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Getting SEO right is essential for Shopify stores to attract customers and make sales. In fact, according to Statista, 43% of all traffic to eCommerce stores comes from organic search results.
Taking steps to improve your organic search rankings and search visibility can significantly increase your traffic and reach. In turn, this can lead to substantially higher sales numbers.
With the help of SEO apps and plugins, Shopify stores can improve their search engine rankings and optimize elements of their websites.
Why is SEO important for online stores? What tools do eCommerce businesses need to improve their SEO? What are the best SEO apps for Shopify stores?
In this guide, Weblime will showcase some of the best picks for SEO apps and plugins for Shopify businesses!
What is SEO? Why is it important for Shopify stores?
SEO stands for search engine optimization. This refers to any steps taken to improve your business’s search visibility. It’s all about making it easier for customers to find your store on search engines like Google and Bing.
Customers regularly turn to search engines to find new products and discover new businesses. In fact, nearly 90% of consumers start their online shopping journey with a Google search query.
SEO provides a steady traffic stream toward your site, long after your initial investment. By contrast, paid ads stop bringing new customers in as soon as you end your campaign.
Improving your ranking on search engine result pages (SERPs) is a crucial part of SEO work. Upwards of two-thirds of all clicks on these SERPs go to the first five results. Boosting your ranking by one place will, on average, increase your click-through rate (CTR) by 30.8%.
What are the best SEO apps for Shopify eCommerce stores?
Shopify’s admin dashboard does offer some SEO tools, but these options are limited. To get the most out of your online store, you should consider using third-party apps to improve your SEO.
Here are some of the best SEO tools and plugins to improve your store’s ranking on search engines!
AVADA SEO Suite
AVADA SEO is a suite of tools for improving your store’s SEO. What can AVADA do?
- Correctly set up your page metadata, including title tags, descriptions and more.
- Analyze your product pages and blog posts for bad SEO practices.
- Optimize your images and add alt tags
- Speed up your page performance
We find the image optimizer and SEO analysis tools particularly useful. These help your product images appear in image search results and in the Google Shopping tab.
With this Shopify app, you can easily optimize the image size and quality to best suit search engines. Adding alt tags to images – especially product and blog photos – helps Google understand what each image is.
AVADA’s advanced SEO analysis tool allows you to preview your technical settings, adjust meta tags and quickly spot errors in your content.
This tool now includes an automated Google Structured Data wizard. Structured Data is a standardized format used by Google to understand the content of your page – and even help you appear in search elements like featured snippets and knowledge panels.
This app allows you to easily submit auto-generated Structured Data documents with a few clicks!
AVADA offers a free plan to get started – offering image optimization for 50 products/month and an SEO checklist. To unlock meta tags and Structured Data support, you’ll need to opt for a Pro plan.
You can check their pricing on the Shopify App Store product page!
JSON‑LD for SEO by Ilana Davis
JSON-LD for SEO is a Shopify app designed to optimize your results and snippets by adding rich text elements and images to your listings. This app uses the “linked data” format to provide richer information to Google to display alongside search results.
This tool helps you take advantage of Google’s rich results – which allow you to add interesting elements to your search appearances. Shopify stores can add product images, ratings, pricing and stock information to their search results.
JSON-LD also allows you to take advantage of rich snippets – adding more metadata information to possible featured snippets.
Some stores add site link search boxes or FAQs to their results.
Higher-quality search listings will inevitably improve your search click-through rates, even with lower rankings. These rich elements help you earn more qualified traffic and in turn boost your conversion rate.
JSON-LD for SEO is available for a one-time fee of $399. Once you’ve bought the tool, it’s yours to use forever. This price makes it a hefty investment for smaller stores, but rapidly growing sites will find its features useful for fuelling their growth, as they generate more product listings.
SEO HTML and XML Sitemap by Petna
Sitemaps are XML or HTML files that act as a blueprint of your site’s content. They help search engines find your pages and understand your website’s page structure.
Remember, search engines index your individual pages, not your entire site. Sitemaps allow them to understand what pages are on your site.
The SEO HTML and XML Sitemap app by Petna makes it easy to generate a useful, accurate sitemap for your Shopify store.
With this tool, you can easily create both an XML sitemap for search crawlers and an HTML sitemap for your visitors!
It’s as simple as one click! These sitemaps are easily customizable – allowing you to adjust their title, description and layout. You can easily exclude pages from your sitemap using Petna’s dashboard.
Petna’s SEO HTML and XML Sitemap creator is a simple, lightweight tool that does the job! For a couple of dollars a month, using this tool is a no-brainer.
SEO Manager
SEO Manager is an all-in-one solution that automates SEO to improve search rankings on Google. Since 2012, SEO Manager has been helping merchants improve their visibility on Google by following all of Google’s best practices. It offers over 40 SEO features to help you reach and stay at the top of search rankings. Here’s what SEO Manager can do:
- Real-time performance scan: Optimizes page load speed & domain rating scores.
- Automate title, description, and image alt text: Uses templates to automate the creation of these crucial SEO elements.
- Add JSON-LD and schema/structured markup: Enhances visibility on Google Search.
- AI-powered keyword discovery and SEO suggestions: Optimizes your store for Google.
- Fix and manage 404 errors in bulk: Improves SEO rankings.
SEO Manager offers a range of SEO tools and features, including 404 pages, AI generation, ALT text, automation, breadcrumbs, broken links, bulk editing, content optimization, JSON-LD, local SEO, meta tags, metadata optimization, page indexing, redirects, rich snippets, schemas, sitemaps, theme optimization, and more.
It also provides performance monitoring features such as analytics, audits, content analysis, insights and tips, keyword analysis, link analysis, reporting, SEO score, tracking, and website traffic.
SEO Manager offers a 7-day free trial and three pricing plans:
- Free: Includes SEO monitoring and scoring, Google result simulation, image and page optimization, structured data testing, and missing page/broken link tracking.
- Essential ($29/month): Offers enhanced SEO scoring and reporting, advanced meta tag control, out-of-stock redirects, and broken link management.
- Professional ($59/month): Provides advanced broken link management, automated SEO enhancements, AI-driven content generation, HTML sitemap page, and advanced Google integrations.
Yoast SEO
Yoast SEO is a renowned tool that quickly improves your store’s SEO and helps you rank higher in search engines. It enhances your online store’s performance with renowned SEO & readability analyses tailored for e-commerce. Yoast goes beyond by refining the hidden elements to ensure your store seamlessly adheres to technical SEO excellence. As Google’s algorithms evolve, Yoast maintains your store’s relevance. For proactive merchants aiming for hands-on involvement, Yoast offers expert guidance and advanced tools to personalize meta tags, templates, and schema according to your preferences. Here’s what Yoast SEO can do:
- Generates structured data/schema output: Yoast generates structured data/schema output to get rich results.
- Takes care of your technical SEO: Yoast takes care of your technical SEO, all automatically.
- Integrates seamlessly with review apps: Yoast integrates seamlessly with review apps.
- Easily optimize your SEO titles & meta descriptions: With Yoast, you can easily optimize your SEO titles & meta descriptions with templates.
Yoast SEO aims to get more people to your online store by improving its visibility and searchability on search engines.
You can check their pricing on the Shopify App Store product page!
Power up your SEO with Weblime’s bespoke SEO Services
Shopify apps are no replacement for hiring SEO marketing experts to boost your search visibility for you. Working with an agency like Weblime helps guarantee fast, robust results.
Here are some of the key SEO services that we offer:
- Keyword Research: Find the right search terms for you to rank and dominate!
- Technical SEO: We’ll handle your metadata and sitemaps. We’ll even optimize your site’s performance for you.
- Competitor Analysis: We’ll analyze your competitors and find actionable tips on how to improve your site.
- Link Building: Gathering backlinks is one of the most important steps for SEO – and a task that cannot be done through SEO apps. We’ll find relevant opportunities for both internal and external backlinks.
Ready to get started improving your Shopify site’s SEO? Get your FREE Instant SEO Audit report and see how your site is performing.
Haven’t built your Shopify site yet? We offer bespoke Shopify store development services to help you create the perfect site for your eCommerce business.
