Shopify is pretty simple to operate, but it can even create significant problems for small e-commerce websites and shops as they start to face an increase in competition from mortars and incumbent brick.
One of the major setbacks you might face with your Shopify website is the technical SEO ( Search Engine Optimization).
This SEO is pretty essential for your online business to rank and be more visible to your traffic.
Therefore, in this article, we’ll know the major Shopify SEO challenges and their possible solutions. So, keep reading to learn it all.
Challenge-1: The Meta Tag Options for SEO are Very Limited
Shopify offers a very small Meta Tag edit option for your collections and products. You can find this at the bottom of the editing screen in the admin area “Edit Website SEO.” There you’ll see only 3 options are provided:
- Page Title
- Description ( also called the Meta Description)
- URL and Handle
While these options can be great for your website’s foundation, they also create issues for many users.
For instance, if you want to publish any of your products for a paid advertising campaign, you won’t be able to add the Meta Robots “Noindex” tag in it.
So, if a major platform or search engine starts searching for the Meta Keywords, you have to wait for your Shopify to upgrade this meta section before implementing any SEO changes.
Another significant issue is all these tags are entered manually. So, e-commerce merchants might face problems during bulk edits, especially if they have hundreds or thousands of the same products.
Solution:
You can update the Liquid code for your theme to include various meta tags and even use “IF” statements to guarantee that only specific pages are modified. Check this Shopify on-page SEO guide for detailed instructions.
This must be clearly documented, as the code will not be seen within any Shopify page-level.
Challenge-2: Filenames and Image Alt Attributes
Search engines prefer filenames and alt attributes that are descriptive and keyword-rich.
Shopify does not entirely support filename editing; once you submit an image file. It will use that name on your Shopify store.
This can be a problem if you are bulk uploading importing files from a dropshipping website, as the filenames might be unrelated or even in a foreign language.
You can edit the alt properties for each of the Shopify product photos. This increases the reach of your website and is associated with higher ranks in Google and Google Images.
However, while uploading a new product image, Shopify does not ask you to provide an image alt. There is no option available to bulk add the same image alt attribute for all your product images.
Without alt attributes, your store may also violate the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990.
Solution:
After uploading a file, make it a part of your new product addition process to download each image, give it an appropriate keyword-rich file name, and include Image Alt attributes.
If the images are of the product itself, you may be able to use anything as simple as the product’s name.
However, there are also such Shopify applications that can automate this entire alt process for you.
These applications can provide you with automated SEO services for a monthly fee, more like a Computer Vision API to understand the product images and apply the alt attributes.
Challenge-3: Images Can Make Your Shopify Website Slow
There is no option to optimize an image file size once it has been uploaded to Shopify.
However, there are algorithms that can reduce the size of image files without compromising visual quality. These algorithms are offered as SaaS programs that allow you to compress photographs each at a time using their online interface.
Moreover, search engines now seek fast-loading websites to provide a positive user experience, and it is also a well-known ranking criterion for Bing and Google.
Solution:
Before uploading any image to your Shopify store, make sure to optimize each and every one of them.
If you only have a small number of products, this image optimizing procedure will also optimize your website and be more cost-effective.
Use services like Kraken.io’s Web Interface to upload and compress your images, and then download the optimized images to use in your Shopify website.
Bottom Line
Search engines like Bing or Google are continuously changing and updating their algorithms, so these Shopify SEO challenges might create issues for your website to rank and be more visible to your target audience.
However, these Shopify SEO challenges solutions should help you establish a better and perfectly optimized e-commerce store in Shopify.