Table of Contents
Shopify is a trusted online platform for many e-commerce businesses. Shopify websites are the primary business center for many companies to reach out to their targeted audience.
For an e-commerce business to run successfully, optimizing the website for SEO is pretty crucial. No matter what e-commerce platform you are using, you will need a solid SEO strategy for reaching your targeted consumers.
Shopify has a great selection of templates, is user-friendly, and can host your website. However, optimizing your Shopify website can be quite a hassle. If you are keen to optimize your website for advanced SEO, Shopify websites can pose a challenge.
Today we will be discussing the Shopify SEO problems and solutions.
Shopify SEO Problems and Solutions
Shopify platform is more focused on user-friendliness than optimizing for SEO. However, to target the right audience and generate valuable leads, websites must be optimized for SEO.
Fortunately, in the Shopify store, there are paid tools for addressing such issues. Although quite tricky, these problems can be addressed and solved. Here are a few major Shopify SEO problems and solutions described in detail.
Sitemap Problems
An XML sitemap allows search engines to crawl your website and index them regularly. In the Shopify platform, whenever you create a page, the XML sitemap is created automatically. It saves you time and hassle to generate your own XML sitemap.
Problem with the sitemap
Without a manual sitemap, there is a chance that every page of your website may not be indexed appropriately. Therefore, the search engine won’t be able to crawl those pages and show them in the search results.
This problem is more frequent in newer stores as Google hasn’t properly crawled and indexed your website.
Solution
For solving the sitemap problem, you will need to create a Google Search Console and upload your sitemap. It will force Google to crawl and index your website again via the sitemap and increase visibility in SERPs. The process is described below:
- Sign in Google Search Console
- Choose the URL of your site
- In the Search Console’s tool, click on “Crawl,” located in the menu.
- Select “Add/Test Sitemap” from the right top corner
- Now you can input “sitemap.xml.”
- Now click on “Submit Sitemap,” and Google will get your submitted sitemap.
It can take a few days to weeks for Google to index the pages and show them in search results.
Redirect Product Page
It is common for a shop to have products out of stock. The concerning part is, a customer can bookmark the page for buying later. When consumers see the product as out of stock, they will go somewhere else to purchase it. You can avoid this issue by getting a great quality pre-built Shopify store.
A solution to this problem is to redirect the consumer to other pages with relevant products. This strategy will help you reduce bounce rates and retain your customers. It will also help your site appear to the relevant users and rank higher in the search results.
Problem with redirect product page
Fail to redirect your high converting consumers. It may remove pages, and your consumer may go somewhere else to purchase the product.
Solution
Applying the Shopify console to the 301 redirect page. The following steps can solve the problem.
- Click on “Navigation” from the left side of the menu
- Go to “Add your first URL redirect”
- Input the old page URL first, then put the URL of the page where you want your consumer redirected to
Images
Search engines still depend on the meta description of an image to detect what it is. Till the search engines can detect the pictures by pixels, human intervention is required.
The problem is, most stores are not aware of this problem. Even if they do, they don’t know what to do to solve this problem.
Problems with image
Firstly, the image problem can depend on your Shopify theme. A new site with no theme allows you to edit the pictures’ descriptions. However, you will not be able to edit the images that come with the theme.
Secondly, without adding the source code, changing the image description is not possible. You will need to add the source code in “Template editor” and highlight where you can edit.
Solution
- Go to “Themes” from the left-hand menu
- Choose “Theme Settings”
- Go to the “Homepage” tab
- Insert the descriptive image texts from the “ALT text box” in the “Slideshow Banner.”
- Click Save
For better results, describe your picture and mention primary keywords. It will make the search engine mark as not spam and index it in image search results.
Blog Tags
Engaging and informative content goes hand to hand with SEO practices. However, for blogging, Shopify is not a great platform. You can add a few pages for blogging and need to be strategic about blogging.
You will need to update your blog at least once a week. Insert tags for categorizing your blogs properly. The aim should be to generate separated pages with specific products or services.
Problems with blog tags
When you insert too many blog tags in a post, each will create a unique page. Without a proper meta description, it will feature duplicate content. That will create problems in your SEO practices.
Solution
Shopify still has no manual approach to solve the problems with blog tags. All you can do is be strategic about putting your tags or removing them to prevent duplicate content from appearing in SERPs.
Forced URL Structure
For having control over every aspect of your website and optimizing it hundred percent, the forced URL structure can create problems for you. The ability to create your own URL can be crucial in various instances.
Problems with forced URL structure
Often this isn’t considered a big problem for Shopify. However, due to forced URL structure, there can be multiple URL forms.
This problem cannot be dealt with even the most premium plan of Shopify. Also, due to this problem, your website cannot be 100% optimized.
Solution
As per the customer team, there isn’t a solution for this problem available yet.
Meta Description and Title Tags
Shopify only allows 70 characters for the title tag and 320 characters for the meta description. In general, it may look great as Google allows 155 characters for meta descriptions.
Problems with meta description and title tags
Using the highest number of characters for your meta description can sabotage your SEO strategy. You are working with limited space. So, when you use more characters, it will destroy the cleanliness of your website.
SEO encourages using fewer words to describe your intention. When you use too many words, people won’t be interested in reading, and therefore your search engine ranking will fall.
Solution
The solution is very simple here. Make sure you are using characters according to Google’s preferences. Also, make sure the meta description is simple, nice, and easily understandable.
Mobile E-Commerce
Google is adopting a mobile-first indexing approach gradually. More and more people are using their mobile devices for searching and purchasing online. Therefore, the mobile capability of a Shopify store is increasing.
About 21% of e-commerce is now coming from mobile devices. This number is comparatively low compared to people using mobile phones in their daily lives.
Problems with mobile e-commerce
E-Commerce sites have almost no plans for mobile devices. Most Shopify themes do not respond well to mobile devices. The ones that are compatible with mobile devices come with most premium packages.
Solution
Building a Shopify store compatible with mobile devices is the ultimate solution. Also, you will need to optimize the site for mobile to rank higher in the search results. With this approach, you can be up-to-date with the moderation Google is taking and boost revenue.
Hire Professionals for Your Shopify SEO
For a SaaS e-commerce company, maintaining its Shopify SEO is quite crucial. Most e-commerce companies use Shopify as their primary store. For reaching the targeted audience effectively, there are very few alternatives to a good SEO strategy.
Shopify allows your website to accommodate a minimal SEO strategy. For further optimization, you will need to learn more about the platform. It requires a steep learning curve.
On the other hand, hiring an expert will give you more flexibility. You can have a great SEO strategy for your website without intense learning and spending less money.
An SEO expert already knows the ins and outs of the Shopify store. While doing SEO yourself may require numerous trials and errors, an expert can provide you with great results within a very short time.
Consider MonsterClaw for Your Shopify SEO Solutions
For the growth and success of your business, consider hiring MonsterClaw for your Shopify SEO. Our resident experts have been working with Shopify platforms for years and have adequate experience to steer your SEO in the right direction.
Our SEO approach is highly focused on customer intent. Firstly, we decide your industry’s consumers’ requirements and then create a campaign based on their intention.
We have professional experts both in the e-commerce and SEO industries. They will put their experience, insights, and expertise to make your website lead in the search engines.
With our excellent in-house marketing team, transparent project management, and approaches to improve customer relationships, your e-commerce company will experience a visible boost sooner than later.
Bottom Line
There are a number of Shopify SEO problems that have unique solutions. For the best results, you need to optimize your Shopify store fully SEO optimized.
It is possible to optimize the website all by yourself. However, it will cost a lot of your precious time and multiple trial and error. So, for your convenience, consider hiring an expert and enjoy the perks.