5 Shopify Search Engine Ranking Factors You Need to Know

Are you ready to boost your search engine ranking? With the new year quickly approaching, implementing effective changes to bring more traffic to your products and services should be at the top of your to-do list. Whether you’re a novice or pro, you can always benefit from making updates, revisions, and reviews to your site, ensuring your e-commerce SEO strategies and techniques are up to date.

Let’s take a look at 5 things you can do today to support your Shopify SEO:

1. Create content with purpose to promote authority.
2. Utilize high-quality content with relevant keywords.
3. Create fresh content.
4. Ensure content readability.
5. Establish mobile compatibility.

Promote Authority by Creating Content with Purpose

Building your brand’s authority with purposeful content is key to boosting your e-commerce SEO strategy. While we all want instant gratification, brand authority takes dedication, persistence, and consistency. So, how do you create lasting authority and gain the attention of Google? Focusing on the following brand authority tips will help you strengthen your e-commerce SEO strategy and ranking:

• Create a Worthy Content Strategy

Google rewards those with consistent, audience-worthy information. Creating your e-commerce SEO strategy is the first step in developing purposeful content and boosting your Shopify SEO. Developing a strategy helps you create content that flows around important dates, events, and the time of year. Your strategy will help you create a long-term path relevant to your customers’ needs while planning ahead for product promotions. Mapping out your plan will further boost your e-commerce SEO goals and rankings. Beginning with a solid content strategy will keep you on track and help you gain the notice of both Google and your target audience.

• Provide Value by Sharing Your Knowledge

Brand authority is all about being an expert in your area. Your readers should feel they can come to you for advice and information without feeling you have an ulterior motive. Provide your audience with content that helps them solve a problem. When you offer your expertise without the demand for something in return, you build interest, trust, and loyalty, strengthening your e-commerce SEO.

• Mingle Amongst Your Industry Peers

Creating a winning Shopify SEO strategy includes becoming social. You want your target audience to know who you are and how to find you. What better way than to seek out forums and social media outlets where you can offer your expertise? Participate in Facebook group discussions, answer questions, and offer advice. Building an online presence and rapport in this manner helps establish your brand authority without being salesy. Your audience will appreciate your knowledge and come to you and your site for additional resources once you establish trustworthiness.

• Target Specific Topics

While you may have a wealth of knowledge to offer, try to focus on a couple of crucial topics. Become the go-to guy on these topics and showcase them as your areas of specialty. Create pillar pages on your website surrounding these specific topics to ramp up your authority-building presence. Making these key topics the center of your Shopify SEO strategy will make creating additional content a breeze.

High-Quality Content with Relevant Keywords

It’s imperative that you aren’t creating content for content’s sake. Be purposeful and maintain high-quality if you want to improve your Shopify SEO. Google looks for specific information while crawling your site to determine if your content provides quality and value to its readers. Consider the following guidelines and questions when creating and maintaining your e-commerce SEO strategy:

• Create your webpages for your target audience and not for search engines.
• Offer helpful information without deceiving your audience with black hat SEO tactics.
• What does your site provide that makes it stand out from your competitors? Is it apparent to your visitors?
• Use relevant keyword-rich content to draw your target audience in without bombarding them with CTA’s and product pushing.

The use of keywords should be purposeful. Keyword stuffing will get you nowhere, and you will lose trust with your audience, thus damaging your brand authority. To support your e-commerce SEO strategy, do your keyword research, and select those most relevant to your products and services. Strengthen your Shopify SEO strategy with routine keyword evaluations and make adjustments as necessary.

Create Fresh Content

Consistently publishing new, fresh content to your site will help you rank higher and supports your Shopify SEO strategy. Some confuse “fresh content” with the occasional updates to previous content, but you mustn’t make the same mistake. Think of fresh content as timely content: What topics are currently trending in the Google inquiry box? What does your target audience want to know or purchase NOW?

If you revisit a topic, utilize your Shopify SEO strategies to refrain from repetition and address additional questions surrounding your topic that you may not have previously touched on. This practice tells Google you are continuing to post new, fresh content relevant to today’s readers.

Content Readability

There’s no point spending your time creating a killer Shopify SEO strategy only to butcher it with poor readability. Too often, creators drop the ball with content readability. This goes beyond your keyword selection and use. You want your content to convey your ideas clearly. Your writing should be easy to understand, with organization being a top priority. Support your Shopify SEO strategy by following additional best practices, including:

• Utilize subheadings to break up the text.
• Create lists and use bullet points.
• Work in long-tail keywords.
• Use an active voice throughout your piece.
• Insert relevant pictures and image alts.
• Use shorter, easy to understand sentences and paragraphs.

Take time to review your work, including spelling, grammar, and structure. If not, you risk diminishing all your e-commerce SEO strategy efforts.

Mobile Compatibility

In today’s world, mobile compatibility is a must. Google made this an essential ranking factor back in 2016, and for a good reason. We spend more time on our devices than desktop computers, making mobile compatibility vital to your e-commerce SEO strategy. Dynamic web designs are ideal as your audience likely uses multiple devices, including tablets. The conscious decision to streamline your website’s design will ensure a pleasant viewing experience while boosting your rankings.  

Need additional help and resources with your Shopify SEO strategy? Find out how we can make a difference.