Not sure why a Shopify SEO audit applies to your store? Think about the last time you searched for something online. What was the first result you clicked on? Clever people proved through a study that there’s a 68.7% chance you clicked on a top 3 result.
If you’re on the other side of the equation trying to attract customers to your Shopify store, this is huge. Getting your store to appear in a top 3 position can attract 68.7% more visitors. And we all know that more visitors = more sales.
That’s why search engine optimization (SEO) is so important. The trouble is that everyone (including your competitors and their mum) knows this, so it’s a tough battle to appear on Page 1 of search engine result pages (SERPs), never mind the top 3. That’s why you need to be strategic and intentional with a site audit for your Shopify store.
So, let’s discuss how to deploy a strategy that puts your store on prominent SERPs, starting with a Shopify SEO audit in as little as 30 minutes.
So, What on Earth is a Shopify SEO Audit?
An SEO audit takes a forensic look into your Shopify store to figure out why your store doesn’t appear in search results for products you sell.
A great audit goes a step further and gives you actionable insights into how to fix the problems that blind search engines to your store. This information saves you time by helping you take the right targeted action to get your store ranking highly in SERPs.
Before you begin any site audit, it’s worth revisiting the factors that determine SEO results. There are over 200 ranking factors that Google considers, but these are the most important:
- Content quality
- Technical SEO
- Keyword optimization
- Links
- User experience
- Site architecture
- Ranking signals like click-through rate, bounce rates, and dwell time
Improve any of these, and your Shopify store gets a better chance of claiming higher positions in SERPs. However, Big SEO companies run some very complicated algorithms, so results aren’t guaranteed.
That’s why it’s critical to go broad with your audit and identify and address various aspects of your store’s bottlenecks simultaneously.
It is therefore not unusual for Shopify merchants to seek outside help with site audits. But thorough audits take time and experts often charge an arm and a leg for their time. So, a more cost-effective alternative is to use the same tools the experts use, and audit your store yourself.
A standard SEO tool like Yoast won’t do because it is not purpose-built to integrate well with your store, scan hundreds of product pages and help you bulk edit SEO data. You need a purpose-built SEO tool like Plug In SEO to scan product pages in bulk, and guide you towards bulk fixes with actionable SEO advice without the huge cost of effort.
To start, you need to first know what to look out for with an ecommerce SEO audit checklist.
E-commerce SEO Audit Checklist
So, you’re ready to get started with your site audit.
Here’s a checklist of the key things your website audit must cover to successfully discover, analyze, and optimize low-performing pages.
E-commerce Category Pages and Site Architecture
First, your SEO audit should review the architecture of your Shopify site. In Shopify, category pages are called “Collections”. They organize all product pages into groups (or categories), helping you attract traffic from broader keywords, such as “fishing tackles” or “skateboard bearings.”
Your audit should evaluate areas for improvement in your category page title tags, meta descriptions, image alt text, and other actionable insights into why your category pages aren’t attracting as much organic traffic as they should.
E-commerce SEO Keywords
The words or phrases that people type into search engines to find your products (aka keywords) lie at the heart of any effective SEO strategy. Identifying valuable (relevant, low-competition) keywords is crucial to ensure your site appears in your customer’s search engine results.
As a minimum requirement, your audit should review your keyword strategy and look for keyword opportunities to attract a broader audience to your store.
A good audit tool should provide guidance on where exactly your keywords need to be placed (e.g., in product descriptions, image alt text, H2 headers, blogs, etc.) to increase their likelihood of impact.
A great audit tool goes the extra mile and gives you a leg up with your store’s keyword research. It suggests new, untapped keyword opportunities, identifying areas that you and your competitors might be slacking on.
E-commerce SEO Link Building
Next, your audit should evaluate your site’s link strategy for both internal and external links. Link building plays a crucial role in driving traffic to your site, as it builds your site’s credibility and improves the user experience.
Internally, pages in similar categories should link to one another. This helps Google’s SEO bots better understand your site, which can improve its rankings for various keywords.
Google also considers external links. These are links to your store from other sites, which act as a sort of “vote of confidence” in your content. The more external links you get from reputable sites, the more trustworthy your e-commerce shop appears — and the better it performs in search engine results.
Technical SEO
Every site audit should review technical SEO factors. A tool like Google Analytics is essential for monitoring these technical SEO factors.
Factors such as page load times, duplicate content issues, mobile friendliness, etc, impact user experience and, ultimately, bounce rates. By optimizing these, you can reduce user frustration, increase engagement time, and send all the right signals to search engines.
Image Optimization
Image optimization sometimes gets lumped together with technical SEO. But it’s worth thinking about independently during your site audit.
A good audit should identify problems with image sizing (as large images increase your site load times), missing image alt text, and even keywords in image file names!
Content Quality
Finally, a good audit should assess for basic markers of good quality content across your product pages, blog pages, titles, etc. This includes keyword spread, description, content length, sub-headings, etc.
High-quality content keeps your visitors engaged, and increased engagement with your site signals confidence in your brand, which can significantly impact your conversion rate and average order value.
How To Perform an Shopify SEO Audit in 30 Minutes
To improve your store’s organic traffic performance in the long term, you need to consider regular audits as a multivitamin rather than a pain killer. Establish a process for running these regularly to stay on top of your organic game.
Your Shopify website audit results give insight into the (organic) traffic potential of your Shopify store and identify areas for improvement, at any given point in time.
Here’s a simple process for conducting your site audit in 30 minutes or less:-
1. Get Your Toolbox (GSC & Plug In SEO)
If you haven’t already done so, register for a free Google Search Console account. Then install Plug In SEO from the Shopify App Store. Both tools are free to begin with. Plug In SEO comes with a 14-day free trial, which gives you access to everything you need to audit your store and get the data and recommendations you need to start implementing improvements.
2. Run Audit (Scan Store)
Once you have the app installed, you’ll get some prompts guiding you to complete set up. Connect your GSC by clicking the button and you’re now ready to run a scan. Just click on “Scan” or “Recheck” and you should get a summary SEO report ranging in order of importance.
3. Start Fixing
Now, you have the most critical issue to address without further ado. These can range from unoptimized images to missing headings or meta descriptions, slow page load times, and other performance indicators.
The good news is you won’t have to fix all these potential issues on your own. Plug In SEO gives you step-by-step instructions for solving every problem it raises. All you’ll need to do is follow the instructions under each alert to start improving your SEO immediately.
If you need any help at this stage, the team offers a Quick Start service, which allows the team to jump into your account and implement fixes for you.
4. Create a Long-Term SEO Strategy
Finally, it’s important to recognize that SEO optimization is a long game. Fixes that you implement on your website today can take weeks or months to move the needle because Google bots take time to crawl sites. Make those changes anyway.
Regular website audits and continuous improvements are crucial to your long-term ecommerce business strategy, as these keep your store competitive and well-optimized for tomorrow’s traffic.
Smart e-commerce merchants create long-term SEO strategies executed over months or even years. Otherwise, keeping up with the competition can turn into an everlasting struggle.
Plug In SEO is Your Shortest Path to an SEO-Optimized Store
Now that we’ve established that SEO optimization takes time due to non-negotiables (like Google Crawl times), it makes sense to focus your energy on areas within your control, such as time to implementation.
With 25,000 happy users, Plug In SEO reduces your time to implementation by giving you all the tools and targeted data you need to start implementing fixes on your SEO with minimal friction. There are no lengthy consultations, no forms to fill, and no extended wait periods for results – just download, scan and start fixing.
What’s more, Plug In SEO is free to install and evaluate your existing SEO structure before identifying missed opportunities in your site’s use of keywords, images, on-page SEO, and beyond.
Put simply, you need nothing else to complete your SEO audit. Just download Plug In SEO, and you can begin improving your site’s Google search results in minutes.
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