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Just because you built a business does not guarantee that the customers will come automatically. It might have worked before the digital era. But in today’s world of the Internet, it takes more than just building an online store to attract customers. 

It is indeed essential to choose the right e-commerce platform that is the most suitable for you. But how do you plan to reach your target audience once you are open for business? And even if you can reach them, how will you convince them to buy from you instead of your competitor?

Search engine optimization (SEO) and ranking play a crucial role in making your Shopify store visible to your target customers. Ranking your store to the top of the search engine result pages (SERP) can increase the incoming traffic to your eCommerce store, which will eventually increase your sales and profits. 

Shopify already has a lot of inbuilt SEO-friendly features that can benefit you right out of the box. However, there is a lot more you can do to climb to the top of search rankings.

It can take more than just including some keywords in the site content, which is why business owners often hire professional SEO services. We got some insights from such service providers and made this list of seven steps that can help your Shopify store rank on top.

Optimize the Site Structure

Organizing your content and pages is crucial for the success of your SEO efforts. If the shoppers can find what they are looking for easily and quickly in your store, they will view more products and pages, which will improve your search engine ranking.

One of the best ways to make your site easy to navigate is to simplify it without using too many categories and subcategories. It also makes it easier for search engine bots to crawl through your website content and rank them on SERPs.

Make sure your product pages are not more than a couple of clicks from your homepage so that it is easy for shoppers to find what they are looking for on your Shopify site. Organizing the content on your website is quite easy using one of their standard structures. Apart from products and category pages, make sure that you also include an about us page, contact page, and a search box.

Optimize the User Experience

There are a few steps to improve a user’s experience on your Shopify website. You should make sure that your site has a fast loading speed. Some of the steps to make your Shopify site faster are:

• Using an SEO and mobile-friendly theme
• Using smaller images optimized for speed
• Removing any unnecessary apps that you may not be using
• Avoiding the use of sliders on your Shopify site

Using responsive themes and designs will ensure that your Shopify store looks good and loads fast on any device. Also, check the cross-browser compatibility for your Shopify store before you make it live.

Find the Right Keywords

Finding the right keywords is a foundation for the SEO success of any e-commerce website, including a Shopify store. Most people think that using a fancy SEO tool is the best way to get relevant keywords. Instead, try making a list of five topics that you feel your customers would care about related to your products.

You can also try putting yourself in your customer’s shoes and try to imagine what search terms they might be using to look for the products you sell. You can find some inspirations by looking at buyer personas, searching forums, and going through social media posts related to your products. Look at some of the titles and meta descriptions used by your competitors for their Shopify stores as well. 

Optimize Your Product Pages

Once you created a logical site structure and found a list of relevant keywords, try optimizing your product pages. Start with your top-performing pages, which would probably be your homepage and your best-selling product collections. These pages would have the highest conversion rates and thus would be the most profitable to you.

Even if you have opened a brand-new Shopify store, you should optimize your homepage. Also, optimize the product pages that generated the most buzz when you launched your Shopify store. You should also find the pages that contain the most searched keywords according to your keyword research. You should also take steps to optimize titles, title tags, and meta descriptions for your product pages.

Build Backlinks for Your Store

Search engines like Google use backlinks to determine what other communities think of your site. Building backlinks is like a word-of-mouth advertisement for SEO which can establish credibility and trustworthiness for your Shopify store. These are some of the sources you can use to build backlinks for your e-commerce store.

• Links from your suppliers or manufacturers
• References from industry influencers
• Mentions of your brand or products in articles
• Replacing broken links on content related to your products

Use Content Marketing

As a Shopify store owner, you might think your product descriptions will suffice for content on your website. But believe us that creating original content and using it on your website is one of the best ways to achieve SEO success.

You can also use content to establish yourself as an expert in the industry. It allows you to talk about upcoming products, gather customer inputs, and mention new trends in the industry.

We hope that these steps help your Shopify store to climb up search engine ranking in no time. You can also let us know if you have found some novel ways to achieve SEO objectives.