How much of a negative effect does the Shopify CDN have on SEO?

[jaakkom]

I have quite a bit of PDF files and custom images that I'd like to rank in SERP. I'm more than little worried about the Shopify CDN though, as it seems that it completely bypasses my store. Let's say I do the work to really optimize the filename and metadata of a PDF file from a supplier (where changing the contents might be difficult), and it ranks well in Google. However, when Google indexes it and links to the file like I'd expect, there is no mention of my store anywhere. The link points to Shopify CDN. I've done all the work, and as far as I understand, I will get no benefit from that.

Am I somehow misinterpreting the situation? Is there some benefit from doing SEO on images and files, even if it goes to the CDN? Am I just making up problems that don't really exist? There's a lot of advice online on optimizing the image alt tags etc, but how does it help if the store doesn't "relate" to those images? Or does it, regardless of the CDN?

One possible solution that was suggested to me would be to register a subdomain, get a server to host files there, and use that for the files. However, I also read that subdomains are treated by Google completely separate from the main domain... so while this would have the benefit of at least getting my domain name in front of the searchers, it might not do much other good. I also read this blog post about using a proxy, but I'm not sure if I can implement that. I have a Partner account registered, but that app part still goes over my head. I would appreciate it if someone could provide some clarity on this topic? 🙂

[MarcioSantos]

Hi @jaakkom ,

Yes, you can get more search traffic to your site if people are using the Google image search to find your products even though your images are served by a CDN.

A change was made to the Google Image search several months ago, where they added the "Visit" button to the image preview screen. Clicking this button sends the user to your site where the image is, even though the image is being served by the Shopify CDN.

Here's a screenshot of the visit button:

Does that answer your question? I hope so.

Good luck.

[jaakkom]

Thanks for your reply! I'm not really worried about images so much, the PDF files are more important. Just as an example, I have a single product that has closer to 20 PDF files for different variations of that product. It seems that the only way to really do good SEO on the PDF's is to alter the contents to include my business information, which often means recreating the whole files from scratch. The good thing is that at least that kind of work can fairly easily be outsourced... it's a bit difficult to gauge the importance of paying for that, especially as there is no direct way to track the traffic of these files.