Is Shopify Good for SEO?
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Shopify is one of the world’s most popular ecommerce platforms, used by millions of merchants worldwide. But is Shopify good for SEO? This is one of the top queries we hear from retailers considering making the switch to Shopify for their online stores.
After all, SEO (or search engine optimization) is a critical component of any ecommerce marketing strategy. It's important to set yourself up for success by choosing a platform that will support your SEO objectives, enabling you to appear in more search results and bring more targeted traffic to your website.
While every ecommerce platform has its pros and cons, generally speaking Shopify is considered to be one of the best all-around platforms. But how do its abilities measure up in the search engines?
In this article we’ll break down the key insights merchants need to know about Shopify SEO, including Shopify SEO tips, areas where it performs well and potential pitfalls to keep in mind.
Is Shopify Good for Ranking on Search Engines like Google?
Overall, yes — Shopify is good for SEO. It’s an accessible platform with the ability to scale, and those benefits extend to search engine optimization. And while we don’t recommend cutting corners on something as important as ecommerce SEO, even amateurs can navigate the basics of search engine optimization through Shopify’s built-in features.
For more advanced needs, Shopify provides top-of-the-line SEO tools, features, and support to help your store index and rank higher on Google and other search engines.
That said, there are certain considerations to keep in mind — especially if you are considering migrating to Shopify from another platform. Ecommerce site migrations can be tricky, and they do come with SEO risks. For best results, it’s important to be aware of these beforehand.
Pros of Shopify SEO Capabilities
1. A+ in SEO 101
As we mentioned previously, implementing SEO basics is a breeze with Shopify’s intuitive backend. The Shopify store platform comes fully-armed with all the standard SEO functionality any ecommerce business needs. Editable metadata enables marketers to write their own page titles and meta descriptions with targeted keywords, boosting their ranking potential.
It’s also incredibly easy to insert headings, add image alt-tags, and handle other on-page SEO features. It event includes a search engine listing preview on each page where you can edit the title tags and meta description. Shopify even guides users through the process of setting up 301 redirects and automatically adding canonical tags using best practices.
Another benefit of using a Shopify store is that it’s easy to integrate with Google Analytics and Google Search Console — two of the most important tools for measuring search engine rankings performance.
2. Optimized Page Speed
Simply put, Google doesn’t like slow websites. Page speed is an important Google ranking factor, and it can also indirectly affect performance via bounce rate (the percentage of visitors who exit the site after viewing only one page). Additionally, it’s a key indicator of website quality and user experience. All of that to say: pages that load quickly will almost always outrank those that load slowly on Google's search engine results pages.
Fortunately for Shopify store owners, Shopify is known for its lightning fast speeds. It offers a world-class content delivery network (CDN) backed by Fastly and Cloudflare, meaning your online store — including any high resolution images — will load quickly around the globe for most Shopify themes. So, Shopify’s ability to support optimized page speed is a solid SEO win.
3. Robust App Store
Shopify boasts the largest app store of any ecommerce platform, and it happens to be a treasure trove of SEO apps and resources. Browsing through the Shopify app store, you will discover both free and paid Shopify SEO apps that will help you streamline SEO tasks such as:
Keyword Research
Optimizing images
Writing image alt text
Fixing broken links
Optimizing meta tags
Creating rich snippets
Editing your XML sitemap
The Shopify app store is quite competitive. So you know you'll have an excellent chance of finding the best Shopify SEO apps by doing a simple search for "Shopify SEO App" in the app store section of your Shopify site dashboard. Shopify apps will save you time and unlock new opportunities when it comes to navigating the ins and outs of SEO, including identifying and correcting potential issues.
Cons of Shopify for Search Engine Optimization
1. Rigid URL Structure
While Shopify’s SEO performance is solid overall, there are some weak spots for Shopify stores. The main one to be aware of is its rigid page URL structure.
Shopify automatically generates URLs for product and collection (category) pages, meaning merchants only have the ability to customize the final portion of the page URL. For example, all product pages are required to have “/products” in the URL. The Shopify site structure effectively limits your ability to optimize URLs with keyword-friendly terms.
If you are migrating to Shopify from another ecommerce platform, this also means you won’t be able to use the same URLs you had on your old platform. It will be necessary to set up redirects for most of your pages to avoid broken links.
2. Limited Blogging Functionality
Content creation is an important part of smart SEO strategy. A blog is the ideal place to publish articles targeting relevant target keywords and phrases your ideal customers may be searching for online.
Unfortunately, Shopify’s native blogging engine lacks certain features and is fairly inflexible, limiting opportunities for content optimization.
The good news? There’s an easy workaround. Rather than using Shopify’s built-in blogging engine, merchants can host their blog on a content-focused CMS such as Wordpress or use one of the many Shopify Apps tailored to content creation.
Final Thoughts on Shopify for SEO
Shopify is good for SEO! Bringing in more targeted, high-converting organic search engine traffic is a top marketing objective for any successful ecommerce business. Many merchants don’t realize that the platform they choose to host their store can seriously impact their ecommerce SEO performance.
Overall, Shopify can be a great platform for ecommerce SEO. It’s one of the most popular ecommerce store platforms for a reason: there are many Shopify merchants who are incredibly successful and who bring in tons of organic traffic and revenue each month.
That said, retailers who aren’t mindful of Shopify’s potential SEO pitfalls can jeopardize their rankings — especially if they are planning or in the midst of a platform migration.
Here’s a summary of the key takeaways we covered in this article:
Pros of Shopify for SEO
A+ in SEO 101
Optimized Page Speed
Robust App Store
Cons of Shopify for SEO
Rigid URL Structure
Limited Blogging Functionality
Perhaps you’ve realized your current ecommerce platform isn’t quite meeting your SEO needs. In that case, you can migrate your online store to Shopify and begin taking advantage of all the SEO benefits Shopify has to offer.
But don’t lose your hard-earned rankings in the process! It’s important to work with an ecommerce SEO migration expert to ensure your organic traffic and sales are preserved.