eCommerce is growing at an unprecedented rate, and for a good reason. As we can see, many consumers from different age groups love to shop from other e-stores. With the digital era, many people prefer to buy online even after coming from an in-store visit.

Being able to buy and search for anything you want anytime and anywhere is a huge benefit. Here are the reasons why eCommerce has boomed over the last few years:

Convenience at its finest: buying online allows the consumers to compare prices and products with one click. Comparison is the most critical factor that consumers perform before purchase and why people love the idea of shopping online. Convenience is the biggest perk people enjoy when shopping online and why eCommerce growth is becoming the current trend.  

More convenient options: for many people who opt for online shopping, it is always good to get their purchases delivered at their doorsteps. The home delivery and curbside pickup options make everyone’s shopping experience a breeze. 

Shopping at your fingertips: setting up a digital storefront is now a must-have for any business. The more you provide an omnichannel experience, the greater chances they will keep coming back for repeat purchases.

The best value offers: it may not be what you are looking for, but they’re out there. Consumers are bargain hunters, and they’re interested in purchasing the best prices for goods or services. It is cheaper than the high street, and the shoppers can hunt for the best deals without leaving the comfort of their homes. 

Moment of truth: there’s nothing more fulfilling than knowing that you paid the best price!

Lifting and carrying heavy shopping bags are a thing of the past: carrying around shopping bags and grocery items is a pain. When you shop online and opt to deliver your orders to your home, you can enjoy a bag-free shopping experience!

Avoid the crowds: shop online, and you get to skip commutes, reduce queue times and avoid crowded shopping centers. In general, online shopping stops the hassles and starts the ease.

Online reviews to check the authenticity of sellers and products:  let’s face it. Reviews are an integral part of a shopper's purchase decisions. It impacts their buying behavior, ensuring that their purchase wings their way to them without any delay.

Time-saving practice: with the rise of online shopping, it is now more preferred than shopping in-store nowadays. People tend to think that ordering online saves them time, the temptation of unnecessary purchases and purchasing products is now more accessible.

There are many recommendations to any site, but here are some tips that apply specifically to a Shopify store. Avoid scratching your heads in using SEO strategies in your Shopify store. Let’s take a look at how to build a robust SEO process that works for you:

• Add meta titles and descriptions for your Shopify product and page - writing great meta titles and descriptions are important to SEO. The meta title and description texts you added are displayed in the search results, summarizing the content of your website.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  

Heads up: by default, Shopify uses the product name as the title - so just make necessary edits and add alternative keywords. You can optimize the pages to attract more visitors by adding meta descriptions.

• Use benefit-driven slugs to create custom URLs for each product and page - this is also known as the URL handle. Slugs are usually added at the end of the link or come after a domain extension, and they identify the product or page.

• Establish content structure and use appropriate headings - use H1 element for the product name - and the only H1 on the page. The headings are structured logically in a hierarchy. Often, headings are used to divide a section or emphasize something important.
  

• Remove duplicate contents and meta tags - duplicate contents are the exact identical copy of your website content found on multiple pages on the internet. 
  

Rule of thumb: duplicated content in your e-commerce store should be avoided at all. For some reason, if duplicating content is necessary, use canonical links to “signal” Google which page is displayed first on the search results.

• Use internal linking to boost your SEO - this strategy uses a single keyword as an anchor text link to another page on the same website. It gives a hierarchy for anyone to follow, resulting in a deeper, richer experience for anyone who navigates your website.
  

• Optimize your images - add alt texts to your images - these will show up as an HTML attribute describing your website photos’ overall content and purpose.
  

Pro tip: correctly name your files for optimal SEO - this is not just for SEO. Appropriate file naming also has practical purposes - be descriptive in writing image files (add keywords when given an opportunity), this will better explain what the pictures are about.

• Compressing and optimizing images for the web - reduce the size of your resources or images to the minimum will significantly improve the page load time - this is a vital part of the SEO strategy. 
  

• Move sold-out items at the bottom of the collection - out-of-stock products should be shown at the end of the page but keep the URL active, allowing you to use SEO to your advantage. 
  

NOTE: do let your customers know when sold-out items will be back on your site.

• Create killer content in your product pages - search engines love content - especially unique and quality articles. Your content is the lifeblood of your online store, so aim to educate your visitors with content and link it to relevant product pages.
  

Best practices: populate your product descriptions with at least 300-word content. Write something informative - one that gives assurance and motivation the visitor needs to buy your product.

• Add a blog to your Shopify store - this isn’t a priority but definitely a must-have if you want to run a successful eCommerce business. This is a long-term strategy that is quite demanding because it requires a regular production of content.
  

• Set up landing pages with relevant content - this is a marketing strategy that is considered standalone advertising. It showcases one product or service at a time and gives people a reason to hang about and eyeball your content.
  

Advance tip: after the landing page is created, make it work for you by automation.

• Increase client engagement - customer engagement is vital in improving your visitor’s staying time, leading to conversions. Here are a few strategies you can do to increase visitor’s engagement:
  

• Add a wish list to your website - potential leads can make an engagement with the product they like.
• Run contests and offer prizes.
• Enable comments on your blog posts
• Display the most engaging content that people would like to read.
• Ask your customers to subscribe to your newsletter.
  

• Submit an XML sitemap to Google search console - sitemaps help Google understand your site structure better. 
  

• Create a robot text file - it acts as good navigation you want search engines to index. Alternatively, it is also used to disallow crawling from a particular bot.
  

• Make use of schema mark-up - this strategy uses a JSON-LD data structure (JavaScript Object Notation for Linked Data) is a more standard way of telling Google what your business is about.
  

• Fix technical errors - to improve your ranking, you need to check if you have violated Google policies. If you are a verified site owner, Google will send notifications through Google search consoles about any violations or spikes in google traffic on a particular page on your website.
  

• Improve your page load speed - literally means the amount of time your webpage loads. A slow web page is due to different factors such as site server, image compression, and page file size. Issues affecting your page load speed need to be corrected ASAP.
  

Website performance goal: for an optimum user experience, achieve 0 - 4 seconds to load the page.

• Choose mobile responsive themes for your website - most users use gadgets when searching for products than desktop devices. Using mobile-first themes is vital not just to your eCommerce SEO but also for your conversion performance.
  

Final thoughts

The golden rule for Shopify SEO is to be the best result and this is a never-ending process. The above best practices should make a difference in your eCommerce store performance in search engine results if done properly, without cutting corners.

With the right e-commerce marketing strategies, you can make your business profitable and reach customers like never before. Get in touch with ePropel with our team of experts to learn more about how we'll help grow it!