
your chances to be found on Google, by Google Search users.
To be optimized for SEO means usually to be optimized for Google.
So there are also ways you can improve your presence on the other search engine like on
Bing, Yahoo, Yandex, whatever.
However, if your main customers are in the western part of the world, then getting optimized
for Google is of the utmost priority.
So do that as your priority, before worrying about getting ranked on the other search engine.
First things first, to be ranked on Google search itself, you need to install Google
Search Console.
That's the priority tool that you need to be installed set up.
You can also check out my other video right here where I talk about the five free Google
resources tools that you need, you might need to help to boost your sales and get more customers
for your store.
So do check that out.
Google search console itself, just to give you a bit of a background.
Tt used to be called Google Webmasters tool.
It's a tool for you to communicate with Google and for Google to talk to you and tell you
how your store is performing on Google search.
Once you sign up for an account, then Google will be able to tell you which of your stores
pages or product pages are getting ranked on which page of search results, what's the
position and which are the key words that are getting users to find your store and your
product.
And it's very important getting Google search traffic because Google Search users are people
who are looking for something, looking for a solution or looking to buy a product.
So that intention to purchase is much higher than getting users from Facebook or Instagram
or the other social media channels.
So getting Google traffic is of priority.
So you want to set this tool up, you can sign up using a Gmail address, and you need to
verify with Google and tell them that this is your store itself.
And they should, send you this information through this reports that you be, that you
will be able to find on Google Search Console.
I have another video right here that shows you exactly step by step on how to set up
your Google Search Console account for your Shopify store, the verification process.
So check this video out.
I also put the link down in the description and pinned comments.
So do check that out now that you have this tool set up.
You're getting a feedback loop from Google to know how your store is performing.
And these are the areas that you should improve on your store.
Number one, improve on your store title.
Every store, you would have a title on your page, on your online page.
So make sure that your store title is optimized if you have a store Shopify store tagline.
Also put that up.
Or you can also mention your product name.
So that's going to help to emphasize to Google that that's what your store is selling as
well.
And if your Shopify store is relying on your location, you have a specific location, for
example, if you want to tell people that your store is from manufactured in London, you're
based in London, so you want to have London in your store name itself, you need to also
put that in your store title, this is where you can actually improve your presence, improve
your local presence to be found for people living in that city itself.
Number two, you have to improve your product titles.
Optimize your product titles, make sure you have the right keywords in your product title.
So when people are searching for dresses, you know that they're looking for specific
dresses like sun dresses, or you know, tube tops.
So there are certain titles that you want to put into your product titles.
Because you know that this is what people would know to search.
If you are putting in the wrong words, then your products will not be able to be found
by Google search users.
So don't use some creative new words in your product title, if it's something that nobody
knows about.
If you have a creative title, yes, if it's one part of your product title, that's something
new like a new word that nobody knows about, it's fine, but still have the main keyword
of what the product function is supposed to be doing, what people would know it to be.
So put that, make sure you have that in your title as well.
So you don't miss out the chances of having your product pages be found by Google users.
So number three that you need to keep in mind is your meta description.
If you notice every time when you go to Google, and you get shown the search results, you
see the title of the page itself and about 160 characters snippets, like a little short
summary of what this page is about.
So when you actually publish your store, your Shopify store, you want to optimize your meta
description right here.
This is where you can actually do it.
I've actually another video right here where you can check out the details.
But basically, by optimizing that 160 characters, it helps people to understand quickly what
your product is about, what's the selling point of your product, so they will feel excited.
So when you go to Google search, they type in their query, they are shown one of your
product page, and then they skim quickly at the meta description.
And then they say, Oh, this looks like a very interesting product that I want to check out,
then they will click on it.
So you want to quickly have that little short snippet summary with, contained within that
160 characters.
Number four, is to optimize your product description.
Many people neglect and they don't put much effort into describing their product within
the product description itself, try to put in other related keywords.
For example, if this product complements another product that they should be buying, you can
also put it in, interlink your other products.
So if you want to buy product A you can recommend product B and C to put it in the product description
as well.
Tell them what's so great about it.
You can even give examples of how, let's say if you're selling apparel, you can tell them
where they can wear this apparel, and then on which occasion would this apparel fit them
the best.
So when people are searching for clothes to buy, they could be searching for color.
So that's something you can include, or you definitely should include in your product
description.
If they're looking for dresses to wear for specific occasion, you can mention the occasion
in the product description itself.
Or if it's meant for certain age groups, you can also mention the age group within the
product description.
This is going to help your product pages rank higher by having this relevant usage of your
products listed in your description.
So don't forget to do that put in as much as you can.
So that's going to help you rank better on search results itself.
And of course, then you can summarize the essence the most important part of your product
itself in the meta description which I've mentioned in my previous point number five.
You can also optimize your images.
When you name your images, you can name the specific product name to put it in the alt
text itself.
What Google does is, it indexes or registers every product images that you have put up
on your store.
So by putting that name related title inside and certain description or colors into your
product alt text itself is going to help your image to rank on image search.
So if there are specific people who are looking for products through image search, or something
looking for inspiration, that's going to help your product image show up as well on Google
image search.
So that's going to be a booster to your store.
So don't neglect that part.
Also, don't forget to make sure that your products are of high resolution, and they
are compressed, but they won't look blurry.
So people will be excited about your products to click on it, to go onto your website.
If you have images that are too big, let's say it's about 4 GIG, 4 GB, four gigabytes
or five gigabytes.
Well, it's an excellent photo.
But when people go on to your store, your product pages is going to take a long time
to load, it's going to be laggy, it's going to be slow.
And after three seconds, potential customers are going to bounce off and exit your store.
So make sure you have the right app set up image optimizer to actually optimize your
images by compressing it, but still having beautiful pictures that are of smaller file
size.
Last but not least, you can also create non product pages content.
If you want to start a blog as well to create more information for people who want to buy
a product that's going to help to boost your store's presence, the more pages you have,
the more likely that your store are going to be found for other search queries or helping
customers to find your products.
So of course, all this information, non product page information has to be useful to your
potential customers.
For example, it could be top 10 gifts that people could give to the other half for Christmas.
So you can include your product as well into part of this listing.
And when you promote that blog page on the top 10 Christmas gifts, so people would want
to promote that page.
And when they do that, it's going to help you get more traffic to your store with that
blog post as well as people discovering your product.
So that's one of the examples on how you can optimize your pages with non product pages
content.
And the last pro tip for you bonus tip for you is if you want to get your products listed
on Google Shopping as well for free, then you need to sign up for a Google Merchant
account so you can get your products also listed on Google Shopping.
So this is the other video where you can find out more details step by step process and
how to set it up so you can check that out.
And that's my six tips on how you can optimize your Shopify store for SEO.
I also help Shopify store owners with their marketing strategy so they can focus their
time and energy on their products instead.
So you can check it out right there in the description and pinned comments https://claricelin.com/services/,
do check it out below.
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I'll see you in the next video.
Bye bye