OK, so in the world of SEO it has become general practice not to use ‘keywords’ and it can be abused by spamming. So I have left the field blank and just made sure all other SEO fields were accurate.
I use a POD app that not only adds the products to my website, but they add them to their website, too. For some reason, on that site, a search does not look at the product title, only the keywords. I know…
So we are in the process of importing a lot of new products that will have ‘tags’ when they propagate to Shopify. I can use these tags with smart collections to sort all the new products into their proper collections, along with a portion of the title.
Do these product tags hinder your rankings in Google, or are they only used within Shopify for buyers to search on site?
Product tags within your admin are only applied interally and don’t have much or any affect on SEO. The tagging system is still very beneficial and great to put into practice for your own organization as well as for customers to have broad search terms available.
As far as SEO, Google will use things like your product description, so that’s a great place to inject keywords. Ultimately though, your meta title and descriptions are what will bring customers the closest to finding your store in the search engine. This guide takes you through the process of building your meta tags.
I hope that helps clear things up.
Great to hear you’re building your business with POD! How are you finding the process so far? Have you launched yet or are you still in your building phase?
HI Ren thanks for the clarification. Yes, my site is up and running for about 3 years now. I have avoided keywords as it is considered bad practice to use them for Google rank. Good to know they work on Shopify for onsite search only. I can add them with export/import. The POD app that I am using requires keywords, so that’s where the question came from.
I have done all the keyword research and with my current 7000 products, each product is optimized with SEO title, URL, Alt Text, and meta description. The meta descriptions need work, as do the product descriptions but I can do that easily with export/import when I get a few minutes.
We are currently adding over 28,000 unique products that will all be SEO optimized. That should be finished this week. Several hundred collections and pages will all be optimized as they are built after moving to the new 2.0 theme. Essentially each and every page, collection and product will be uniquely SEO optimized!
BTW, Yes, I like this setup very much. I have printed with many methods on many products- in house- since 1992. My first e-commerce website was 2001, and it was POD. I took the order online, printed the product in house, and shipped the next day. Good times. When launching my Shopify Store with a POD company it was a game changer. I still produce some product in house, but I have gained sales on products that I was unable to offer previously. 100% agree that meta title has to be perfect. Then the description to use your keyword phrases. Then the other fields. With Excel and Export/Import within Shopify, this is a pretty straight forward task. Thanks again.
Wow, what a fantastic evolution you’ve had with POD! Yes I imagine going from in-house to mainly outsourcing was a huge plus, especially in the time it frees up. What were some of the main benefits for you once you made the switch?
Congratulations on your success so far! I wish you continued prosperity and success with your new products. It sounds like you’ll be ready to go with lots of time left to think about Black Friday Cyber Monday.