10 Shopify Website Optimization Tips To Drive More Sales To Your Online Store

John Vuong

Approximately 375,000 online stores are using Shopify to market their products.
The platform itself is sophisticated to suit seasoned retailers and established brands, yet straightforward enough for the average user to start a business and earn an extra income.
However, the competition is so fierce these days that it can be challenging to cut through the noise and generate sales.
So if you’re one of those people who face this problem, you’re not alone. There are several store owners out there who are scratching their heads as well, wondering what they can do to sell more product.
That’s why, in this post, we’ll talk about practical Shopify website optimization tips on how you can drive more sales in your e-commerce store.
Are you ready? If you are, let’s dive in.

1. Keyword Research For Your Shopify Store

For you to attract the right kind of shoppers and drive more sales, you need to know what your ideal customers are searching for.
Understanding the industry words of influence is a step in the right direction of gaining more product sales. Additionally, a brand needs to structure their site to reflect their research and make use of the data they have acquired. Otherwise, you won’t appear on the top results of search engines.
“Organic traffic” won’t find you either.
So, when you’re doing keyword research, it’s crucial to use the right words and phrases.
Keywords are also the bread and butter of every search campaign. There are several SEO keyword tools to help you with that.
Google Keyword Planner– The Google Keyword Planner tool is a great way to start with keyword search tools.
You can use it to:

Look for new keywords and ad group ideas.
Multiply keyword lists to come up with new ideas.
Get traffic forecasts for several keywords.

KWFinder– KWFinder is a long tail keyword research tool with an excellent interface. It lets you view search volume, trend, CPC, and the level of difficulty in its results. Moreover, it also helps you dig in the local keyword research ‒ letting you target results based on the city, state, or country.
Moz’s Keyword Explorer– This tool gives you a more in-depth understanding of why certain websites rank on SERPs based on links and social data. It also helps you know how critical a keyword is to your campaign, and provides you with a combination of keyword metrics that you need to prioritize.

2. Use a “flat” Website Architecture

Having a flat site architecture is excellent for your SEO. This kind of site architecture means that search engine crawlers and users can reach any page in your site in only four clicks or less.

But why is it so important?
Firstly, a flat site architecture makes it easy for search engine crawlers to search for all web pages for your site.
Secondly, link authority tends to flow from pages that receive a lot of backlinks (such as your homepage) to other pages in your site that you want to rank (like your product page.
That’s why you need to have it adequately optimized so that your target customers will be able to reach your content quickly and easily. Otherwise, your rankings will suffer.

3. Building Backlinks

Search engines usually use backlinks as a way to rank the current standing of your e-commerce site.
Therefore, if there are several high-quality and authoritative sites that are linked to yours, it’s often seen as valuable in a broader community, and will place well.
Meanwhile, a lack of backlinks can hinder your search rankings. So, it’s all about having a balanced backlink strategy.

4. Do On-Page SEO

On-page SEO is optimizing individual content pages (whether its text, images, or video) in your e-commerce site for the specific keywords (that you have researched beforehand.) It also significantly affects your search rankings.
Here are practical ways how you can do an on-page SEO in your site:

Upload a robots.txt file. That way, it’s easier for bots to crawl into your site.
See to it that you have an XML sitemap. It will guide Google with the overall architecture of your site.
Have Google Analytics installed.
Validate HTML and CSS.
Buy an SSL certificate. Then, upgrade it to HTTPS.
Revise any crawl errors and redirect issues.
Place target keywords in a given page in the title and H1.
Optimize meta-descriptions, as it significantly affects click-through rates, (CTR.)
Optimize images, from the image size, alt text, and file name.
Optimize headings, (H1, H2, H3) more naturally.
Optimize future pages as well, as you add them.

Take note that you need to update your content regularly. By doing so, you can be able to target keywords that have the most conversions.
SEO is continually evolving. Changes are needed because search algorithms are changing, as well.
Moreover, your customers’ wants, needs, interests, and behaviors are continuously changing, too.

5. Improve Your Website Load Speed

You need to prioritize your site speed before anything else. It’s because approximately forty percent leave a page if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. So, even a one-second delay in your site causes the conversion to drop by 7 percent.
For your e-commerce store, this can lead to thousands of lost sales every year. Keep in mind that most internet users these days are getting more and more impatient. Having a slow loading site is terrible for your business.
That’s why it’s crucial to optimize the speed of your Shopify store.
Here are a couple of helpful tips to improve your site loading time:

Compress images.
Keep redirects to a bare minimum.
Activate browser caching.
Utilize a content delivery network (CDN.)
Minify code (JavaScript and CSS.)
Monitoring ‘Behavior’ at your Google Analytics account

When it comes to the overall user experience, speed is vital. It’s also one of the most crucial ranking factors of Google. So strive on developing a site that’s faster without having to compromise elements that give an optimal user experience.

6. Create High-Quality Content

One of the most common mistakes most Shopify users make is focusing too much on product catalogs ‒ the keywords they use, images, and descriptions.
They tend to overlook one crucial aspect of SEO, and that is creating high-quality, informative content.

Take for example this Best Buy: buying guide for a drone:

This giant electronics store educates its visitors through “Buying Guides”, giving its users a tech tutorial and allowing them to know more about the different kind of products, accessories, and add-ons before entering the product’s purchase page.

Moreover, those that tend to perform well on search are those sites that produce in-depth and highly informative posts, which most users are generally interested in.

7. Off-Page Optimization

Making on-page optimizations are just a part of the entire picture. Equally as important, is your site’s off-page presence.
Off-page SEO is optimizing your brand’s online and offline footprint through content, relationships, and links that create an optimal experience for prospective customers and search engine bots.
As a result, it boosts positive brand mentions, traffic, search engine rankings, and conversions.

Links

Links play a significant role in improving your page rankings and traffic. Ideally, try to avoid low-quality sites, paid links, and link schemes.
Here are a couple of suggestions to acquire high-quality links:

Let the media notice you.
Join in high-quality directories.
Network with other bloggers and influencers in your industry.
Comment on blogs.
Create high-quality blog posts and link to websites and bloggers.
Ask vendors, associates, and clients to link to you.

Build Social Media Profiles

Remember that not every social media channel will work well with your brand. Ideally, try to know where your ideal customers frequent and focus on those sites.
Once you know where your customers are, send photos, articles, links, and other types of media to those networks.

Get Local

Ensure that your profile is visible on YellowPages.com, Yelp, Google My Business, Bing, Yahoo, local directories in your area, and reviews. Don’t forget to list the location of your site as well.

Affiliate and Email Marketing

Affiliate marketing and email marketing will help boost your company’s brand recognition. A key to any off-page campaign is getting your name and products out there to the right people who will talk, share, and search.

8. Optimize For Mobile Devices

Currently, mobile is now responsible for approximately 60 percent of total searches. Therefore, if you don’t have a mobile-friendly site, it’s unlikely that you’ll end up on the top results.
According to Alexa rankings, 80 percent of the top websites are mobile-friendly.
Now, ask yourself, whether or not your e-commerce site has adapted to these trends.
If your answer is not yet, this might be the primary reason why you don’t hold that coveted top spot on search results.
Optimizing your site for mobile will help you gain more traffic from users who are browsing via their smartphones and other mobile devices.

9. Find Useful Shopify SEO Tools

Utilizing Shopify SEO tools can make it more convenient for you to make your site as search engine friendly as possible.
Some tools help you look for keywords, which act as alternatives to Google Keyword Planner. There are also other tools that help you optimize images and videos. When used properly, these make it easier for you to get your e-commerce store in shape.

10. Utilize Shopify SEO Apps

SEO applications at Shopify app store

Just like Shopify SEO tools, there are also several apps that will help you optimize your e-commerce site. You can utilize them to look for problems or issues on your website.
These apps work similarly to the Yoast SEO app in WordPress. Note there is no Yoast Shopify app available.
Remember, you need to update these apps regularly as SEO is continuously evolving:

Over to You

So there you have it. With these tips into mind, optimizing your site on Shopify to boost sales will be easier than ever before. But, don’t wait up to the very last minute to apply these strategies. Make them work for you, and watch how it will take your Shopify store to the next level.
It might take some time to achieve the results you want. But you can’t build a store and expect prospective customers to come flocking overnight. With the right dedication, persistence and hard work, all your efforts will pay off in the end.