Optimizing your Shopify store for the search engines is no easy task. Not only do you have to perform any number of different changes to your website, acquire backlinks, research the right keywords, and write useful content, but you are also competing against hundreds of other businesses in your niche as well.
We have put together this guide to help you boost your rankings by using the best Shopify SEO apps on the market, along with other essential aspects of search engine optimization that you need to know about.
Ultimately, in order to make your website SEO friendly and truly improve your rankings, you have to take the right steps. With any form of digital marketing, you’re going to want to take it seriously, starting with outlining a strategy and thinking about your goals.
You don’t want to approach SEO as though it’s just a bunch of random technical tasks that need to be updated, and then suddenly you are going to rank. It doesn’t work this way.
For store owners unfamiliar with the complexities of SEO or confused as to which Shopify apps work best when it comes to getting results, this is the guide for you. Let’s start by digging further into how SEO works and what your options are in terms of boosting your Shopify website’s rankings.
Are Shopify SEO Apps Necessary?
The big question here is, is it even worth looking into apps for your Shopify store? Can’t you simply perform all of the SEO work you need manually?
It depends on your time, budget, and overall digital marketing gameplan. The ideal situation would be to hire a capable eCommerce SEO agency (like us!) to dive in and develop a sound marketing strategy for you, and take all of the day-to-day SEO work off your hands as well. This includes blog writing and backlink creation, which many store owners struggle with.
However, if you are just starting out and don’t have the budget yet for a full-scale SEO campaign, or if you are simply in the process of laying the foundation for your marketing and aren’t yet at the point where a strategy makes sense for your business, then the use of the right Shopify SEO apps makes plenty of sense.
What you don’t want to do is attempt to manage all of your SEO manually for your Shopify store without the use of apps. What these apps do in part is shorten the time it takes to perform certain tasks. Other apps perform tasks that would otherwise be quite difficult or unmanageable without the help of a marketing agency, such as photo size optimization and crafting meta titles.
How do you reach more customers online? You need an effective marketing campaign that begins with the right Shopify SEO tactics.
One problem you may immediately encounter is that there are just so many apps to choose from. Many of them have overlapping functionality and could even conflict with one another. Some only focus on certain aspects of SEO such as user experience while ignoring important technical aspects, while other apps are keyword-oriented and are just there as a guide to writing SEO-optimized content.
In most cases then it makes sense that you would utilize 2 or more of the best Shopify SEO apps in order to get your online store firing on all cylinders. Depending on your needs, you may even wind up using all of our picks that we recommend below. Either way, it’s clear that for many store owners, these apps are a necessity, so you want to read up on them in order to make the best decisions for your website.
Getting a Handle on Your SEO
Before reviewing the various Shopify apps we have selected, it’s worth mentioning that you always want to formulate a smart approach to any SEO issues. Taking care of your optimizations properly early on will lay that strong foundation you are looking for, and will help pave the way for a more robust digital marketing campaign down the right.
It all begins with an in-depth understanding of the keywords you want to target. While some SEO apps can help you find related keywords or key phrases relevant to your industry or a particular blog topic, there’s no substitute for manual and thorough keyword research.
If you want your Shopify site to start ranking well, it’s crucial to select the best possible keywords for your business. Although it’s theoretically possible to do this on your own, we recommend getting the help of a professional SEO agency. Only a team of marketing experts will have the necessary experience and technical skill to uncover the best target keywords for your needs. From here, you can begin to formulate a larger content strategy and take advantage of the best Shopify SEO apps in order to start climbing the SERPs and getting more organic traffic.
The 5 Best SEO Apps For Shopify Right Now
Although there are quite a few apps out there that focus on marketing and SEO for Shopify stores, we narrowed our selection down to 5 of the best ones. These are highly rated apps that not only have a great reputation but will actually provide you with value for the price, in lieu of an actual professional SEO campaign conducted by a marketing agency.
Whether you are trying to write SEO optimized blog posts, writing meta tags and descriptions, trying to improve the user experience of your product pages, or if you are interested in making sure the technical aspects of your website are properly addressed, there’s an app here that will help you.
1. Ultra SEO
To start things off, we have the Shopify app Ultra SEO, which is a small and lightweight app that simply gives you complete control over your meta titles and descriptions.
Although this may seem like a small issue, in reality the meta data of your website is some of the most important when it comes to ranking well on Google and the other search engines. With SEO, everything is about context and the user experience. Every page or product listing on your website should provide the right information to users and also give context for the web crawlers. This way, Google will know what kind of content to expect on the page and this information also plays a role in your click-through rate.
In other words, well-made title tags and page descriptions will help users click onto your website when they see your website pop up in the search results.
What users love about Ultra SEO and why it is so highly rated is simply because it is easy to use and there is no fluff. You won’t get overwhelmed with features or different changes you can make. It’s simply a tool that you can use to optimize the pages on your website.
You can grab Ultra SEO for only $10 a month, or try it for free for 7 days to see if you like it.
2. Shopify SEO Manager
For store owners looking for a more robust suite of tools that can help you take total control over your SEO, this app will be of some use.
The SEO Manager is a beefier app that provides an array of different features, including an SEO dashboard that shows bounce percentage, revenue, transactions, and even average time on website. It can help you find broken links on your site, generate a functional sitemap for crawling purposes, optimize your on-page content, and check for issues on your web pages such as duplicate content and readability.
SEO Manager is a complete one stop solution for a variety of basic SEO needs. The only issue is that like many apps in this genre, it can be overwhelming to figure out what fixes you need to implement and what actually is worth your time and what isn’t. However, the app can certainly help you move in the right direction with your marketing and could potentially improve your rankings while educating you on certain fundamentals.
You can get SEO Manager here for $20 a month, or take it for a spin to see if it works for you.
3. SEO Image Optimizer
An often overlooked but nevertheless key aspect of good SEO is page load times. If your website is slow, you’re not providing a good user experience and Google is going to rank you accordingly.
One of the worst offenders of long load times happens to be images. To ensure that your website is running as snappy as possible, you have to optimize all of the images on your site. Doing this manually, of course, poses a wide array of problems. Do you have to purchase a photo manipulation program like Photoshop and re-upload each product image individually? That could take a ton of time, and apps like Photoshop don’t run cheaply.
Great product images are effective at generating conversions, but you have to make sure these images aren’t slowing down your website. An SEO app that compresses your images is a must.
Fortunately, there are better solutions, one of which is the Image Optimizer for Shopify. This app will help you tackle your image compression problems and also provides a wide range of other SEO benefits as well. The full All in One SEO app functions similar to SEO Manager in a lot of ways but its image optimization can’t be beat. If you need to up your site speed by reducing the size of some of your images, this is the app for you.
SEO Optimizer has a free plan you might want to check out.
4. SEO Doctor
For Shopify merchants interested less in blog writing and more in cleaning up the technical aspects of their website, this is the app that fits the best. SEO Doctor helps to diagnose major SEO problems and offers a variety of easy solutions. It has a variety of options for optimization as well.
What users like about SEO Doctor is that it can help you catch errors on autopilot and is fairly straightforward to use compared to other apps. It’s worth giving a shot if the sheer amount of options in an app like SEO Manager make your head spin, but you still need something comprehensive.
SEO Doctor also has a free plan that is worth a look.
5. ReloadSEO
The last app on our list is great for helping to discover keywords within the actual app. Compared to other software that has these capabilities, it’s a steal. What’s also beneficial about ReloadSEO is that it comes with a host of other features as well, including comprehensive reports and on-page blog writing optimizations as well. For content-focused store owners trying to flesh out their website, this app is a must.
Succeeding with your Shopify SEO often requires a close eye on the data. The fact that this app lets you have a peak at all of your relevant SEO data right on your Shopify site is worth the price alone, especially because you can’t get this info elsewhere without paying a lot of money.
A combination of ReloadSEO, SEO Doctor, and the image optimizer would work wonders for a struggling store, but ultimately which apps you select is up to your needs and personal preference.
ReloadSEO is available for the convenient price of $14.95 a month.
Making the Right Choice For Your Shopify SEO Strategy
As you can see, the right Shopify apps can indeed make a difference when it comes to tackling your SEO, but even these tools don’t demystify everything or tackle every aspect of your search engine optimization.
For instance, there’s no replacement for creating a proper internal link structure or performing backlink outreach. You also have to write professional-sounding blog content that will not only please your target audience but also rank well in Google.
These are not easy tasks by any stretch of the imagination. If you really want to improve your rankings, you will have to take a more aggressive approach with your digital marketing and hire a Shopify SEO agency that knows exactly what they are doing.
We have a team of marketing experts that you need on your side if you really want to take your Shopify store to the next level. Genius eCommerce® is all about providing powerful solutions that actually make a difference for online stores, whether we’re crafting clickable page titles, informative blogs, or generating backlinks, our approach is focused, strategic, and based on eCommerce. Get in touch with us for more information on launching your SEO campaign with a proven agency.
