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Make your webshop visible - tips for SEO in Shopify

A strategy ensures you're on the right track. That you are working towards relevant and realistic goals - and that all your efforts make sense in relation to your objectives

When you're putting together a SEO strategy (or evaluating your current one), there are a lot of questions to ask, turn and twist.

A typical misconception is to opt for all SEO measures. It is rather a non-choice, a non-strategy.

I think a SEO strategy is about assessing what actions make sense for the specific situation - not pulling out all the cool SEO tricks from the toolbox at once.

So here are 19 questions to ask yourself, your (marketing) team, your SEO agency or maybe just your cat.

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Adam Ketelsen
Adam Ketelsen
- SEO-specialist
Last updated: May 11, 2023

Get the basics right - webshop SEO for dummies

Before you dive into more complicated SEO technical disciplines like canonical tags and structured data, you first need to get all the basics right SEO on your webshop. A bit like a craftsman building a house doesn't start thinking about minute aesthetic details until he's poured the foundations and built the skeleton.

But what do I really mean by basic SEO - or webshop SEO for dummies, as I have somewhat arrogantly chosen to call it?

By this I mean the practical SEO measures that you absolutely must be able to tick off if you want to have any hope of giving your webshop good rankings in the search results.

Basic SEO on your webshop

  • Correct H-tags on your front page and collection and product pages
  • Unique meta/page titles and meta tags on front page and key collection and product pages
  • ALT tags

The above is one of the first things that Google looks at when allocating rankings in search results. So make sure they are optimised.

What are H-tags?

An H-tag (or header) is a piece of HTML code that defines a piece of text as a header. In this way, it tells Google what a sub-page is about - just as the headline and sub-headlines in a news article tell readers what the article and its individual paragraphs are about.

H-tags come in several levels - from H1 to H6, with H1 being the most important and H6 the least important. And just as in a newspaper article there will be one headline and several subheadings, on a subpage of your webshop there should be one H1 and preferably several of the lower levels of H-tags.

  • The H1 is the "angle" of the landing page - it describes and frames what the page is all about
  • H2s are elaborate but important information
  • The H3s are nice to know, but not necessarily need to know - and so on

If you want to know more about H-tags and how to use them, click here.

How do you create H-tags in Shopify?

You don't need to be an HTML whiz, code cruncher or web whiz to create H-tags in Shopify. In fact, Shopify has a user-friendly and simple text editor that makes it easy to insert, edit and tag text on your collection and product pages.

To tag H's in the text of a collection or product in Shopify, do the following:

  • Click on Products > All Products or Collections
  • Browse and click the collection or product you want to edit
  • Copy-paste, or type your text in the text box
  • Specify the desired heading level in the Formatting drop-down menu ("Heading 1" corresponds to H1, "Heading 2" to H2 and so on)
shopify h-tags

When you select a piece of text and click on "Heading 2", for example, the formatting will change so that Google reads it as an H2.

Be aware that Shopify will often automatically give the text in the title field an H1 tag. So to avoid multiple H1s, as a general rule, do not give headings in the text field itself H1 tags.

how to make h tags in shopify

What are meta tags?

You've probably come across meta tags before. Meta tags are information in search engine results that describe the content of a website or subpage. A meta tag consists of a SEO title (also called page title or meta title) and a meta description.

It looks something like this:

snippet meta tags

How to create meta tags in Shopify?

You also do this in the text editor. Scroll to the bottom of the text editor and click Edit SEO for website.

Then you can write your page title and meta description. Below you can see the text editor of one of Webamp's webshop customers selling makeup. Here I am editing meta tags on a collection page with blush.

meta tags in shopify

Tip: Want to make sure your meta tags aren't too long - and also encourage potential customers to click through to your webshop? Then try Webamp's meta tags tool.

What are ALT tags?

ALT tags (also known as ALT text or alternative text) are text in the source code that tells Google and other search engines what an image is about. Google is pretty "smart" - but not smart enough to understand images. That's why the otherwise all-knowing search engine needs a little help understanding the images on your webshop. Because the more Google knows about a collection or product page, the more likely it is that your webshop will rank well in search results.

And that's where ALT tags come in - literally! So make sure you provide your images with relevant ALT tags.

How do you create ALT tags in Shopify?

  • Click on Products > All products
  • Find the product or collection you want to ALT Tag
  • Click on the image you want to tag under the Media section
  • Click on Add alternative text
  • Write your ALT tag
  • Click Save alternative text

Poof: now Google knows what the image is about. And that increases the likelihood that the search engine will understand what the rest of the page is about.

You can (and should) put ALT tags on all the images on your collection and product pages. But remember to give them unique ALT tags.

For example, if your webshop sells tools, don't give all your hammers the ALT tag 'hammer'. Therefore, make variations like 'hammer', 'hammer for carpenters' and 'rubber hammer' if you need to ALT tag several products within the same category.

ALT tags will not be visible on the webshop itself. But they will be visible in the source code - and that's where Google is looking. Below, for example, you can see the source code of the aforementioned blush collection page. Here, Google can read that an image has been assigned the ALT tag 'blush'.

alt tags alt text shopify

Write unique collection and product texts

I can't stress this enough: Content is king on the web - even on your webshop. After all, H-tags, metadata and ALT tags are an important part of Google's vocabulary. But Google is also pretty good at understanding ordinary human language - so good, in fact, that text is one of the most important parameters in Google's equation when it comes to awarding rankings in search results.

Let's say you have a collection page with red shoes on your webshop. You have lots of products - but no text saying you sell red shoes. Google will therefore have a hard time understanding that the page is about red shoes. Because even though you might have the basics down SEO, Google will still give higher priority to pages with more detailed text.

In other words: If you want to make your webshop visible on Google, you need to write user-friendly SEO texts for your product and collection pages. And it's a no go to copy text from your competitors. Google punishes duplicate content with poor rankings.

But it's not just for SEO that webshop texts are important - they're also important for your customers. Having a webshop without information about the products is like having a physical shop where the staff don't bother to tell customers about the products.

Tip: Do you get sweaty palms at the thought of a blank text document - or do you just find writing texts for your webshop dry work? Then you can build your texts according to the following template - it makes it both easier and faster to angle and write webshop texts:

  • Introduction to the collection or product
  • Buying instructions
  • Advantages and benefits of the products
  • Answers to typical product questions - where Answer the public can be worth its weight in gold
  • Advantages and benefits of shopping in your webshop
  • Call to action - what do your customers need to do to get their hands on the product?

Tip: At Webamp we have professional copywriters who will help you write compelling and SEO- and user-friendly content for your webshop. But if you just need inspiration to write good web copy, I highly recommend reading the following post:

Create landing pages for important keywords - filtering won't benefit your SEO

Shopify has an excellent filter function that makes it easy for your customers to narrow down their choice of products based on personal preferences. For example, on a collection page with red shoes, it will be possible to set up filters so that your customers can sort by parameters such as brand, model or price.

And it certainly benefits your users - but not your SEO! The problem with the filter function is that you are not exploiting the SEO potential of creating separate collection pages for each filter parameter. 

For example, let's say you have an online wine and spirits business. Here you have created a wine collection page and set up filters so that your customers can search for their favourite wine based on parameters such as:

  • Type: red, white, rose or sparkling wine (etc.)
  • Country of origin: French, Italian or Spanish wine (etc.)
  • Region: Burgundy, Amarone Della Valpolicella or Rioja (etc.)
  • Grape type: Cabernet Sauvignon, Malbec or Merlot (etc.)
  • Price: under 50,-, under 100,-, under 200,- (etc.)
  • Alcoholic strength: non-alcoholic or alcoholic wine

The site is optimised for the somewhat broad and generic keyword 'wine'. This means that the H-tags, metadata, ALT-tags and text on the page are optimized to be found when people google 'wine'. And filtering doesn't change that.

(Keep my last formulation in mind. I'll come back to filter functions in the next section.)

This means, for example, that you won't be found for high-volume keywords like 'red wine', 'Italian wine', 'Amarone Della Valpolicella', 'Cabernet Sauvignon' and 'non-alcoholic wine'. This means you're missing out on a lot of potential traffic and sales.

According to the SEO tool Ahrefs, 'non-alcoholic wine' is googled no less than 1,500 times a month, just as the keyword is relatively easy to get into the top 10.

shopify landing page

This gives the following equation:

  • high search volume + low difficulty = low hanging fruit!

So of course you need a landing page with your selection of non-alcoholic wines. And of course you optimise that landing page based on my first two tips. That way you increase your chances of being found on 'non-alcoholic wine' countless times. And with 1,500 potential customers a month, there's good reason for that.

But does that mean you should choose landing pages over filters? The answer is a resounding no! The filtering feature in Shopify has a big impact on the usability of your webshop - and usability (or UX) also affects SEO. So filters and landing pages are by no means opposites - on the contrary, they support each other.

Bonus knowledge for you who sell well-known brands

If you sell well-known brands in your market, you should strongly consider creating landing pages for high-potential keyword combinations of generic product collections and specific brands.

For example:

  • Hästens beds (monthly search volume: 400) for the webshop selling beds
  • Nike running shoes (monthly search volume: 1,100) for the webshop selling sports equipment
  • PH lamps (monthly search volume: 2,500) for the webshop selling lamps

If you're not sure which keyword combinations to target, do (or have done) a keyword analysis. It will tell you which keyword combinations are high-potential.

Get a handle on canonicals on pages with filter function

As mentioned, Google punishes duplicate content with lower rankings. But this doesn't just apply to content from your competitors - it also applies to your own content.

But what do I mean by that? Because why would you copy your own content? You obviously don't use the same text, images, ALT tags, meta tags and H tags on two completely different products or collections. Let me go back to Shopify's filter function for a moment to clarify what I mean.

The picture below shows a section of a product page of a webshop selling beauty and health products. Notice that the quantity of the product is set to 200 ml by default.

shopify canonical url

Shopify has assigned the following path (the part of the URL following the domain name) to the product page:

/collections/iles-formula/products/iles-formula-serum

But notice what happens to the path when a customer selects the product in the 1000 ml variant using the filter function:

/collections/iles-formula/products/iles-formula-serum?variant=337446169

Because of the filter, the path is now being widened. This is potentially problematic because the new URL essentially tells Google that a new product page has been created. And the "new" subpage is completely identical in content to the original - and therefore counts as duplicate content!

This is particularly a risk factor on collection pages with many filter parameters (for example the wine webshop in the previous section), where you can end up with as many URLs as there are filter combinations.

So how do you avoid Shopify's otherwise excellent filtering feature hurting your rankings on Google?

The answer is canonicals tags and canonical URLs!

What is a canonical tag?

A canonical tag is a piece of code written as follows:

  • <link rel=”canonical” href=”https://www.webshop.dk/collections/produkt/”>

Et canonical tag bor i <head></head>-sektionen i din webshops kildekode og kan blandt andet bruges til at definere canonical URL’er.

What is a canonical URL?

A canonical URL (or a canonical web address) is the URL chosen as the "master" of a collection of duplicate pages - for example, the multiple "duplicate" pages that a filter function (in the view of search engines) creates.

Or in Google's own words:

A canonical URL is the URL of the page that Google believes is the most representative of the identical pages on your website.

Source: https://support.google.com/webmasters: Help for Search Console

In other words, a canonical URL is the version of a page that Google should crawl.

However, it is important to tell Google which URL is the canonical one - otherwise the search engine will choose a term version itself.

Modern eCommerce platforms like Shopify automatically assign canonical tags to your pages when you create collection and product pages. Therefore, by default, you don't need to assign canonical tags to your desired canonical URLs.

But I would still highly recommend you to double-check if your webshop's canonicals are in order - especially if you use another eCommerce system than Shopify. Because that way you avoid these 3 SEO-related (horror) scenarios:

  • Duplicated content!
  • That Google crawls a less relevant version of the page
  • Google crawls hundreds of filter-generated URLs on your website, gets confused and instead shows a competitor with control of its canonicals in the search results

How to check canonicals on your webshop

You can check canonical tags on your Shopify webshop in one of the following ways.

1. Look at the source code

  • Open any collection or product page in your browser (on desktop - does not work on mobile and tablet)
  • Right-click anywhere on the page and click Explore
  • Now the source code of the page will pop up in a new window
  • Click control/command + F to search the source code and type "canonical"

If the page URL has been assigned a canonical tag, it will appear in the URL after the yellow highlight.

canonicals source code

Prøv nu at bruge filterfunktionen, så URL’en ændrer sig, ligesom i eksemplet fra før, og gentag samme proces. Nu skulle du gerne få samme resultat, når du kigger i kildekoden – URL’en efter <link rel=”canonical” href= skal altså være uændret til trods for filteret. Det betyder nemlig, at den oprindelige URL er angivet som kanonisk.

And then everything is good - Google will only take the canonical URL into account.

2. Check it out with a SEO crawler

If you want a more general overview of canonicals on your site, you can use a SEO crawler like Screaming Frog. Here you can get an overview of all canonicals on all subpages of your webshop.

I won't go into detail about the application here, as you can read much more about it in the post "Seven tips to improve your SEO with Screaming Frog".

3. Check theme.liquid in Shopify's admin panel

Endelig kan du kigge i theme.liquid-filen i <head></head>-sektionen i admin-panelet i din webshop.

  • Click on Actions > Edit code under Webshop > Themes
  • Select theme.liquid, and look up "canonical"
  • If all is well, you should see the following (see yellow markings):
shopify admin panel

Ligger der ikke allerede et canonical tag i <head></head>-sektionen? Så kopierer du blot følgende kodestykke ind i sektionen:

<link rel="canonical" href="{{ canonical_url }}">

For more information about canonical URLs and tags on your Shopify webshop, you may want to follow Shopify's guidelines and best practices.

Give your page and URL structure a health check

The page structure of your webshop should make it easy for your customers to find what they are looking for. It will also make it easier for Google to find your webshop.

In a supermarket, you don't expect to find cat food in the greengrocer's, just as you don't look in the butcher's if you need a socket.

Similarly, you need to make sure that your webshop is divided into "sections" that make it easy for your customers to find the product they need - and that make it easy for Google and other search engines to crawl your webshop.

So make sure your page structure is simple and easy to navigate. It should look something like this:

  • Home > category > (subcategory) > product page > product

So the page structure is important - but so is the URL structure. You want your paths to match your page structure. In other words, they should be as simple as possible. For example, the URL of a product page with men's shoes should be something like:

  • www.webshop.dk/collections/herresko

Shopify generates URLs itself when you create collection and product pages, and the path will therefore be identical to the name of the collection or product. So if you named the collection men's shoes, Shopify will automatically assign the path /collections/men's-shoes to the page.

If you still want to change the URL manually for search engine friendly reasons, you can easily do so in the Web address and handler field in the Edit SEO for website section under each product or collection.

Use schema.org - structured data makes you visible in the SERP

Have you ever noticed that some of the results on Google's search engine results page (SERP) are more detailed than others?

For example, in the result below from bicycle retailer Saxil Cycles, you can see both the price and stock status of the popular Hövding bicycle helmet. This gives Google users more information than the SEO title, URL and meta description, which is the information normally displayed in a search result (snippet).

Use schema.org - structured data makes you visible in the SERP

Such a search result is called a rich snippet. And it makes your webshop stand out more in the search results - partly because it stands out visually from the other results, and partly because it tells potential customers relevant information about a product even before they have visited your webshop.

And it benefits both user experience, SEO and click-through rate.

How do you get a rich snippet?

You do this by using structured data.

Structured data is HTML that tells Google and other search engines exactly what a website is about. My colleague Peter has already written an excellent introduction to structured data, so I won't go into what structured data is here. But it might be more interesting to know what it does - and not least what it can do for your web shop's visibility in search results.

Structuring data yourself requires some technical understanding, but fortunately there are tools to help - for example, this Schema Markup Generator. Here you can choose a Schema.org markup that suits your business type. If you have a webshop, it will make sense to choose Product.

You can then specify different parameters you want to tell Google and potential customers - for example, stock status and price, as in the example above. Based on the parameters entered, the markup generator will generate a JSON-LD script. Afterwards, you can test and implement your schema code in your webshop's source code (typically in the collection.liquid or product.liquid file).

How do you get a rich snippet?

You can use structured data for many different purposes - for example, to display reviews in search results so your customers know whether your webshop is worth a visit.

Of course, this requires that you get your customers to review your business on Trustpilot, Google, your webshop itself and other platforms - and you'll want good reviews.

For example, here I have structured a schema (the most universal vocabulary in structured data) for displaying reviews:

<script type="application/ld+json">

{

  "@context": "https://schema.org/", 

  "@type": "Product", 

  "name": "",

  "image": "",

  "aggregateRating": {

    "@type": "AggregateRating",

    "ratingValue": "5",

    "ratingCount": "299"

  }

}

</script>

When we talk about structured data in relation to webshops, it is dynamic. If a product is sold out in your webshop, the stock will also change in the structured data - if you have set it up correctly and according to the guidelines.

The same applies to the price of your product if it goes on sale or is discounted. This means you don't have to change anything manually, saving you a lot of time.

Blog amok!

If you've read my post "Why your business should write blog posts", you already know 5 good reasons to write blogs with tips and tricks about your products. If you haven't read it, I can briefly summarise what a blog on your webshop can do for your SEO:

  • You catch customers early in the buying journey
  • You will be found on long tail keywords
  • You increase your chances of backlinks

First, you capture customers early in the buying journey. Because your potential customers may not even know that your products can meet their needs. That's why you need to help them a little. And you can do this by blogging about your products.
That way, you guide potential customers further in the decision-making phase.

  • For the makeup retailer, it can be advice on how to apply makeup that lasts
  • For the wine merchant, it can be advice on how to choose wine for food
  • For the health shop, it can be a post about the benefits of collagen powder

That's why a blog is also the perfect platform to be found on keywords people use when googling a problem. These will typically be so-called long tail keywords - longer, highly specific search terms. For example:

  • Breathable raincoat with high water resistance
  • Supplements for skin and nail care
  • Breathable running socks with compression

In the early part of the buying journey, people are not looking for products - they are looking for solutions to their problems.

You may have a health web shop that sells collagen as a dietary supplement. But your potential customers won't find your shop if they don't know that collagen is an important component of the skin and that collagen powder can therefore help to tighten the skin.

So you might want to write a blog post about skin care and then talk about collagen and link to a relevant product page.

It also gives you plenty of opportunity for internal link building, which also strengthens your SEO. And speaking of link building, if you write really good, informative blog posts, there's also a chance that other websites will link to your site - in other words, you're laying the groundwork for strong backlinks.

How to create and edit a blog in Shopify's admin panel:

  • Click on Online Store > Blog posts
  • Click on Manage blogs
  • Click on Add blog
  • Name the blog
  • Blog amok!

Want to know more about SEO of Shopify webshops?

Are you too busy looking after your webshop to play SEO specialist? Or does SEO of your webshop seem a bit too complicated?

Then contact Webamp at 70 60 50 28, or write to me directly at ak@webamp.dk

Learn more about SEO, and increase your online presence

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