How to get your Shopify Store Rank in Search Engines (SEO Checklist 2021)

is it not every ecommerce business owner's dream to show up number one on google ranking first in search engines can get you up to 30 more daily traffic so that would mean more people coming to your online store and making purchases and the best part is is that you could rank number one for free so in today's video we're gonna teach you how to harness the power of seo this is gonna be your golden ticket to improving your shopify store rank on search engines so that you can make more sales [Music] what's going on guys my name is michelle i'm a creative strategist and i am also your host for today's video now if you just stumbled upon this channel learn with shopify is a channel that is dedicated to helping you start run and grow your online business now i know as entrepreneurs it can definitely be tough to find answers to your questions especially if you are working alone so we're constantly making videos that are going to give you the answers that you need to grow your ecommerce store so if you do have a topic that you need help with make sure that you're leaving it in the comments section um for example we recently had someone ask how to reach out to influencers so we just made an entire video just on that just answering that question so we definitely listen to you guys and we want to make sure that you are getting the most value possible um so leave your topic suggestions down below and if you like our content make sure that you are hitting subscribe and you are liking this video but without further ado let's get into the video so there's this joke in the seo world it goes if you wanted to hide a dead body you'd put it on the second page of google that's because the first page gets the most clicks and no one really goes to the second page let alone the third or the fourth now no matter what you're selling where you are in the world or how new you are to selling online getting your store ranked number one on google is possible it just takes time and persistence to rank first in a google search result your store's content needs to match a potential visitor's intent search engine optimization are the steps that you would take to prove to google that your content is relevant and that your site is worth visiting so there are three types of seo there is technical seo on-page seo and off-page seo getting all three of these aspects to move in harmony is the key to ranking your ecommerce store in search engines so if we take a look at what technical seo is technical seo ensures that your website is optimized for search engine crawlers mobile devices and has good page speed it also optimizes your site for humans by making sure that its structure navigation and internal links allow for easy browsing so on page seo is the primary method of directly telling readers and search engines what your page is all about so this is going to include keywords topic relevance meta information the slug in the page url and your images so with off page seo essentially it boils down to building backlinks so these are links that point to your site so the more high quality relevant backlinks that you have the better your pages will rank so what happens when you take steps to improve your seo the result is that you improve the quality and the quantity of people coming to your store so once google sees that your online store is a good experience for shoppers they will bump you up higher and closer to that number one page so this takes a little bit of time and a little bit of effort on your part but seo is a marketing channel that can produce the highest traffic and revenue for your business so i'm going to introduce you to some simple steps that you can take right now today in order to get you closer to that number one spot keywords so you might have heard of keywords before but what are they actually the best way to think of keywords are the queries that people use and type into search engines keywords are literally the words that you put onto your site so that when someone is searching for something in google they find you because you have included keywords that relate to their search so you can build keywords into your page content meta description title tags url and more now one thing to remember is that seo has come a long way since the days of keyword stuffing so when optimizing pages to rank for keywords the first step is to try and understand the topic behind it and then you do your best to cover that topic so for example when i search for silk sleep mask in google this ecommerce store shows up because they have used the keywords silk and sleep mask in their product descriptions the trick though is to find the right keywords the right keywords are going to have a lot of people searching for them but not a lot of other websites that are using these keywords so in short we want high volume low competition to go ahead and find those keywords you're going to need to use a tool called google keyword planner so if you haven't set that up yet i will just leave a link for you guys in the description box on how you can get that set up so now i'm in google keyword planner and i'm going to be looking for words for my hot sauce brand specifically i'm going to be looking for transactional keywords which are searches that indicate an intent to complete a purchase this entails typing a product name directly into the search bar and these type of keywords go into your product pages so i will click discover new keywords and i'm going to start typing in some keywords that i think people are going to be searching on google and i'm going to really think about the words that people might use if they are ready to make a purchase so here i have hot sauce canada i have hot sauce subscription box and i will also use vegan hot sauce which is actually quite ridiculous because i think most hot sauces are vegan but that's fine so you can put in up to 10 keywords but right now we're just gonna hit get results okay so here we have hot sauce canada and as you can see it has a thousand to ten thousand monthly searches so that's pretty amazing but my only thing here is that the competition is looking pretty high that means we're probably not going to rank for this search term so you want to look for a high average monthly searches with a low competition that is a sweet spot and if we scroll down google is going to give us some other keywords as well and these are going to be keywords that are related to our initial search and that's just going to help us give us some more ideas so as you're doing your research here are some rules of thumb number one go for keywords with more than a thousand monthly searches number two if your search term has too high competition think of synonyms so instead of hot sauce maybe we could do something like chili sauce and number three try to go for something that's called long tail keywords long tail keyword phrases will be easier to rank for so instead of just like hot sauce for example you could use gluten-free hot sauce for sandwiches and number four include many keyword phrases not just one okay so let's say you found your keywords what you're going to want to do is you'll put them on a notepad in your computer and then you'll actually want to put these keywords that you found onto your site so here we are on my left hand side i have my keywords i want to use and on my right hand side i'm editing my products here in shopify so make sure that you're using your keywords in your product titles as well as your descriptions i'm going to make sure that all of these keywords are weaved in in a way that makes sense we want to avoid keyword stuffing so if you haven't heard of keyword stuffing this is basically when you're just you know randomly plopping in keywords and when you read it out loud the paragraph just doesn't make sense we want to avoid keyword stuffing because google actually picks up on this and they will penalize your website so make sure that your paragraph is readable and that it's providing value as well another place to add your keywords is in your image alt text so if you want your actual images to show up when someone is doing a google image search your image alt text is how you're going to get found so i'll just add that here and i will click save alt text all right so let's scroll down a little bit so this is a little preview of how our product page looks to other people when they find us on google so this is looking super messy so let's just clean this up and we'll also take this opportunity to add in our keywords you also want to make sure that you're using copy that will entice people to click through once they actually find you on google and really short and sweet here is perfect i'm gonna also include our keywords in our url because google also takes this into account one other type of keyword that i briefly want to mention is informational queries so these types of keywords normally begin with how to what why best etc so you can use these types of keywords to create blog content that genuinely provides helpful information that is also relevant to your target audience so when it comes to the customer journey in search engines it's important to understand how people move from not knowing what they want to purchase or what they're looking for to constantly making the choice to purchase your product users look for information before they make a transaction if you're looking to buy a new smartphone for example you would probably start your search by typing in a query like best smartphone and then you might be scrolling through an article that lists the top 10 smartphones from there you would probably want to compare two of the products that you saw on that list to learn how they might compare in features or reliability okay so from there you might type in something like apple iphone versus samsung galaxy and then after reading this you would have a clear idea of what smartphone is right for you and then you would type in a transactional keyword like by iphone and that way you could find the best deal and complete your purchase okay so now that we understand how a customer might move from consideration all the way to purchase as they're using a search engine you're going to want to replicate this so to do this you're going to want to create a list of informational keywords related to your niche or your product you'll want to brainstorm customer questions as well consider what questions customers are asking when they're aware of your product but maybe they still need more clarification so for example we could create an article that helps customers understand how to pair certain hot sauces with certain foods going back to our hot sauce example so i would recommend that you start typing into google see what suggestions come up and that's going to give you an idea of common questions people are having so after that you're going to want to hit enter on one of the queries and scroll all the way to the bottom this is a bit of life hack and this will give you related queries these will give you article ideas that are validated because you know people are searching for them all right so once you have your keywords the next step is to create thoughtful and value-packed blog articles with original photos that help drive visitors from awareness to consideration to transaction remember that funnel that we were talking about we want to move them through that with our content so for this consider making step-by-step tutorials you can also try top 10 lists you can do how-to articles you can make long-form content and how-to videos if you want to rank higher in search results and maybe you're looking for a checklist that you can easily reference then i will leave a link for you guys in the description box and that will give you access to download a free checklist on search engine optimization link building so you're also going to want to think about a link building strategy so link building refers to the process of acquiring hyperlinks from other websites to point to your own website so if google sees that other websites are pointing to your store other people are talking about you google is going to start to see your site as trusted and reputable google takes into account the number of links that are out there about your store it also considers the quality as well so if time magazine drops your url in their article that would definitely be considered a reputable and high quality reference relevancy is also another key factor if you do want to get started on building links the best way to approach this is to focus on partnerships so whether that's publishers or other sites in your industry you're going to want to determine who can provide and share value with so if you know someone who reviews hot sauces and you want to promote your hot sauce products a really simple email introduction can be the start of a mutually beneficial relationship when you're reaching out here are a couple of things that you're going to want to keep in mind so in your pitch email start by explaining what's in it for them let's say they have a blog post and they have links to products that are out of date or products that no longer exist or maybe they're missing something vital in their post you're going to want to give them a reason to consider your request to consider featuring your products in their content secondly make sure that you're not requesting links from people who are your competitors okay this might sound obvious but it's sometimes it's not so obvious so for example let's say you're you're selling hot sauces make sure that you're looking at who is writing the actual article of you know top 10 hot sauces make sure that those people are not also selling their own hot sauces that's just something to keep in mind so that you're not wasting your time number one foundational links so foundational links are from social media profiles business directories and niche directories so if you haven't already signed up for social media accounts like instagram facebook pinterest etc then you're definitely going to want to do that now and it's also recommended that you create a profile for google my business even if you don't have a physical retail store this is still going to help you improve your local seo which can help you get more local customers the seo benefits here are on the smaller side on you know the foundational links but this is easy to set up and it's going to increase your discoverability number two pitch gift guides so gift guides are a list of recommended products typically surrounding a holiday like christmas for example if you've ever googled gift ideas then you've likely come across one of these articles so getting your products in the right gift guides can increase your sales they can increase your traffic to your website as well but inclusion in these does not happen randomly it is going to require some effort on your part you'll need to contact gift guide publishers and ask to have your product listed now of course when it comes to this there is no guarantee but if your product is the right fit you can be included and that can help you introduce your brand and your products to an entirely new audience number three pr campaigns so press publications have a really good chance at getting you website visitors and also establishing clout this is all good things coming from an seo perspective so when we think about a press release we're generally thinking about it in a very traditional sense where you would submit a release to the media to get featured in local national or industry press but instead of hiring a pr company because that can be pretty costly try taking a shot at doing your own publicity so if you have a great story or if you have a super interesting product that people are going to want to write about just put it out there get in touch with bloggers and journalists who cover businesses like yours and tell them what you're up to it's definitely true that most writers are drowning in requests but they are still always on the lookout for a good story so make sure that you're targeting the right publications and that you're sharing your brand's story especially if it is you know compelling touching shocking or inspiring telling a narrative will improve your success rate with this tactic site speed having a fast site is not only important to keep customers from getting frustrated and leaving your site but it's also important because google sees this as favorable google will reward you with increased exposure and get you closer to that number one ranking if you do have good site speed one of the most common offenders are apps on your shopify store so start by going to your apps start by you know just cleaning up the ones that you don't use and just by doing this small step you're gonna see a huge difference in your site speed video is so important in keeping your customers engaged and on your site for longer long sessions will increase your site's seo performance but ironically having a heavy video is going to slow down your site speed and that's going to negatively affect your seo ranking so to solve this little conundrum instead of using iframe which is youtube's standard embed code use something called lighten beds this is going to help with load times and it's going to make your site load faster so for personalized recommendations on how you can increase your site speed shopify actually has a tool that's right inside the admin called the store speed report so you can check that out quality content so google tracks how people are interacting with your site so if people land on your site maybe they don't find what they want or maybe your sites look an amateur they're probably going to press the back button if google sees that people are leaving right away they will move you down in ranks so instead create content that is keeping people engaged and google is going to uprank you for this when it comes to your home page keep it short and snappy so instead of opening with two long paragraphs that explain why your brand is the best open with a product image open with a short line of copy and open with a button like shop now to entice people to browse and stay a while so on our hot sauce store we have beautiful photography some teaser text and a shop now button this is a very standard way to set up your home page on your product pages make sure that you have high-res images and also include specific information that a customer would need to know before they actually make a purchase so for example here we have ingredients and spice level quality product pages are not only going to help with seo but they're also going to help with conversions as well so make sure that you are paying close attention to your product pages we actually have an entire video of me just going over shopify stores that i think are doing an amazing job so you can check that out right here for when you're done watching this video so these are all the steps that you can take today if you wanted to and that will help you improve your presence on google but when you implement these steps you're going to want to use a tool like google search console google search console is going to help you track how well you're doing so if you don't know how to use google search console and maybe you want an entire video just on how to use it let me know and i will do that if there is enough interest if you're already watching this and you're wanting to improve your store then you are 10 steps ahead of the game the most common traits of successful entrepreneurs are people who are passionate persistent and keeps their eye on the goal so good job for being out there and taking yet another step in pushing your business and getting closer to financial freedom if you're not on shopify already and you are serious about ranking your online store then shopify is really going to have everything that you need it has powerful features and free apps that's going to simplify your marketing and up your game with seo so you can get started with a free 14-day trial no credit card required i will leave a link for you guys in the description box so that you can get started on your business journey if you thought that this video was helpful maybe you gained a couple of gems make sure that you're giving it a thumbs up that's going to help this video do well give it some more exposure it's going to help our channel grow and it's going to overall help our community grow and make sure that you are leaving your questions in the comments section we will do our best to get back to each and every single one of you and of course if you like this type of content if you are an entrepreneur and you're looking to up your game make sure that you're hitting subscribe because we are constantly dropping content just like this thank you guys so much for watching my name is michelle and i will see you in the next one bye

Channel: Learn With Shopify

Views: 27,525

Keywords: learn with shopify, ecommerce tutorials, shopify store, ecommerce business, online business, ecommerce seo, seo checklist, online business 2021, seo tutorial, page landing, shopify seo, shopify seo tips, shopify seo optimization, seo for beginners, shopify seo for beginners, seo for shopify, best seo for shopify, seo on shopify, seo tips, seo for shopify store, shopify seo 2021, shopify seo hacks, shopify tutorial for beginners 2021

Id: 7epUGFEdrP8

Length: 21min 15sec (1275 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 14 2021