Shopify SEO: Three Ways To Attack SEO On Your Shopify Store In 10 Minutes or Less

Not many people love doing Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).  If I had to choose between being at the beach or focusing on SEO, you can guess which option I’d choose.

However, it remains an important part of any web business.  Here are 3 ways you can start attacking SEO in 10 minutes using Shopify’s interface, so you can start rising to the top of Google, gaining more traffic and making more sales.

1.  Make your image names descriptive.

How often do you turn to Google Image search to look for photos, rip off a logo, or find something funny to email your friends? Google Image Search is becoming more and more important for search results, and your product images are no exception.

Naming images is important because:

  1. Google looks at them to understand what your content and the image is about; and

  2. Some people might even come to your web store by clicking on the image (not the link!) in search results.  For an even sneakier way of using Shopify with Google Images, see this thread.

The one-and-only-step:  When you’re naming your product images on your hard drive, make them specific and descriptive.  For example:

descriptive-shopify-seo-image-example-bike

Good image names:  Black-bike-with-bucket-40-gallon.jpg

Bad image names: Product1.jpg; Bike.jpg

The “Bad” examples above don’t give Google any useful information and certainly won’t help your search results.  Help Google make you famous.

Once you’ve named them descriptively, simply upload them to your product page in Shopify.

2.  Make your Image ALT Text Descriptive

Alt text is what you see when you put your mouse over an image, like this:

alt-text-on-shopify-store

How to customize it: Go to your product’s page in your Admin Panel, and look at the images on the right.  See the small button called “ALT”?  This is where you enter a descriptive, keyword-rich snippet about your product.

Good Alt Text: MacBook Pro Case / MacBook Cover, made from sustainable cork || Front view with MacBook inside

Bad Alt Text: Nothing; MacBook

Spend a couple of minutes crafting some meaningful ALT text descriptions, and this gives Google another way of understanding what your page is about.  (Added advantage:  it makes your website much friendly for people using screen-readers.)

3.  Get the Meta-Tagger App

[I have no financial interest in this app… it’s just a nice tool to bump up your SEO.]

This nifty little app adds extra fields into your Shopify storefront that Google sees directly, so you don’t need to adjust code on the backend.

After you install it, you have a lot more control over the Title Tags, Keywords, and Description that you do with the standard interface.  You’re going to fill out all of these with descriptive, engaging and keyword-rich goodness about your site and products.



Oh, and so far they have over 70 positive reviews.


How to do it:  
Check out the meta-tagger app, complete with installation instructions and a video tutorial, here.  You can try it free for 10 days, then it’s $6 per month.

***

Those are 3 simple ways you can attack SEO on your Shopify store.  What else have you discovered?

Credits:

***

Thank you for keeping up to date with our Shopify Insider Blog @ Blackbelt Commerce,  we have many other valuable and informative posts that will help you to continue to optimize your website such as The Benefits Of Multichannel Thinking,  Best designs for a good e-commerce store, 4 Social media tricks to improbe your e-commerce store,  and   Going Global With Shopify Internationalization. Please make sure to check out our services.

Questions? Leave them in the comments below.

8 responses to “Shopify SEO: Three Ways To Attack SEO On Your Shopify Store In 10 Minutes or Less

  1. This for the simple and practical article. We’ve easily implemented #2 and #3, but we are struggling with #1. We have hundreds of products which have already been uploaded. Do you know an easier way to update the names of all our product images? The only way to do it now is to re-name all of them and re-upload them, but this would take ages as there are hundreds. So just wondering if you know of an easier way?

    Another question is, does it matter if the alt tag and title tag are the same? Does google not like this because its seen a repeated content?

    Thanks! 🙂

    Tim

    1. Glad you enjoyed it! Happy to help.

      I don’t think there’s another way to change the image names other than to re-upload them. A slight pain, I know. Sorry!

      I’m not 100% on whether Google cares if the title tag & alt tag are the same, but my suspicion would be ‘no’. I wouldn’t worry about that one too much. Hope that helps!

Add Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

;

Comments 8

  1. This for the simple and practical article. We’ve easily implemented #2 and #3, but we are struggling with #1. We have hundreds of products which have already been uploaded. Do you know an easier way to update the names of all our product images? The only way to do it now is to re-name all of them and re-upload them, but this would take ages as there are hundreds. So just wondering if you know of an easier way?

    Another question is, does it matter if the alt tag and title tag are the same? Does google not like this because its seen a repeated content?

    Thanks! 🙂

    Tim

    1. Glad you enjoyed it! Happy to help.

      I don’t think there’s another way to change the image names other than to re-upload them. A slight pain, I know. Sorry!

      I’m not 100% on whether Google cares if the title tag & alt tag are the same, but my suspicion would be ‘no’. I wouldn’t worry about that one too much. Hope that helps!

Add Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.