This holiday season, it is very likely that you are buying many of your gifts through online retailers. Many of these small businesses are using e-commerce platforms that assist in creating an online shopping experience that is simplistic for both shoppers and the business itself. One of the most popular of these platforms is Shopify. With millions of Shopify accounts online, many businesses depend on the usability and built-in knowledge of Shopify for their success. Although Shopify comes with many SEO crutches, some of these may not be in to your benefit. Often businesses are not SEO savvy enough to notice these and this can cause SEO headaches. Here are some potential SEO headches from using Shopify and how you can easily fix these!

 

Meta Titles & Descriptions

In Shopify, you may notice that the Meta Titles & Description areas give you a number such as 70 for characters to use in your titles. Although this is close to correct, it is no cigar. Although there are variations of what the correct number should be, it is best for you to remember to stick to around 60 characters. Google actually determines if a title is good with pixels, which it wants maxed at 600. For example, a M takes more pixels than an I, so this can cause your count to be off.

 

ALT Tags

Images are likely a huge part of your online experience if you are running an eCommerce business. One of the hiccups when adding images into Shopify is that if you use one image for multiple products in Shopify, if will generate the same ALT Tag throughout. Although there is not a true “fix” for this yet, it is something to be aware of when writing your ALT Tags. Be sure to be generic with these and not too keyword-specific.

 

Robots.txt

One of the largest problems with Shopify currently is not being able to edit your Robots.txt file. Alterations are not allowed and there is no XML Sitemap created. This is a huge concern from an SEO standpoint and something that we are certain Shopify will have to address in the near future. In the meantime, there are plugins for WordPress and Drupal that can generate a XML Sitemap for submission.

Starting out with a new Shopify eCommerce site or trying to improve your existing site? Contact Atria today to learn how to improve your SEO results.