The Complete 29-Point ​Shopify SEO

Checklist

In this post, we’re going to show you the exact, step-by-step SEO checklist that you can use to
optimize your Shopify website.

This checklist can be applied to any ecommerce store built with Shopify to increase your traffic
from search engines as quickly as possible.

We cover every important area of search engine optimization:

● Shopify SEO Basics

● Keyword research for ecommerce

● Optimizing the content of your Shopify store

● Link building for ecommerce

● Technical SEO for Shopify

● Bonus Tips

You certainly will not be able to go through this whole checklist in a single day, and that’s OK.
Shopify SEO Basics
First, let’s go over the mandatory tools and plugins you’ll need to optimize your Shopify sites.

Set Up Google Search Console

Search Console is the free tool provided by Google to website owners.

It provides useful data about your website’s performance in Google’s search results. For
example:

● Which keywords are generating the most clicks

● What’s the click-through rate of your page in the search results

● How your keyword rankings have changed over time

Plus, Search Console is useful to perform technical SEO tasks like:

● Request crawling and indexing of your website’s pages

● Submit your website’s sitemap to Google

 ● Check your robots.txt file for errors

Finally, Search Console is how you get communications from Google about:

● Website errors (mobile-friendliness, indexation, etc)

● Manual penalties

Search Console is a must-have tool for your Shopify store.

Here’s a resource to help you set up Google Search Console:

● How to verify your Shopify site with Google Search Console

Install Google Analytics

If you haven’t installed Google Analytics yet—stop everything else you’re doing and do this
instead.

With Google Analytics you’ll be able to link your SEO efforts to the sales of your ecommerce
store.

You can use Google Analytics to learn things like:

● How much revenue you’re getting from SEO

 ● What’s the conversion rate of your organic traffic

● Which pages or products are generating the most revenue through organic search

Plus, you can connect Google Search Console to Google Analytics and perform analysis that
mixes both data sources.

Here are some resources to help you set up Google Analytics:

● How to Add the Google Analytics to Your Shopify Site

● Configuring Search Console data in Google Analytics

Keyword Research for Ecommerce
Keyword research is the most important element of SEO. You need to have a solid keyword
strategy before you even start optimizing your Shopify site.

Learn the Basics of Keyword Research for Ecommerce

Keyword research is the process of understanding what people are searching for in Google and
other search engines.

You can use this to discover massive opportunities, prioritize your content plan, and even make
product decisions.

When you perform keyword research, you just need to understand 3 concepts: search volume,
keyword difficulty, and searcher intent.

Search volume​ is an estimate of how many times a specific term (keyword) is searched for each
month.

Search volumes allow you to compare keywords based on how popular they are.

In ecommerce, you can use this information to learn ​which new products to launch​.

For example, if you’re running a Shopify store selling backpacks, keyword research would allow
you to know that approximately 60% more people are searching for travel backpacks than laptop
backpacks.

Another example is about ​choosing the right keywords to target​.

If your store offers a backpack designed for traveling, performing keyword research would tell
you that it’s more beneficial to optimize your product for “travel backpack” than “travel bag”.

Keyword difficulty​ is a calculation offered by some tools about how easy (or difficult) it is to rank
for a certain term.

You can use keyword difficulty as a second filter for the keywords you select.

For example, let’s say own an ecommerce store for sports apparel. If you relied exclusively on
search volume to prioritize your keywords, you would choose to pursue “soccer cleats” over
“football cleats”—after all, it has 65% more searches per month.

However, it’s almost 3 times more difficult to rank for “soccer cleats” than it is to rank for
“football cleats”.

If you’re running a small ecommerce store, it will be easier and faster for you to get SEO traffic
for “football cleats”.
Searcher intent​ refers to the understanding of what the user was looking for when they typed a
specific keyword into Google.

This sounds obvious but it can save you from wasting a lot of time and effort.

If you own an ecommerce store that sells baseball equipment and looked at the data above, it
would look like a great opportunity to create a page dedicated to baseball bats made of metal,
right?

However, when you look at the search for the keyword “metal bat”, all the search results are
about a character from an anime series.
This simple check tells you that you probably won’t be able to rank for that term, and even if you
did, people looking for “metal bat” are not looking to buy baseball bats from you.

Use a Keyword Research Tool

For years, people relied on Google’s Keyword Planner to perform keyword research. However, it
has become ​unfriendly​ and ​less reliable​ in the last few years.

Most SEOs today rely on third-party tools instead.

Our favorite tools at ClickMinded are ​KWFinder​ (affiliate link) and ​ahrefs​—both of these include:

● Search volumes, seasonality, historical, keyword difficulty, keyword competitors

● Related keywords, autocomplete/search suggestions (what happens when you start

typing something in Google), questions

● Find out which keywords your competitors are ranking for

Map Your Keywords Against Your Sales Funnel

Different keywords will serve different purposes for your business. This depends on which part
of your sales funnel each keyword belongs to.

Top of the funnel keywords​ will typically higher search volumes but have less commercial intent
behind them. People searching for these terms are just looking for information and are not
necessarily ready to buy.

Middle of the funnel keywords​ have less volume than the top of the funnel keywords, but people
searching for these terms are already considering their options for products, sellers, or brands.

Bottom of the funnel keywords​ usually have the lowest search volume but high commercial
intent. People searching for these terms are ready to buy.

Your keyword strategy should look to balance keywords for each stage of the funnel. Top of the
funnel keywords will attract most of your traffic, while bottom of the funnel keywords will
generate the most revenue for your business.

Here’s how you might map some keywords against the sales funnel of an ecommerce site selling
tea.

If you didn’t do this, you might be tempted to dismiss some keywords with lower search volumes
until you realize that they are more likely to convert visitors into customers.

Here are some resources to help you understand keywords and the sales funnel:

● The ClickMinded SEO Strategy Guide

 ● The ClickMinded Sales Funnel Strategy Guide

● The ClickMinded Keyword Strategy Masterclass

Avoid Keyword Cannibalization

Keyword cannibalization happens when several URLs or pages on your site are competing for the
same target keyword.

You should target each keyword (and related keywords) with a single URL or page.

For example, if you have a blog post that’s ranking for the keyword “best organic coffee” and
attracting good traffic, you should avoid optimizing a product page for the same keyword.
Optimizing the Content of Your Shopify Store
Google can’t understand content as easily as humans. On-page optimization is the process of
helping search engines understand what your content is about to get higher rankings.

Optimize Your Titles and Meta Descriptions

Title tags are still one of the most powerful important elements of on-page SEO. The title tag is
what people will see in Google’s search results page.

The meta description is the snippet of text that appears in search results below the page title.
Even though the meta description is no longer a ranking factor, it can indirectly help you get
higher rankings by increasing your CTR.
To optimize your title and meta descriptions, you should:

● Include the keyword in the copy

● Use an active voice

● Write in the second person

● Use ​power words

● Use numbers, brackets, or parentheses

● Include the date (month or year)

In your Shopify website, you can scroll down to the “Edit Website SEO” to edit your title and
meta descriptions.
You should optimize the title and meta description of the following pages of your Shopify site:

● Homepage

● Pages

● Blog posts

● Products

● Collections

Optimize Your URLs

URLs give search engines and users an indication of what a certain page is about.

In fact, Google has started to give more relevance to URLs by moving it to the top of each search
result.
To optimize your URLs, you should:

● Include the target keyword in the URL

● Avoid using ​stop words​ like “the” or “and”

● Keep the URLs short

Here’s an example of bad, good, and better URLs for a product page optimized for “boxing
gloves”:

● Bad URL​: https://www.boxingfire.com/products/​product-109398 ​—this is hard to

remember and not descriptive at all

● Good URL​: https://www.boxingfire.com/products/​the-worlds-lightest-boxing-gloves

—this includes the target keyword but it’s very long

● Better URL​: https://www.boxingfire.com/products/​boxing-gloves ​—this is short,

descriptive, and includes the target keyword
You can edit your URLs in the bottom section of the “Edit Website SEO” section of your Shopify
site:

Similarly to what you did with title and meta descriptions, you should optimize the URLs of the
following pages of your Shopify site:

● Pages

● Blog posts

● Products

● Collections

Important​: in general, you should NOT modify the URL of an existing page that’s already getting
SEO traffic or has links pointing to it. This could negatively impact your rankings and traffic for
that page. In those cases, it’s better to leave the URL intact and move on to other items on this
checklist.
Include Your Keywords in the Copy of Your Pages

This one’s pretty straightforward. Include your keywords in the page you’re optimizing.

We recommend including the keyword in the h1 heading of the page and again in the body near
the top of the page.

Check out this example by ​Beardbrand​.

Don’t overdo it, though. Getting your exact keyword in there 2 or 3 times is probably good
enough.

Try reading your text out loud—if it sounds weird, then you should probably dial it down a bit.

Include Synonyms and LSI Keywords

Aside from including your exact keyword, it’s helpful to throw in some synonyms and LSI
keywords.

Both of these help provide more context to Google about what’s the topic of a page.
LSI keywords are terms that are thematically related to a keyword.

For example, a synonym of “NYC” could be “New York City” and an LSI keyword could be “Empire
State Building” or “Statue of Liberty”.

Check out how Cup&Leaf includes terms that are typically related to “black tea” to their product
page selling “ginger black tea”.

To find synonyms or LSI keywords, you can use ​Thesaurus​ and ​LSIGraph​.
Optimize Your Pages for Higher Engagement

Google’s entire business model relies on being able to provide relevant results to people’s
searches.

That’s why a lot of SEOs believe that Google has started to use engagement metrics to help
determine whether a piece of content is relevant to a searcher or not.

It’s simple: if a searcher spends time on your page and interacts with it, Google can assume that
the information shown to that user was relevant.

In ecommerce, a few things you can do to increase engagement include:

● Writing detailed descriptions in your product pages

● Adding high-quality images and video of your products

● Highlighting rating and reviews

● Linking to related products

Check out this great example from ​Ratio Coffee​.

For other types of pages on your Shopify site, like blog posts or collections, some best practices
include:

● Writing short sentences instead of long paragraphs

● Use simple language

● Organizing your content with headings and subheadings

● Including rich media like images, gifs, audio, and video

Optimize Your Images

Search engines “see” images by reading the ALT tag and looking at file names, among other
factors.

Optimizing the images in your Shopify store is a 2-step process.

First, use a descriptive name for the image file before you upload it to your site.

● Bad filename​: img-190303.png

● Good filename​: womens-white-shirt.png

Second, edit the alt text of your image inside the Shopify admin—the best practice is to write a
short description of the image.
Add Internal Links

When you add a link from “page A” to another on your site, “page B”, that’s called an internal link.

Internal links are helpful for SEO for 3 reasons:

1. They can pass some of the SEO value from one page to the other

2. They can help Google understand the content of a page

3. They can help users find other relevant content on your site (increasing engagement)

In your ecommerce store, you can manually add internal links when they are relevant. However, a
quick and easy way to add internal links is to add a “related products” section to your product
pages.
Link Building for Ecommerce
Link building is one of the most powerful things you can do to increase your rankings. This is one
of the hardest parts of SEO, but there are a few tactics that work great for ecommerce website
owners.

To determine which pages to rank above all others, search engines rely heavily on the authority
of pages and websites.

In SEO, authority is mainly determined by links—more specifically, links from other sites to yours.

Here are a few general rules for how the authority is calculated:

● More links > fewer links

● Links from sites relevant to the topic of your site > links from completely irrelevant sites

● Links from sites with high authority > links from sites with low authority

● Links from several sites > several links from a single site

● Links in the body > site-wide links (e.g. header, footer, or sidebar)

These are some tactics you can use to build links to your ecommerce site.

Find Unlinked Mentions

Once your business starts being noticed, you’ll often find people including mentions to your
business without links.

Just reach out to these people and ask them to include a link along with the mention.

To find unlinked brand mentions:

Start with doing a search for all your current existing unlinked mentions using a tool like ahrefs
and reach out to all of those.
Then, implement alerts on Google Alerts or ahrefs for on-going mentions of your brand (and
related terms like your own name or names of products) and reach out to new mentions as they
happen.
Get Your Products Reviewed

Another easy way to get links for your ecommerce store is to contact writers and website owners
that usually write about the industry you’re in.

You can usually send them samples of your product to test out and they might be inclined to
write a review if they like it.

For example, check out the link to the ​Minaal​ website in this review of the best travel backpacks.

Sidenote​: don’t expect that everyone you send your products to will write a review. People are in
no way obligated to write about you—even if you send them free stuff. If your product is good or
interesting enough, you’ll get reviewed.

An easy way to find opportunities to get reviewed is to just use Google.

Try using the following search “best [keyword or category]”

Then, try reaching out to each of those sites about sending them a sample of your product.

Guest Post on Relevant Sites

If you write valuable guest posts on relevant websites and add links to your site in a natural (not
spammy) way, guest blogging can be a great way to build links.

For example, here’s a guest post by the founder of Cup&Leaf that includes a link to his own site:
An easy way to find guest posting opportunities is to search Google using advanced search
operators.

Try these searches for your target keyword:

● “[keyword]” “write for us”

● “[keyword]” “become a contributor”

● “[keyword]” “submit guest post”

● “[keyword]” “guest post by”

● “[keyword]” “guest post”

● “[keyword]” inurl:blog “contributor guidelines”

● “[keyword]” inurl:blog “write for”

Reach out to the blogs or websites that make sense, it may be a good idea to have a few post
pitches prepared beforehand.

ProTip​: if you have already guest posted on other sites, send over examples along with your pitch
to build some credibility.

Get Media Mentions With HARO

If you have something newsworthy story, you could leverage media coverage to get links.

For example, check out how the founders of Minaal were able to get a link back to their Shopify
site from a local media website.

If you can’t afford or don’t have time to do PR for your ecommerce store, HARO is an easy way to
get media mentions.

Help a Reporter Out (​HARO​) is a daily newsletter that will send you requests from reporters,
authors, and publishers who want to write stories.

This is how a request might look like:

Here’s a great resource to help you get started:

● How to Build Backlinks and Get Press Using HARO [Case Study]

Get Interviewed on Podcasts

Podcasts are growing in popularity and many people are jumping into the channel.

What most people don’t realize is that this is a massive link building opportunity. Aside from
Spotify, iTunes, and Stitcher, people usually publish their podcast episodes as posts on websites,
along with the show notes.

So whenever you appear on a podcast, you’ll likely get a link back to your site.
Check out how the founder of Cup&Leaf was able to get a link through an interview on the “Sales
for Founders” podcast.

Come up with a compelling story that’s relevant to podcasts in your niche and pitch it to them.

You can use Chartable’s charts to find podcasts in your industry.

Here’s a great guide on how to appear on podcasts:

● How To Get Podcast Interviews (+ Free Pitch Outreach Templates)

Technical SEO for Shopify
Technical SEO is everything you do to make it easier for search engines to find and crawl your
website. Technical issues can prevent your site from ranking and getting organic traffic.

Fix Crawl Errors

Crawl errors are those preventing Google from viewing your content correctly.

You can find them using the Coverage report in Google Search Console.

Here are great resources on fixing crawl errors:

● A simple guide to understanding response codes

● How to Fix Crawl Errors

Use to HTTPS

In an effort to make the web “safer” for users, Google has made a push for more websites to use
HTTPS.
So you might see a small ranking boost by switching from HTTP to HTTPS.

Fortunately, Shopify automatically provides SSL certificates for your new stores.

No need for you to take any action here, but we mention it just because people have asked about
it.

Make Sure You’re Using a Responsive Theme

As an increasing amount of web traffic comes from mobile devices, having a site that is not
responsive to different screen sizes and shapes will negatively impact usability, especially for
local searches.

Plus, Google recently deployed the ​mobile-first index​, which means they’ll use the mobile (not the
desktop) version of your site to crawl and index it.

They are basically saying: “if your site isn’t mobile-friendly, it won’t rank highly on Google”.

A responsive theme is one that adapts to any screen size. You can use ​Google’s Mobile-Friendly
Test tool​ to check your Shopify site:
Fix Broken Links

Broken links on your site send a bad signal to Google.

A site with a lot of broken backlinks is probably not up-to-date and unlikely to provide a valuable
answer to searchers.

You should try to avoid having broken links on your site. To find broken links, you can use
Screaming Frog​ or ahrefs.

Once you’ve identified your broken links, you can fix the issue by redirecting, updating, or
removing the link.

Speed Up Your Shopify Site

Search engines value sites that provide a good user experience and the speed of your site is a
huge factor.

A slow loading site will increase your bounce rate, as visitors lose patience and leave.

Many tools offer speed tests along with suggestions on how to make your site faster—some of
the ones we like are ​Google’s PageSpeed Insights​, ​GTMetrix​, ​Pingdom​.
ProTip​: It’s super easy to get caught up in trying to fix all of these speed issues and getting a
perfect score. DON’T do this—in general, these are things you can do to improve the speed of
your Shopify site:

● Compress and reduce the size of your images—high-quality images are great, but most of
the times you don’t need a 40MB image that’s 4000x6000 pixels.

● Uninstall apps you’re no longer using.

Submit Your Sitemap to Google Search Console

An XML sitemap helps search engines understand the structure of your site and find all the pages
that you want to be indexed.

Shopify automatically creates and updates your website’s sitemap for you—you can find it at
www.yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml

Then, you can use Google Search Console to submit your sitemap to Google:
Bonus / Everything Else
These are some extra stuff you might want to check out now that you’ve gone through the rest of
the items on this checklist.

Set Up Rank Tracking

Whenever I start working on an SEO project, one of the first things I do is set up rank tracking.

Doing this will allow you to easily monitor your website’s rankings among dozens or hundreds of
keywords.

Tracking your rankings lets you know whether your efforts are paying off.

These are the tools I like for rank tracking:

● SERPWatcher

● ahrefs​ (although you might have to pay extra if you want your rankings to be updated
daily)
Claim Your Brand Name on as Many Social Networks as Possible

For reputation management reasons, not only do you want to make sure no one else gets your
account name, but you can often own all the results on the first page of a search for your brand if
you’re a new website or company.

You can use ​NameChk​ to help with that.

Set Up Alerts

This was already covered in the link building section, but we recommend setting up Google Alerts
or ahrefs alerts for mentions of your brand and products.

This way, you can be the first to know when someone’s talking about your products and respond
accordingly.
Earn Your SEO Certification

ClickMinded is an SEO training course that teaches you exactly how to increase traffic to any
website, as quickly as possible.

The course includes a final exam. Take the course, pass the final exam, and you’ll earn your ​SEO
certification​. It integrates seamlessly with LinkedIn.

ClickMinded certifications are designed to show future employers and clients that you
understand how search engine optimization fundamentally works. We also have a ​digital
marketing certification​ and a ​social media marketing certification​.
Sidenote​: we are very open about the fact that certifications don’t mean that someone is good at
SEO (or digital marketing)—but some people still want them for various reasons, so we offer
them.

Boost the Impact of Your SEO Efforts With Other Marketing Channels

SEO works best when combined with other channels.

If you’re just getting started on digital marketing or want to learn more about how to get more
traffic and sales from other marketing channels, check out our free strategy guides:

● Digital Marketing Strategy Guide

● Sales Funnel Strategy Guide

● Content Marketing Strategy Guide

● Email Marketing Strategy Guide

● Paid Advertising Strategy Guide

● Social Media Strategy Guide

● Website Analytics Strategy Guide