If you have started your search for the best shopping cart software, chances are you’ve heard of Shopify. Shopify is a cloud-based, SaaS (software as a service) website platform that allows you to create and customize your online store. You can choose from the many different design templates or customize the site to your liking (if you have some experience in web development). Since it is perfect for beginners with a simple-to-use interface and offers a relatively low start-up cost, it is easy to see why so many people choose Shopify as their website platform.
Why is Shopify Good for You?
While there are many add-ons and apps that allow you to create a fully functioning e-commerce website, it is not the best for everyone. Most people that are using Shopify are using it as an e-commerce platform for their online store. But keep in mind, while the fundamentals of SEO are the same, getting a page to rank is quite a bit different from getting a product to rank well.
Since Shopify is built for e-commerce, it structures its SEO so that it has the best chances of ranking well in search results. Before deciding if using Shopify is best for your business, take a look at all of their features.
Is Shopify Good for SEO?
The biggest question we often get asked is if Shopify is good for SEO? Shopify is generally good for SEO when used in conjunction with tried and true SEO best practices. (The same goes for any website platform really; as long as you have a well-optimized, SEO friendly website, your chances of ranking well in the Search Engine Result Pages, or SERPs, are good.)
If you’d have asked a few years back whether Shopify was good for SEO, it may have been a different story. In the recent years, Shopify has excelled at adding important SEO functions to their platform:
- 301 redirects
- the creation of canonical tags
- ability to create and edit meta tags
- custom URLs
- image alt text
- automatically uses SSL encryption
- Google Analytics integration abilities
Additionally, if Shopify doesn’t specifically provide or allow a feature to help with SEO, there is likely an app available to fill that need. While Shopify features its strong SEO functionalities and extensive apps, some of the cons include a limited ability to edit the sitemaps, and preset templates can sometimes be cumbersome to edit if you have little development experience.
Even with some limiting SEO functionalities, Shopify is one of the best shopping cart platforms out there. With the proper use of SEO best practices, Shopify users can be confident that their sites will perform well in search results.
Here at Moose May, we are Shopify Experts and can walk you through ideation to the implementation of your website. Let us help you get started on Shopify today, and for a free 14 days on Shopify.