3 simple steps for creating an SEO marketing strategy for your Shopify site

Shopify is a universally popular choice for eCommerce ventures. Searchability is still the key to success though. So, here’s a three-step shopify marketing strategy SEO activities, including a ‘live’ illustration.

No platform for eCommerce is the complete solution to establishing and growing your venture successfully. Even the best online retail website option will still require careful planning and the addition of strong content.

The starting point to your shopify marketing strategy is to find an eCommerce website platform that suits your needs and technical abilities, then build from there. For many start-ups, this is Shopify.

Shopify is of the most successful eCommerce platforms worldwide. It is favoured by some of the best-known brands globally, such as Budweiser, Nestle, Pepsi, Unilever, Penguin Books, Red Bull and Tesla.

By early 2020 there were 500,000 active stores within Shopify, which is an impressive 20% market share.

There are other options – such as sector leader WooCommerce, as well as Wix, Magento, BigCommerce and Weebly. However, the user simplicity of Shopify continues to grow its popularity.

If you have chosen to use Shopify for your eCommerce venture, it’s vital that you optimise your pages to be found on Google searches, and preferably to achieve high page rankings within results.

This guide to the Shopify SEO features a three-step strategy for online retailers (adaptable to any product). It also provides an illustration to show how it works in practice.

Step 1 – Product-specific SEO

Choose one of your products, and use the free Google Keyword Planner option to do some ‘digging’. This will give you a set of words and phrases that your customers use, in relation to that product.

The only thing you need for this is a Google account.

Step 2 – Creating new content

Using the long and short tail keywords your search uncovers, you need to then create strong content that smoothly assimilates them. Don’t be tempted to ‘stuff’ keywords or artificially replicate the text in chunks. Those practices are badly out of date and can actually harm your SEO! Original and well-written content is what wins!

Plan out a series of fresh articles, blogs and product updates with these keywords in the title, and interspersed in the body text. These should be posted periodically (such as weekly), not ‘cluster posted’, to maximise their SEO potential.

Step 3 – Optimising other content

Use your keyword ‘matrix’ to refresh and update your Shopify marketing strategy content. This needs to include relevant images and alt tags.

Remember, by publishing a relevant article each week, you bolster the impact of those keywords. The sum total becomes a ‘library’ of content that helps strengthen your Shopify SEO strategy.

Practical example of Shopify marketing strategy for SEO

Let’s go through the steps again, but this time using a product; Protein Powder.

Step 1 –

By using a Google Keyword Search, then filtering and sorting the results, it becomes apparent that 1,600 people have recently searched for “Plant-Based Protein Powder”. This is a valuable long-tail keyword.

Step 2 –

A body of insightful and fresh articles are now drafted, using Plant-Based Protein Powders in headers and the body text. The keyword search helped to suggest some of the titles, including:

• Do Plant-Based Protein Powders provide a higher amount of energy release?
• Are Plant-Based Protein Powders beneficial to me even if I don’t workout?
• What is a Plant-Based Protein Powder?

Step 3 –

Now content on the eCommerce pages is optimising using this SEO intel. This includes amending the product SLUG (the URL page identifier for that product) and META (HTML tag for that product).

Also, additional internal and external links, images and alt tags focusing on Plant-Based Protein Powder all improve the chance of this product page securing high ranking in Google searches.

The quick SEO solution for Shopify

Shopify does offer some built-in SEO tools and features for users. Building your site’s structure correctly to make it quick to load and easy to navigate also helps. The more user-friendly your Shopify eCommerce pages are, the more likely they are to underpin healthy sales.

However, following our guide to improving the searchability of your products on Shopify can be important to generate organic leads, and therefore boost lead conversion and sales.

Alternatively, give us a call to audit your Shopify eCommerce site and to provide a step by step guide to improve its success and plan your Shopify marketing guide.

Further Reading: Is SEO still necessary for your ecommerce website in 2020?