Evaluating a site for “quality” is the most misunderstood concept in SEO. As a result, you may be leaving sites out of your outreach that can drive ranking, or you may be including sites that will provide no value or potentially get you penalized. This presentation is for digital marketers who want to scale up a high-impact link-building program while lowering risk.

Join link-building expert Kevin Rowe, who will walk you through an in-depth analysis of what website elements need to be evaluated to determine “site quality” for link building.

To learn more, register today for “How to Identify Site Quality for Link Building,” presented by Purelinq.

The post Create a high-impact link-building program appeared first on Search Engine Land.

On January 31, Google released the URL Inspection API, enabling you to programmatically check the status of URLs in bulk (based on properties you have access to in GSC). Although you could always inspect one URL at a time in GSC to see if a URL was indexed, this is the first time you can check the indexing status of URLs in bulk (based on data directly from Google).

The API opens up many opportunities to understand how Google handles your URLs. Also, it has been great to see the various SEO tool providers move quickly to add the URL Inspection API to their products.

Monitoring indexing status via the URL Inspection API and Analytics Edge

Regularly checking the indexing status of important URLs can help nip SEO problems in the bud. For example, using the API, you can check on a daily or weekly basis whether your most important URLs are still indexed. And you definitely want to know if important URLs drop out of the index, whether it’s a result of technical problems, quality problems, or Google’s finicky indexing system. That’s versus identifying that problem down the line after you’ve experienced lost rankings and traffic as URLs drop out of the index. And that’s if you pick up the drops quickly enough.

As soon as the API was released, I started thinking about a solution to periodically bulk-check important URLs. In addition, I started thinking about checking URLs across different sites. And going even further, I wanted to move beyond the 2,000 requests per day limitation (per property), which can be severely limiting for many larger-scale sites. In this article, I’ll cover the solution I’ve been using. It’s easy to set up and extremely cost-effective.

Analytics Edge, your SEO Swiss Army Knife

I’ve written heavily about using Analytics Edge for a number of scenarios in the past. It’s an Excel add-in that enables you to work with several APIs directly in your spreadsheets (and provides a ton of functionality for working with that data once exported). For example, it’s a great way to export your top queries and landing pages from GSC, create Delta Reports after major algorithm updates, and more. And now, you can use Analytics Edge to bulk check URLs via the URL Inspection API.

But it can do more than that.

By creating several macros, which can be grouped, you can link API tasks together to create a powerful recipe for checking the status of many URLs across websites (or GSC properties from the same site). I’ll cover more about moving beyond the 2,000 URL limit per day soon.

What you can accomplish via the URL Inspection API using Analytics Edge

In this post, you’ll learn how to check the indexing status of your most important URLs, across different websites, all at one time. Instead of just checking one GSC property in bulk, we’re going to do that across several websites automatically (without having to trigger each macro on its own).

The goal is for you to open a spreadsheet, click the “Refresh all” button, and have Analytics Edge check all your top URLs across multiple sites. It can save you a ton of time, while also providing critical intelligence about important URLs that are no longer indexed.

Overcoming the 2,000 requests per day limit

You can only process 2,000 requests per day via the URL Inspection API (per GSC property). But there’s an important distinction between “website” and “GSC property.” Remember, you can set up multiple GSC properties per website by adding directories and subdomains, which can give you more data (because the reporting will focus on just those directories or subdomains).

For our situation today, having directories or subdomains set up as properties will enable you to process 2,000 requests per day for each of those properties. That means you can check many more URLs per site if you have those additional properties set up. And using Analytics Edge, you can check the indexing status of URLs across those properties in one shot (using the process in this tutorial).

If you don’t need to check multiple websites, but want more requests for the one site you manage, then this can still help you get more data. So set up your top directories and/or subdomains. It’s easy, and more data awaits.   

Tutorial: How to set up a multi-site indexing monitoring system using the URL Inspection API and Analytics Edge

Step 1. Download and install the Analytics Edge core add-in. I have covered how to set up Analytics Edge several times in previous posts, and you can check those posts to learn how to do it. You should be up and running in no time. Once you install the core add-in, you can quickly add the Google Search Console connector. You will need both to accomplish what I am covering in this post. License-wise, there are free trials for both the core add-in and the GSC connector. After which, it’s $99 per year for the core add-in and $50 per year for the GSC connector.

Step 2. Now it’s time to connect to your Google account that has access to the GSC properties you want to monitor. In Excel, click Analytics Edge in the top menu. Next, click Google Search. Then Accounts in the dropdown menu. Go through the process of connecting your Google account and authorizing access. This should only take a few seconds.

Step 3. Create a worksheet that contains the top URLs from the first website you want to monitor. You can include up to 2,000 URLs per worksheet. For this tutorial, I would only add the top 10 or 20 URLs for the site (so you don’t have to wait too long for the API to process your requests while building the system). After which, you can add up to 2,000 URLs per worksheet. Make sure the column has a header. I would use “page” as the header in this example so you can follow along. You can name the worksheet whatever you want, but I used “site1” for this tutorial. You could name each worksheet based on the site name.

Step 4. Next, we’ll create our first macro to check the URLs via the URL Inspection API. We’ll get to the second site after that (and then you’ll be able to run all the macros at one time). But for now, let’s focus on using the URL Inspection API to check indexing for the first list of URLs. Analytics Edge provides a ton of functionality you can use when crafting macros. You can explore the various menus to see everything you can accomplish.

Step 5. When you create a macro in Analytics Edge, you combine a series of instructions that will run together (like a recipe). For our purposes, we want to first read in the list of URLs from our worksheet, then use the URL Inspection API to check those URLs, and then write the results to a new worksheet (so you can analyze the data).

Step 6. In the Analytics Edge menu, click the File menu, and then Read Worksheet. This will pull the complete list of URLs you have in that worksheet. In the dialog box, the workbook will be the current workbook, and the worksheet should be the current worksheet. You shouldn’t have to change anything. Just click OK to read the worksheet. Also, notice how the Task Pane in Analytics Edge adds each part of our macro as we execute them. After each step, you will see the new instruction added to the macro.

Step 7. Analytics Edge creates a temporary worksheet named “Step Results” containing the list of the URLs you will process with the URL Inspection API. Next, let’s use the API. In the Analytics Edge menu, click Google Search, and then URL Inspection. In the dialog box, select the Account you set up earlier and then the GSC property you want to work with. Then you must tell Analytics Edge where the URLs are in the worksheet by adding the column name to the URL field. To add the column name, surround the name with brackets. So, if you used “page” as I did earlier, add [page] in the field. Then click OK.

Step 8. Next, let the URL Inspection API process all the requests (which shouldn’t take too long since we’re only testing a handful of URLs). Once that’s done, the Step Results worksheet will contain a sample of the results highlighted in green. Next, let’s write the results to a new worksheet where you can analyze and work with the data.

Step 9. Write to Worksheet – In the Analytics Edge menu, click the File menu and then “Write to Worksheet.” Give your new worksheet a name like “site1 Results” and click OK. You now have a new worksheet containing the URL Inspection results for the list of URLs you want to monitor.

Step 10. We want to check multiple GSC properties in one fell swoop (across different websites). So, let’s create a second macro to do that (and then we’ll run them together via Analytics Edge).

Step 11. Create a new worksheet with URLs from a second website (or second GSC property for the same site you ran earlier). You can name this worksheet “site2” for this tutorial. And again, you can name it by site if you want in the future. Add the top URLs from the second site you want to monitor. Again, I would add only 10 to 20 URLs. You can use “page” as the column name again.

Step 12. Create a new macro that will work with this second list of URLs. The first macro is already set up and will work with the first worksheet of URLs. This second macro will use the new list of URLs. In the Task Pane for Analytics Edge, you will see your current macro. Click the dropdown and select “new macro.” Name is whatever you want. I called it “Check Site 2”. Also, if the Task Pane isn’t showing for some reason, you can reveal it by clicking the Analytics Edge menu and then Task Pane on the left side. It’s a large icon next to the File menu.

Step 13. Next, go through the same process we did earlier to create the instructions for reading the worksheet, using the URL Inspection API, and writing the results to a new worksheet named “site 2 Results”. You will have two macros that process URLs from two different worksheets when you’re done. And each macro writes the results to a fresh worksheet to analyze and work with the data.

Step 14. How to monitor the URLs regularly – Now that you’ve created the two macros, you can always open the spreadsheet and run them at one time (to check the URLs you want to monitor across GSC properties). To do this, click the Analytics Edge menu and click the “Refresh All” button in the upper left corner. Analytics Edge will run both macros (in alphabetical order). Once the macros are complete, you’ll have fresh data to analyze. Save each spreadsheet with a new name so you can monitor your results over time.

Congratulations! You now have a multisite URL Inspection monitoring system.

You can add more sites to monitor by adding additional macros to the spreadsheet. And again, if you have a large site, then adding multiple directories or subdomains as properties in GSC will enable you to move beyond the 2,000 requests per day limit. So, you could add multiple GSC properties (from the same site) versus checking different sites.

Summary – Start with a simple URL Inspection monitoring system and expand from there

Ready to create your own system based on this tutorial? Then download Analytics Edge (the core add-in and the Google Search Console connector) and get a simple example working. Once you do, then expand your efforts by adding more GSC properties.

I think you’ll dig working with Analytics Edge, how versatile it can be, how fast it can work, etc. It’s a great way to monitor important URLs (across sites or properties). And feel free to ping me on Twitter if you have any questions while working through your first macros! Happy monitoring.

The post How to create a multi-site indexing monitoring system using the URL Inspection API and Analytics Edge appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Core Web Vitals (CWVs) have already impacted search rankings for mobile, and with the desktop rollout now underway, they’re set to gain even greater importance for publishers. Due to complete by late March, we’ll see the familiar trio of CWV pillars incorporated as active measures for determining desktop search success – namely, first input delay (FID), largest contentful paint (LCP), and cumulative layout shift (CLS).

Why Core Web Vitals can no longer be ignored

According to a recent analysis of Chrome’s User Experience Report, Similar Web and global traffic data, only 31% of websites globally are compliant with all three CWV measures on mobile – just five percentage points higher than when CWVs became official KPIs for site evaluation last summer. But compliance with these user-centric metrics has never been more crucial – with those publishers that boost their search status able to drive higher visibility, traffic and revenue, as well as improved user experience. In fact, Google’s own research highlights major gains on mobile of up to 10% ad revenue uplift and 23% higher session duration.

And while site owners might assume they’ll have an easier time with desktop – with its superior connections and faster processing – that’s not necessarily the case. Figures from the Chrome User Experience Report show that, of the top 1000 media sites globally, only 59% meet the requirements for CLS on desktop. That’s even lower than compliance on mobile, at 67%, and leaves publishers at risk of accidental clicks from readers – potentially leading to penalties from Google and a significant hit to revenues.

The risk of sudden changes

Even those with good scores can’t afford to be complacent: often, seemingly minor changes to a site, such as adding a new script or vendor, could cause a sudden drop in scores that isn’t immediately obvious.

For example, one of Clickio’s publisher partners saw a significant fall in their CLS score last July, shortly after making some changes to the setup of their Progressive Web App (PWA).

While there were seemingly no problems with the site’s performance or layout, Clickio’s Web Vitals Monitoring service showed that CLS on mobile had dropped from around 90% to under 60% in just a couple of days. However, by spotting the issue quickly, the publisher could test several solutions and fix the issues fast – before they showed up in Google’s Search Console or impacted the site’s search ranking.

In another case, a publisher working with Clickio had never paid much attention to Core Web Vitals and had not experienced any real issues. This was until last August when they suddenly saw a 16% deduction from their Google AdSense earnings due to invalid traffic.

With this increasing to a 26% deduction in September, the website owner was keen to get to the bottom of the problem and began to look into their Web Vitals scores with our real-user monitoring tool. This showed a CLS score under 60%, but after implementing a few quick CSS changes, the site was soon fully compliant again, with all three metrics above 90% and deductions from Google back to almost zero in November.

Four reasons publishers should set up real-user monitoring

With the desktop rollout bringing new challenges and Core Web Vitals metrics also expected to evolve over time, the only way for publishers to remain agile in the face of change is to set up real-user monitoring.

Specifically, real-user monitoring is vital for the following reasons:

1. Google says so – Despite the tech giant announcing its own Search Console report for desktop URLs, it has openly stated that this analysis doesn’t go deep enough:

“The data provided by Chrome User Experience Report offers a quick way to assess the performance of sites, but it does not provide the detailed, per-page view telemetry that is often necessary to accurately diagnose, monitor, and quickly react to regressions. As a result, we strongly recommend that sites set up their own real-user monitoring.”

Effectively, Google acknowledges site owners’ need for more granular data about how users are experiencing pages.

2. Track real user experience – In other words, publishers need field data. Distinct from lab data, which is gathered in controlled environments with unchanging device and network settings, field data gathers insight into what is happening in the real world, including the impact of varying factors such as differing location, device type, and network quality. With Google utilizing field data for its page experience rankings, publishers must prioritize this resource when learning how users experience their website.

3. Access real-time data – While Google’s tools are generally based on historical data, meaning site owners have to wait weeks for updates, real-user monitoring platforms are based on real-time, real-user data. This means publishers can see how their site performs in-flight and immediately take action. Some services, such as Clickio Web Vitals Monitoring, also allow site owners to set up email alerts – so they’re notified straight away if their vitals drop.

4. Identify specific problems – This ability to see, at a glance, whether a site is compliant with each of the three CWVs, means publishers can quickly spot when their site isn’t up to scratch. By drilling down by page, device, browser, and other dimensions, publishers can pinpoint exactly what needs fixing.

Time to act

The desktop rollout of CWVs is the latest wake-up call for publishers to enhance their site performance. With many already struggling on mobile, site owners now face the possibility of low scores across both environments if they don’t keep a close eye on compliance levels. By using real-user monitoring platforms, publishers can equip themselves with the information required to take stock of their site, understand the user journey, and take swift action to safeguard their search ranking – along with traffic and revenue.

Why not try Clickio’s Web Vitals Monitoring for free? Click here to sign up now, or contact us if you’d like to find out more.

The post Optimizing Core Web Vitals: Why real-user monitoring is key appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Microsoft has moved the Bing News PubHub out of its own microsite and into the overall Bing Webmaster Tools console, the company announced this morning. This makes it easier for for publishers who have already verified their sites with Bing Webmaster Tools to access the Bing News PubHub features.

Bing News PubHub. Bing News PubHub first launched in June 2016 as a portal for news publishers to submit their sites, at pubhub.bing.com. While pubhub.bing.com is still live, it is now telling publishers “We have integrated with Bing Webmaster, please go to Bing Webmaster Tool.”

What it looks like. Here is a screenshot of my site, the Search Engine Roundtable, waiting to for approval in Bing News. Note, you can access Bing News PubHub on the left side navigation in Bing Webmaster Tools:

How Bing evaluates news sites. Bing News uses the following criteria to help evaluate the news websites:

• Newsworthiness – Reporting on timely events and topics that are interesting to the people using our services. Content that does not focus on reporting, such as how-to articles, job postings, advice columns, product promotions, is not considered newsworthy. Similarly, content that consists strictly of information without including original reporting or analysis, such as stock data and weather forecasts, is not considered newsworthy.
• Originality – This includes unique facts or points of view. Faced with numerous sources frequently reporting similar or identical content, originality or uniqueness becomes a critical way to determine the value to a user of an individual story.
• Authority –News sites with authority maintain the highest level of trust and respect from our users. Submissions must identify sources, authors, and attribution of all content.
• Readability –Content containing correct grammar and spelling and that keeps site design easy for people to navigate. Advertising should never interfere with the site experience.

Why we care. If you are a publisher and want to see the status of your approval in Bing News, you can now login to Bing Webmaster Tools, click on the Bing News PubHub and check your status there. If you have not yet submitted your site for approval, you can within that tool as well. If you were previously rejected, you can resubmit the site for an additional review.

The post Bing News PubHub moves to Bing Webmaster Tools appeared first on Search Engine Land.

“Any SEO tool will spit out 10s or 100s of ‘recommendations,’ most of those are going to be irrelevant to your site’s visibility in search. Finding the items that make sense to work on takes experience.”

–John Mueller, Google, Reddit Thread

There’s a difference between data and wisdom. That’s why relying only on the recommendations of your SEO software is an inefficient way to do SEO.

SEO tools make life easier for those of us doing SEO. But so many generate busy work that will not move the needle. 

The problem is that if you don’t understand the context behind the tool’s recommendations — if you cannot see the bigger picture on how things connect and you aren’t able to read between the lines when it comes to the data — you won’t be able to execute a successful SEO strategy. 

That isn’t the tool user’s fault. Most SEO software companies market to the masses in such a way that users think they can just follow the tool’s recommendations, and they are doing SEO. 

Even if the SEO software is simple to use, most require training to use it properly. If someone doesn’t do any training, the tool may be fairly useless. If they get the training but don’t have the SEO knowledge to question the data, that’s useless too. 

This is one of the reasons that for years, we’ve had our clients take our SEO training at the outset of their project. It helps them understand the big picture. 

Compounding the problem is that many of the tools out there are based on SEO “best practices.” 

These best practices often come from​​ data in large-scale SEO research studies, which look at a massive amount of search results across all niches and all types of keywords. In other words, generic data not customized to the business or website (think recommendations based on data like “optimal article length”).

Related: Why real-time and customized data matters

This generic data then becomes an SEO “truth” that trickles into every corner of the SEO industry, including practices and SEO software. 

Then, of course, you have to navigate the SEO software’s “branded” metrics, which the company making the tools invented. These metrics, if not understood, can confuse people and even steer them in the wrong direction. 

(See my article on “site authority” for more on why this metric is a false target).

So what ends up happening is that many businesses subscribe to SEO software and blindly follow its recommendations. 

A better way:

• Become educated on an SEO need and find the right tool to help. (Hint, it’s usually not just one SEO tool. See the top SEO software tools our experts use every day). 
• Take the recommendations with a grain of salt and discern which activities are worth the time.

Real SEO tools support the project rather than become the project. Use tools that provide you with the right answers without getting lost in unimportant detail, and focus on applying wisdom to implement successful SEO strategies.

The post The SEO tool you use shouldn’t become the SEO project appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Google is testing “Buying Guides,” a new mobile search results feature that presents users with various drop-down menu options to learn more about the product they’re searching for, the company has confirmed to Search Engine Land.

Tip of the hat to Brian Freiesleben for bringing this to our attention.

Why we care. Editorial content — not e-commerce links — show up in the various drop-down options of the Buying Guide, which could be another place in the SERPs where your content marketing can appear.

“Brands” was one of the drop-down options in the Buying Guide I saw, so it’s safe to assume that the same Brand section will appear in many Buying Guides. Brands will want to ensure that they appear in the Buying Guides for as many of their products as possible — being omitted when your competitors are being shown to users puts you at a disadvantage.

How it works. A price range is shown at the top of the Buying Guide, right below the title of the search result feature. The drop-down menus within the Buying Guide cover several characteristics that might help shoppers narrow down their options. Tapping on a drop-down menu shows the user editorial content; Google did not say how it ranks content that appears in these sections.

The “Types” and “Brands” menus showed carousels that users could interact with to toggle the information shown (for example, users could select from “Composite,” “Aluminum,” “Hybrid” and “Wood” in the Types menu to find out more about bats of the selected material).

The rest of the drop-down menus were geared toward addressing a single question. For example, the “Size” drop-down provides a search listing and preview that answers the question “What is the average size for a bat?”

For the query I was able to trigger this test for (“baseball bats”), the Buying Guide appeared as the fifth organic, non-rich result listing, below 3 ads, a “Popular Baseball Bats” Shopping carousel and the People also ask box. 

Google’s statement. “This is an experiment that helps shoppers discover relevant characteristics of a product by surfacing attributes like price, brand and type,” a Google spokesperson told Search Engine Land. “We’re always testing new ways to improve the shopping experience for our users but don’t have anything specific to announce right now.”

There are some kinks to work out. In terms of understanding a user’s query and matching it with relevant content, Google has made a lot of progress over the last few years, touting advancements such as BERT and MUM. However, it still gets things wrong from time to time.

I used the query “baseball bats” to trigger the Buying Guide feature and, while most of the baseball bat drop-down categories and results were relevant, the results for “Body” and “Age” pertained to bats, the flying mammal (as shown above).

Whether the irrelevant results are due to Google’s systems mistaking baseball bats for animal bats or because the Buying Guides are still in testing, it’s clear that this feature is not quite ready for a wider rollout.

The post Google tests Buying Guides in mobile search results appeared first on Search Engine Land.

This guide was first published on May 21, 2020. It was updated to include new information on February 4, 2022.

Optimizing your Shopify store for Google, Bing and other search engines is critical for helping potential customers discover your site. Many of the tenets of search engine optimization (SEO) are based on providing users with a positive experience. The easier it is to discover and use your Shopify store, the more likely people are to shop with you.

The fundamentals covered in our SEO guide also apply to Shopify SEO, but there are some tricks involved in getting a Shopify site fully optimized for search. There are also nuances and other factors to be mindful of when evaluating the platform’s SEO capabilities.

Get the Periodic Table of SEO Factors

In this guide, we address the SEO fundamentals and technical considerations to improve your Shopify store’s search rankings to increase traffic and sales.

Shopify SEO basics

Shopify’s page editor. Shopify’s content management system (CMS) has a page editor with a simple user interface to build landing pages, collections pages, product detail pages and blog posts.

The page editor allows for basic formatting options, headings, tables and the ability to edit in HTML. You can also upload photos and embed videos to the pages.

The search engine listing preview section automatically generates a page title and meta description based on the content you enter in the page details section. By default, your page title is used for the title tag and H1 and your description is used for the meta description. Site owners can overwrite these automated defaults by modifying their search engine preview section.

Page titles are an important ranking factor. They provide search engines with information about the contents of your page and they often appear as the headline for your search result.

Meta descriptions are often what appear under the title in search results. They should summarize the content of the page for prospective customers, and can help improve click-throughs to your site.

The Shopify page editor allows you to manually revise your titles and descriptions. If you’re not content with the ones automatically generated, optimize them to include the keywords you’d like to rank for and appeal to customers browsing the search results.

Analytics. Shopify sites are compatible with two very useful, free tools: Google Search Console and Google Analytics. Google Search Console helps site owners monitor and troubleshoot their site’s presence in Google search results, and provides data on the queries that are leading prospects and customers to your pages. Google Analytics shows you how people arrived at your site and behaved once they got there. Search Console and Analytics are critical tools for SEO.

To connect your Shopify store to Google Search Console, you’ll need to add a piece of code to your homepage (Shopify has a great video on this). There are two things to keep in mind when verifying your Search Console account for your Shopify store: Google will only index the current theme and only if the theme is live and not password protected (new merchants often password-protect their sites because they’re not yet ready for launch).

Setting up Google Analytics is as simple as enabling it in your Shopify site preferences, acquiring your tracking ID and pasting it into the associated field within Shopify.

[Pro Tip] Use Shopify’s URL structure to help segment your analysis

Thanks to Shopify’s strict URL structure, it’s easy to segment certain types of content in Google Search Console, Google Analytics, etc. For example, if you want to see how your products are performing, simply filter your data by URLs that contain “/products/” and voila! The same trick works for collections (/collections/), blog posts (/blogs/), and pages (/pages/).

-Kevin Wallner, founder, First Chair Digital

Domain and security. You can buy a custom domain through Shopify; the platform even has a free tool to check domain name availability and generate alternative domain names. If you don’t want a custom domain, your site’s URL will be yoursitename.myshopify.com. Having your own custom domain is much better branding, conveys more professionalism and greatly increases your chance of ranking well in searches for your business’ name.

If you opt for a custom domain, check that your .myshopify.com domain redirects to your primary domain by logging into your Shopify account and heading to Settings > Domains (within the left-hand navigation menu). Your primary domain should say “Traffic from all your domains redirects to this primary domain.” If it does not, click on “Enable redirection.” Doing this will help to ensure that search engines only show your primary domain to searchers, instead of presenting both the primary and the .myshopify.com domain.

All Shopify plans also come with an SSL certificate, which encrypts data sent between your site and its visitors. This is important because Google gives a small ranking boost to secure sites and because many browsers will display a security warning when users attempt to visit a site without an SSL certificate. You can check this one off your worry list.

Site speed. Site speed and security are Google ranking factors, and they go hand-in-hand with user experience. Slow load times may lead customers to bounce before your page loads, which means they won’t be buying from you.

Selecting a lightweight theme for your Shopify store can help you get a head start on your speed optimizations. Loading times can vary across themes, said Chris Long, director of e-commerce at Go Fish Digital, during our Shopify SEO session of Live with Search Engine Land.

His agency found that the average theme takes approximately 3.8 seconds for First Contentful Paint (FCP), makes 171 requests and weighs in at about four megabytes. If you’ve already selected a Shopify theme, those benchmarks can help you gauge whether your store is performing below or above the mean.

If you haven’t selected a theme, or are considering switching themes, Long has compiled a list of the top-performing Shopify themes according to FCP and Time to Interactive (TTI) and the late Hamlet Batista also published a list of page speed scores for numerous Shopify themes.

Shopify features a content delivery network (CDN) that can help keep page load times down no matter where in the world your customers are browsing. Even so, it’s in your best interest to compress your images (more on that below) and implement lazy loading functionality to shave down your loading times as much as possible.

Instead of loading all your images the instant a visitor lands on your page, lazy loading enables the visitor’s browser to load images as they scroll, decreasing the upfront load time. “It’s actually exceptionally easy for developers to implement in most cases,” Long said.

Being conservative with your Shopify apps (more on that below) can also help you manage page load times. And, tools such as Google’s PageSpeed Insights can help you identify more opportunities to increase site speed by suggesting different image formats and other speed optimizations.

Image optimization. Since e-commerce stores typically feature many product photos, image optimization is key. Even with Shopify’s CDN, image file size can disproportionately increase page load times.

Selecting the appropriate format to compress your images is one way to keep file sizes under control: JPEGs will generally result in smaller file sizes than PNGs, which are more suitable when you need a transparent background in your image.

Every image should have an alt attribute assigned to it. Image alt text provides search engines with more context as to what the page is about, which can improve relevance and thus rankings. Additionally, the alt text is read aloud for site visitors that rely on screen readers, so adding it will help you comply with digital accessibility standards.

From your Shopify admin, alt text can be added by navigating to the desired product detail page and clicking the desired image or media item. A media preview page will open and you can click “Add alt text” to edit the field. Once you’re done, save the alt text and exit the preview page.

Store owners can use image optimization apps (more on Shopify apps in the next section) to automate some of these tasks. TinyIMG SEO Image Optimizer has hundreds of five-star reviews and can help keep your load times down by compressing your images.

Shopify does provide an image sitemap, which helps Google find your images so that they may potentially appear in image search results and provide searchers with one more way to discover your products. However, Shopify’s image sitemap only includes one image per product and does not include additional metadata. To get more of your images indexed, Kevin Wallner, founder of First Chair Digital, recommends the Image Sitemap app, which can build, submit, monitor and update XML sitemaps for all the images in your store.

Shopify apps. One big advantage of a platform like Shopify is the app ecosystem that makes it easy to add more features and tools to your site with little to no coding. There are apps to help you manage inventory, take customer support tickets, run affiliate programs and, yes, optimize your site for search.

Shopify has dozens of SEO apps, including Yoast SEO, which offers much of the same functionality as its well-known WordPress counterpart. Yoast SEO can help you control your titles and descriptions in Google Search and social media and provide feedback on readability. It can also help you implement structured data, which can come in handy as structured data is used to power product information in image search results, which may, in turn, help you guide searchers from Google’s image results directly to your product page.

In 2021, both Google and Bing launched Shopify integrations. These integrations are actually apps (the Google Channel and Microsoft Channel apps) and they both allow merchants to include their products in Google’s and Bing’s free product listings. This is a welcome addition for Shopify retailers since these integrations make it easier for them to get greater search visibility without necessarily needing to rely on an expert. And, both apps can also be used to launch shopping campaigns, in case you want to advertise your offerings.

There are also plenty of other apps that can help you do things like add product reviews to give customers more information about what you’re selling, which search engines may use to show star ratings that can improve your clickthrough rates.

Before you load up on apps, keep in mind that they add extra code to your site. Apps that load on the user’s end, such as some that enable you to customize your store’s design, may slow the site down.

Sitemaps. Sitemaps contain information about your pages and files and are used by search engines to crawl and index your site — this process enables your pages to appear in search results. Shopify automatically generates a sitemap.xml file, with links to your pages, products, images, collections and blog posts, for all sites. After verifying your Google Search Console account, submit your sitemap to Google to help it find and index your pages.

Crawl optimization. For merchants that want to control which pages get crawled, Shopify now lets site owners edit their robots.txt files. This can be used to disallow certain URLs from being crawled, add extra sitemap URLs, block crawlers and so on.

International domains. In March 2021, Shopify launched international domains, enabling merchants to sell to more than one country using a single account. Merchants can now configure subdomains and language folders for international targeting. When you do so, Shopify automatically adds hreflang tags to your store, which can help save you time.

Local SEO

Since the onset of the COVID pandemic, more local merchants have made their way to Shopify. If your business serves a locale, ensure that you have an online presence wherever customers may go to look for businesses like yours, be it Google, Bing, Facebook or other platforms.

While your Shopify website will complement your local efforts, the range of options for local search optimization warrants numerous standalone articles. As a jumping-off point, check out our how-to guide on optimizing your Google local knowledge panel.

Technical SEO for Shopify

Search engines work by “crawling” websites, meaning that they look through a site’s code and URLs to discover each page on the site. That information is then added to the search engine’s index to be ranked and served as a result when someone conducts a relevant search.

Technical SEO refers to the optimizations that facilitate the crawling and indexing aspects of search. Technical optimizations can include your site’s architecture, URL structure and JavaScript.

Shopify enables store owners to bypass many of the technical aspects of launching an e-commerce site by providing pre-made themes with Shopify’s framework as the structure. However, that structure is rigid and in some instances, does not provide a straightforward way to make certain technical optimizations.

Being aware of the technical SEO challenges inherent to Shopify can help you find workarounds for a number of issues and inform prospective store owners about the trade-offs that come with building their store on Shopify.

Below are the most common technical SEO challenges that Shopify store owners encounter. Solutions to these issues are discussed in our Technical SEO for Shopify guide.

Duplicate pages. Collections help group products together into categories, making it easier for customers to find them. They’re also an inherent property of the Shopify framework.

When you associate a product page with a collection page (as the vast majority of merchants are likely to do), Shopify will generate a second URL for that product page. For some of the free themes, this means you’ll have two URLs for the same product. The URLs you end up with will look something like this:

1. /collections/shirts-collection/products/blue-shirt
2. /products/blue-shirt

Duplicate pages can split your link-building power as referrers may link to either URL. Duplicate content can also make it harder for search engines to determine which URL to index and rank. While Shopify has remedied this issue for some of its free themes, canonicalizing the duplicate, some themes may still be affected, so we’re leaving this guidance in place, just in case.

Internal linking. The duplicate pages issue mentioned above can also show up in your internal links. In the image below, Shopify uses two different links to direct customers to the same product detail page.

While internal links don’t directly play into Google’s algorithms, they do direct link equity to your product detail pages. That link equity gets diluted when it is spread across multiple links and search engines will have a harder time understanding which one is the primary URL.

Architecture issues. Shopify automatically generates the URL for your product detail pages using the following structure: myshopifystorename.com/products/product-name. Store owners can only modify that last part of the URL, where the product’s name (which is derived from the page title) appears.

URLs are a minor ranking factor, so you’ll want to use descriptive words in your URLs to inform search engines about your page, but also to give potential customers an idea of what they’re clicking through to. Removing the “/products” or “/pages” URL paths gives you more space to include those descriptive keywords; unfortunately, Shopify doesn’t have that option out-of-the-box. There are, however, solutions, such as Cloudflare and their Cloud Worker interface, that can be implemented with the help of a developer, as discussed in our Technical SEO for Shopify guide.

Product schema. Schema is a type of structured data that can help search engines understand your site’s content. Search engines also use schema to generate rich snippets, which can provide your products with greater visibility in the search results.

For example, Google uses product schema in image search results to display a product’s price, its availability and star ratings.

Google’s Popular Products section is another search feature that uses schema to provide potential customers with product information, although it is currently only available for apparel and fashion items.

[Pro Tip] Use schema and Google Merchant Center for additional organic visibility

With an app like Feed for Google Shopping or ShoppingFeeder, you can sync your entire product inventory with Merchant Center. Once you’re in Merchant Center, if you enable ‘Local Surfaces Across Google’ in Programs, your products can instantly appear in Maps results when people search product keywords . . . Surfaces Across Google creates a Google-hosted storefront, so you might see a decline in visitors in your Shopify analytics if customers are browsing products on Google instead; however, these visitors can be tracked in Merchant Center.

–Lachlan Wells, Berlin-based SEO consultant

Product schema is built into most Shopify themes. The default theme, “Dawn,” supports the following schema types: “Organization,” “WebSite,” “Article” and “Product.”

However, there may be additional structured data types, such as recipe or FAQ schema, that you’d like to add but are not supported by your theme. In that case, you can edit the structured data code within your theme, dynamically inject structured data using JavaScript or install a dedicated schema app. Whichever method you choose, you can verify if your pages are marked up correctly using Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool.

SEO, beyond products and category pages

Creating valuable, informative and engaging content can help increase your store’s organic visibility. Content can give search engines more information about your site and prospective customers more ways to discover your business. More visibility can mean more traffic and more sales.

The pages every store should have. It’s highly recommended that you create an “About us” and “Contact” page; these pages help potential customers get familiar with your business and enable them to get in touch with you to resolve concerns before and after they buy from you.

Additionally, a dedicated page for your shipping information, return policy, privacy policy, terms and conditions and frequently asked questions can also enable you to communicate important details and may even reduce the amount of time spent answering redundant questions. You can also add a mission statement or “Our Story” page to help distinguish your brand from others.

You can set up a blog on your Shopify store as a home for content that helps to differentiate your brand, supplement your transactional pages and earn backlinks.

Keyword research. Keyword research helps you understand how your target audience searches — for the kinds of products you sell, the types of problems they’re looking to solve and other queries that are relevant to your business. You can then use these words to inform your content strategy and optimize your pages.

There are a number of keyword research tools that help indicate how popular queries are, seasonal trends and related terms. Google Trends analyzes search query interest, which can be filtered by time and geographic region, displays related queries and allows you to compare interest between different keywords. You can also examine the auto-suggested queries that populate in the search bar on Google, Bing and Amazon to get more keyword ideas.

Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising offer in-depth keyword tools that include monthly search volume and competition estimates and suggested bid amounts. Google Keyword Planner and Microsoft Keyword Planner are designed for advertisers, but they are both free to use and provide a wealth of information.

You’ll also want to evaluate what the search results look like for the keywords you’re researching. The “People also ask” box and the “Searches related to” section can supplement your keyword research.

Take a look at the search results and features present on the page to get an idea of what search engines are surfacing for that set of terms. Are the results filled with news articles, signaling an informational intent, or are they businesses selling products similar to yours? If it’s the latter, you have a higher chance of ranking for those keywords.

Related: Common Shopify SEO Pitfalls and how to avoid them

E-commerce content ideas. Providing your audience with pertinent content can help them get more value from your products or services while also signaling relevance to search engines. Here are a few content ideas that might help you get started:

• How-to’s and tutorials can inform your customers about how your products or services work. Consider creating a video to demonstrate these points; you can then upload it to YouTube and embed it on your blog post or product detail page to encourage visitors to shop with you.
• Behind-the-scenes content can bolster your branding and give customers a reason to shop with you over competitors. For example, if you sell vegan cookie dough, you could create a video that demonstrates how you test new recipes to teach customers about your process while getting them excited for upcoming flavors.
• Case studies can separate your business from a crowded field of competitors. If you’re selling tie-dye t-shirts, for example, you could create a video detailing how your shirts’ colors hold up against competing brands, wash after wash.

Looking for more ways to optimize and market your Shopify store? Check out these resources:

• The ins and outs of Shopify SEO [VIDEO]
• Technical SEO for Shopify: A guide to optimizing your store for search engines
• Shopify tradeoffs: What to consider before selecting your next e-commerce platform
• Blogging for Shopify: A unique SEO approach
• 5 easy-to-miss SEO mistakes blogs make
• E-commerce category pages outperform product detail pages in SERPs
• Raising the stakes on product category pages
• Download the Periodic Table of Digital Commerce Marketing
• Search Engine Land’s Essential Guide to SEO: Master the science of SEO

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