10 Common Shopify SEO Mistakes to Avoid

With a well-thought-out SEO strategy, you can boost your rankings, increase conversions, attract more customers, and grow your business. At Bear North Digital, our team of experts is here to assist you with your Shopify SEO needs. Call us today at (715) 319-4822 and keep reading for ways to improve your search engine optimization.

1. Poor URL Structure 

A poor URL structure is one of the biggest mistakes you can make with Shopify SEO. Having a well-organized site drives more traffic to your business and makes the selling process easy, but customers and search engines will have more trouble navigating your site when you have a poor URL structure.

Shopify uses subfolders instead of subdomains like other e-commerce sites. With this structure, you’ll need to map out your URLs and organize them into a cohesive, easy-to-navigate hierarchy. You should structure site content based on these pages:

• Home
• Category
• Product
• Resource

URL structures have a significant impact on SEO. To ensure the best results, you’ll want to develop a streamlined URL layout. With our top-notch SEO agency for Shopify business, you can get optimal solutions from a team of experts.

2. Lengthy Meta Titles and Meta Descriptions

Using lengthy meta titles and meta descriptions can have drastic effects on SEO. Shopify SEO limits the number of characters in a header to 70. Google measures title length by pixels, typically around 600.

To ensure the best results across all platforms, keep your titles shorter than 65 characters.

Meta descriptions help people get a glimpse of what your site offers. If you limit your meta descriptions to less than 160 characters, you don’t have to worry about search engines cutting off text. You won’t reach high SEO rankings if you don’t write great product descriptions that fit the proper length.

3. Ineffective Keyword Usage 

Another common mistake is using ineffective keywords. Short keywords work great for most web content but not always with e-commerce. You’ll want to choose specific keywords that focus on the products and—more importantly—what potential buyers will likely Google.

For example, a keyword like “shorts” is too broad. Narrow your keywords to match the phrases people may use to find your product, like:

• Best shorts for hiking
• Swimming trunks vs. surf shorts
• Women’s jean shorts under $20

Keywords play a critical role in SEO. If you want to boost your business rankings, see more conversion rates, attract more customers, and ultimately sell more products, utilize an effective keyword strategy.

4. Cross-Device Incompatibility

Have you ever loaded a site on your mobile device to find it looked terrible? Maybe it had overlapping text or graphics that extended past the width of your screen. If so, you probably didn’t want to stay there long or trust the site with your money.

Don’t make this mistake and hurt your Shopify SEO. Instead, build a site that looks fantastic on desktops, tablets, and mobile phones. You’ll want to pick mobile-friendly themes and optimize content with mobile users in mind.

5. Broken Links 

E-commerce sites probably have more broken links than any other type of site. Broken links occur when you stop selling a specific product and remove a page or category. This deletes the URL and gives a “404 Page Not Found” error when someone follows a link to that page.

When your Shopify site has broken links, it punishes your SEO. You can take a couple of simple steps to avoid this problem:

• Redirect links instead of deleting them
• Regularly check for broken links using Google Search Console

6. Slow Page-Loading Speeds

If your website takes a long time to load, search engines will notice and give you worse rankings. Customers also don’t want to wait for slow-loading pages. They’ll move on to something else after a couple of seconds.

Common Shopify SEO mistakes include not identifying and fixing slow page-loading speeds. Avoiding this will increase your rankings, conversions, and potential customers.

7. No Reviews or Testimonials 

Another reason your SEO might be suffering is that you don’t have customer reviews. If your site lacks excellent reviews and testimonials, it doesn’t just hurt your Shopify SEO—it hurts your business. People trust product reviews and testimonials from previous customers much more than your marketing team.

More customer reviews mean higher rankings. If you don’t have reviews or testimonials on your site, add them or ask customers to write some.

8. Images Without Alt Tags 

When an image on your Shopify site fails to load, it renders the image’s alt tag (also known as alt description, alt attribute, and alt text). Alt tags help users understand what was supposed to appear instead of a window icon, but they also play a vital role in SEO.

Search engines like Google include alt tags in your site’s rankings. Images without alt tags count against your SEO score. On the flipside, descriptive alt descriptions can improve optimization and user experience and help you rank better.

9. Lack of New Content Marketing

Many Shopify stores don’t publish new content on their website regularly. Unfortunately, search engines crawl sites and put ones with old, outdated web content toward the bottom of their rankings. To avoid this mistake, keep your Shopify site updated with fresh marketing content that helps customers engage with a product before purchasing it.

10. No Backlinks 

Backlinks play a significant part in SEO rankings. If your site has no backlinks, Google will take note. The best way to avoid this is by including several relevant links on every page and having other websites link to your site.

Boost Your Rankings and Grow Your Business Today!

At Bear North Digital, we can help you avoid Shopify SEO mistakes and boost your rankings. To learn more about SEO services in Duluth by Bear North Digital and grow your business today, call our team of experts at (715) 319-4822!