When it comes to building a strong SEO campaign, keywords perform the role of that all-important scaffolding. Keywords are going to be your route to building organic traffic, so it’s important to optimise all aspects of your website with the right keywords and phrases.
In this quick guide, we’re going to teach you everything you need to know about adding keywords to your Shopify store: where to place them, why you should place them, and how the right keyword strategy can transform your store’s SEO performance. Let’s take a look!
What are keywords?
Keywords refer to popular queries that customers search online when looking for products, services, or information. When it comes to running a Shopify business, keywords are going to be important terms that relate to your business niche.
For example, if you were running an online cosmetics store, popular keywords would include “best lipstick” or “waterproof mascara.” These would be considered commercial keywords, as it’s most likely that users searching these terms had the intent of making a purchase.
Keywords can also refer to phrases, also known as long-tail keywords. If we take the same example above of the online cosmetics store, a relevant long-tail keyword might be “best foundation for oily skin”.
If you want Google to direct users to your website, you’ll want to optimise relevant keywords using tried-and-tested SEO strategies. If you’re unsure what keywords to target, it can be a good idea to speak with a Shopify SEO consultant, who will be able to perform keyword research for you.
Why is it important to add keywords to Shopify?
Adding keywords to your Shopify store is important for two reasons:
Indexing
Google’s spidering system (the method Google uses to crawl the web for content) relies on web page metadata being clear and precise; adding important keywords to your on-site content is therefore essential if you want to be indexed correctly.
SEO performance
Aside from having your Shopify store indexed within its correct commercial category, keywords are also important when it comes to your long-term SEO performance. Effective keyword placement is going to help Google recommend your products or services to those looking for them, increasing your revenue
This is what’s great about SEO: you’re able to target customers who are looking for your exact products. Unlike traditional digital advertising (which can be presented to any demographic, target or otherwise) search engines are navigational tools: with an effective SEO strategy, Google can guide customers (with commercial intent) directly onto your website – again, again, and again.
How to add keywords to Shopify for SEO
So, how can you go about adding keywords to your Shopify site to improve your site’s SEO performance? Here are the main areas you to need to target:
Page titles
Your page titles are incredibly important for SEO – customers or navigational users aren’t going to click on a web page that isn’t clear about its content. You can add relevant keywords to your page titles by heading to your product pages, and adding key terms to the “title” bar of the page. Don’t overdo it; keyword stuffing is harshly penalised by Google.
Meta descriptions
Your meta description is the short subtitle text that will be displayed under your page titles when your web page is shown on Google. This is another key area to optimise with keywords – it’s a good idea to include one or two keywords here, but make sure the text itself reads naturally.
To optimise your meta descriptions, head to “Edit website SEO”, and create a page title. From there, fill in the below box with a short sentence or two that summarises the content of the page. Meta descriptions should be around 200-300 characters.
Alt tags
Alt tags are used to help Google register images on your site; as you may already know, Google’s crawler bots can’t see images, so you’ll need to optimise them with text if you want to enhance your SEO performance. To do this, head to your product page, click on any images included, and edit the ‘alt text’ box with a descriptive sentence, preferably including a relevant keyword.
Page content
Last but not least, it’s important to optimise your on-page content for SEO. This means creating unique, engaging text that helps sell your products to your customers, preferably using relevant keywords strategically within the text. To avoid creating duplicate content, you also need to make sure you’re not copying and pasting product descriptions, even if you’re describing products that are similar.
