What makes a Shopify theme SEO-friendly? PLUS: Top 4 themes to try to boost your SEO - Part 1

What makes a Shopify theme SEO-friendly? PLUS: Top 4 themes to try to boost your SEO - Part 1

CiCi_Nguyen
Shopify Partner
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For online stores aiming to improve traffic and revenue, a well-designed Shopify website is essential. Using a theme that has been optimized for SEO is the best method to construct a Shopify site that ranks well in search engine results pages (SERPs).

 

Shopify is a well-known eCommerce platform that allows companies of all sizes to set up online stores. It provides customers with a variety of customizable themes and templates, as well as a number of features and tools to assist them in running their businesses.

 

Not all Shopify themes are made equal when it comes to SEO. To put it another way, not all of them were created with SEO in mind. We'll explore some of the finest Shopify themes for SEO in this blog post, as well as recommendations on how to choose the ideal one for your Shopify stores.

 

What makes a Shopify theme SEO-friendly?

 

To choose the best Shopify themes for SEO, we must first consider what makes a theme SEO-friendly. There are six primary criteria that account for a theme's SEO-friendliness, according to what Google and other popular search engines tell about how their algorithms work.

 

Valid and clean code markup

 

Coding standards are revised on a regular basis to keep pace with the evolution of coding languages. As a result, ensure that the theme code is current and compatible with common browsers. It should have correct HTML and CSS and work effectively on both mobile and desktop devices.

W3C Validator and HTML5 Validator are two code validators you can use to check for correct and clean code markup.

 

Although valid HTML has no direct impact on SEO, it does improve crawlability and user experience. Ads on a site with clean code have also been shown to produce better results.

Support for SEO on-page

 

On-page SEO elements are a crucial part of SEO friendliness. Search snippets, meta tags, and sitemaps should all be supported by a good SEO theme.

Structured content on your website that is automatically displayed in the SERPs is known as search snippets or features/rich snippets.

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We have no way of knowing how a highlighted snippet from your site is displayed by Google. Even so, a theme with schema markup ensures that it can. When these snippets are presented, they boost the number of 'zero-click searches' and your chances of ranking better.

 

You should be able to edit metadata or meta tags with an SEO-friendly theme. Meta title, meta description, social cards, alt text, canonical tags, and the Robots.txt file are just a few examples. You can have more control over the keywords you wish to rank for by using meta tags.

 

When it comes to Shopify themes for SEO, the sitemap is less of an issue because Shopify creates sitemaps for all store plans. Megastores with a large number of URLs, on the other hand, will need to account for this. When a site has more than 5,000 URLs, Shopify will use child sitemaps instead of the auto-updated parent sitemap, which do not repopulate new pages. As a result, you should keep an eye on this theme feature to ensure that your store's sitemap is always up to date.

UGC and social media integration

 

User-generated content (UGC) and social media outlets are unrelated to SEO. However, all search engines prioritize user experience, and this feature significantly increases visitor pleasure.

 

According to a Business Wire survey, 79 percent of individuals feel UGC has a significant impact on their shopping decisions. Social commerce is also becoming more popular. As a result, having a built-in social sharing plugin is a terrific method to obtain a lot of traffic, make your site users happy, and increase your sales. The more people who visit your e-commerce site, the more Google credits you get, and the better you rank in the SERPs.

Page speed and mobile-friendliness

 

We live in a fast-paced world that will only get faster as 4G and 5G become more prevalent. As a result, Google's Web Vitals considers page loading time to be an important factor. You can use Google PageSpeed Insights to see if a theme is optimized for performance.

 

With more individuals browsing on a mobile device than ever before, mobile commerce is a top-trending technique for both merchants and buyers. As a result, be sure to select a mobile-friendly theme.

 

The design of such themes should be responsive across all devices. This implies that when customers transition between mobile and desktop, they will have a consistent experience. Easy navigation is also beneficial to an SEO-friendly Shopify theme.

CiCi Nguyen - Content Specialist
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Boost Commerce - Boosting sales for over 13,000 active merchants
No.1 Product Filter and Search Solution for Shopify Stores
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