How can I improve site speed and search engine indexing for free?

[Alikhan2]

Can anyone help me with site speed and search engine index of my shopify store? I have tried a lot of apps but all are paid. and I want to find a way so I can optimize my store's speed without any bucks. Thanks

[PurchaseSurvey]

Hi @Alikhan2! 

This is PostPurchaseSurvey.com - free Post Purchase Surveys. For a quick win on side speed, make sure that all your images are compressed and optimized. Whenever we upload a photo on our website, we'll do what's called "lossless compression" in order to reduce the file size without losing image quality. This is really helpful for SEO efforts and for speeding up your website. 

This is the tool we use for JPEG images and we use this one for PNG files. Try running those 15 images through the image compression linked and it should work for you

[ikerseymer]

Hi @Alikhan2,

As far as page speed improvements go, one of the best tools for analyzing your site is Google’s own PageSpeed Insights app. It will provide some recommendations on how to improve your page speed score. Oftentimes, changes will be technical so you may need developer help to implement the changes.

As far as SEO goes, understanding the fundamentals of search engine indexing is incredibly important. Oftentimes, improving your position on the search results page is a matter of writing more targeted product descriptions with the right keywords. If you know what your customers will search for, make sure you include those words on your pages. I recommend absorbing all the free information about SEO that you can, such as the Shopify blog  or the amazing Moz.com. Understanding how to write content that makes Google love your page is very doable and will pay dividends.

Ian

[oreoorbitz]

"so I can optimize my store's speed without any bucks"
Learn to code.

I've sometimes worked 12+ hours to opitmize a shopify store once, t's not a simple thing you can do 1-2-3.

If you don't want to spend any money, and don't know how to code, you won't go far in opitmizing your store.

or if you don't want to spend any money, here is an easy way to get a high score without spending any money
Use any of the free StoreFront 2.0 themes offered by Shopify.

Do not install any apps

Do not install any analytics

Do not install any custom scripts at all

Follow those above steps and you can have a site with a high PSI score.

[Williamjordan]

In terms of page performance optimization, Google's own PageSpeed Insights app is one of the greatest tools for assessing your site. It will make suggestions on how to enhance your page speed score. Changes are frequently technical in nature, thus you may want the assistance of a developer to accomplish them.

In terms of SEO, understanding the principles of search engine indexing is critical. Improving your rank on the search results page is frequently as simple as creating more focused product descriptions with the relevant keywords. Make sure you include the words your consumers will search for on your pages if you know what they will look for.

I recommend taking up as much free SEO content as you can, such as the Shopify blog or the great Moz.com. Understanding how to create content that will make Google love your page is simple and will pay off big time.

[oscprofessional]

@Alikhan2 ,

Welcome to the shopify community.

• Apps can have a significant performance impact on the stores they are installed on.
• First of all,  I am not trying to say that you shouldn’t install apps on your store.
• use less applications on your shopify store. Use such APIs for the Apps.
• use cookies without an app.

We will help achieve your task easily and more cost-effectively if you are looking for a way to improve the Speed of your site and SEO quickly & effectively! you can check our store.

https://www.oscprofessionals.com/shopify-performance-optimization/

https://www.oscprofessionals.com/search-engine-optimization/ 

You can directly get connected with me via email or Skype.

[MS_WEB_DESIGNER]

Hi @Alikhan2,

This is Nia from MS Web Designer - TOP Rated Shopify Experts based in Singapore. We would like to provide some recommendations based on our seven years of experience in providing solutions to over 10000 active Shopify merchants.

Kindly share the URL of your store to test the speed.

Based on that result, you can optimize the site with some tactful actions like optimizing the JavaScript files, minimizing the images and videos (if any), deleting the obsolete and junk codes, etc. to make your webpage faster hence ensuring customer satisfaction.

What will we do for Speed Optimization?

1. Full speed optimization Audit ( Using GTMETRIX )
2. Image optimization for easy crawling and indexing- Reducing file size, choosing appropriate file formats like PNG, JPEG, GIF, etc.
3. Check and optimize all website assets (images, CSS, JS, etc)
4. Check and remove apps’ obsolete code, if any.
5. Minify JavaScript, CSS
6. Optimize the video section to an optimized version, if any.
7. Code Optimization to reduce space and increase speed- Through dead code elimination, Code motion, and compile-time evaluation.
8. Image scaling to high performance- By analyzing your site and resizing images.
9. Eliminating the halting problem in JavaScript.
10. Removing apps that are not required.
11. Apply Lazy loading per section wherever required
12. Check and defer scripts wherever required.
13. Loading the correct image size and then compressing the image where possible by integrating the special premium app which is really good for image compression ( You need to install this app / if required )
14. Improve liquid rendering time
15. Improve Largest Contentful Paint LCP [Web Vitals] as per Gtmetrix
16. Improve Cumulative Layout Shift [Web Vitals] as per Gtmetrix
17. Improve TBT – Total blocking time as per GTmetrix
18. Improve FID – First Input delay
19. Pre Load critical assets

On-Page SEO -

• Google Search Console Setup
• Schema Markup for Home page
• Sitemap XML Check and Submit at Google Search Console
• Index home page and other 2 any pages
• Internal Linking Check
• Broken Link Check
• Canonicalization Check
• Title and Description optimization home page and other 2 any pages
• 3 keywords optimization for home page and other 2 any pages
• Content optimization for home page and other 2 any pages 
• Alt tag optimization for home page and other 2 any pages

Our Apps-

As we checked there were no Terms and Conditions at the checkout. It might create some confusion during the delivery of products. Hence we suggest you install a Free app from the Shopify app store which provides 'I agree to the Terms and Conditions' before checkout as it makes it easy for the customer to read your terms and policies and for chaos-free shopping.

Voila Shopify app adds a highly efficient cart feature, proven to reduce cart abandonment and boost sales. (Shows multiple Discount coupon codes on the cart page)

These were the few suggestions that we think are necessary for your store. If you feel that this comment was helpful, hit a like or mark it as a solution.

Thanks

Nia
MS Web Designer

[Alikhan2]

I appreciate all the comments and solutions provided. but I was looking for something more on the free side because on a low budget. turns out I can not really have that so I have like 2 options now. Either learn coding or hire a developer (which I can't). I have tested my store from gt metrix and google web dev and it scores 59 in google. Here is my store's link: www.thegirlyobsessions.com

[ikerseymer]

So I checked your site on PageSpeed Insights and got 74 on mobile and 65 on desktop. This may seem like a "D-" grade, but relative to many other sites it is actually pretty good. It's more like a "B+".

For example, I analyzed a major brand that everyone knows (keeping anonymous), they score a 2(!) on mobile and 14(!) on desktop. So you are not in a bad position relative to other successful brands.

On top of that, Google just recently started using core web vitals as a ranking factor for SERP, and it's hard to say how much it *actually* affects the ranking today.

That being said, you are being very wise to be thinking about page performance. Faster loading will improve the UX and the conversation rate for your products. That's what matters most.

Ian

[Swishman]

Hi @Alikhan2,  Not sure if you have seen this, but Shopify do have a help document that goes over this topic. Improving your online store speed · Shopify Help Center . 

Your site speed is good by the way.

Regards,

Swish: Page Speed Booster

[JayAdra]

Speed seems pretty good to me! Didn't notice any issues navigating around or waiting for things to load.

[MS_WEB_DESIGNER]

Hi @Alikhan2 ,

Welcome to the Shopify Community!

I am Alex From MS Web Designer (Top Rated Shopify Certified Experts and eCommerce Consultant from Singapore ) I helped 1000+ Shopify Store owners to Optimize their website loading speed for both mobile and desktop and increase their conversion rate.

I will love to help you with some experts feedback here

- Kindly Provide your Store Url,
- Also Mention Which Shopify theme you are using

- How many Apps you are using?

Note: If your store is protected with ‘store Font password’ please Send it here or DM me.

If you have any concerns feel free to ask me!

Regards,
Alex 

[BlogPilot]

Hi Alikhan,

A great way to boost the SEO of your store is to have consistent, high-quality and optimized blog posts. This gives the search engine crawlers more content to index and shows activity on your storefront.

Blog Pilot automates the blog post creation and management process for you, posting once per week automatically. We offer a free trial as well!

https://apps.shopify.com/blog-pilot

Happy to answer any questions you might have about blogging and SEO. Feel free to reply to this comment or shoot us a message directly!

[SEOKart]

Hello Alikhan2,

Glad you reached out.

The following suggestions can help you optimize the speed of your website. 

1. Use a light-weight Shopify theme for your store.
2. Compress images’ file size.
3. Remove unused JavaScript.
4. Implement AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages), which is an open-source HTML framework by Google. Its implementation allows Google to crawl the pages and store the cached versions of the pages in the server, which reduces the loading time of these pages on mobile devices.
5. For the advertisements, implement lazy loading.

If you’re looking for a free SEO solution, then the SEOKart app is perfect for you!

Let me brief you on the amazing features of the app:

1. SEO Audit 

With this feature, you can carry out an in-depth SEO audit of your website, on the basis of 15 SEO factors, categorized under 5 grading factors (Meta Tags, Content, Image, URL, and Broken Links), different pages of the website are awarded the SEO score. 

You can also edit and optimize the SEO factors and improve the SEO score. 

As ChatGPT is integrated with the app, you get AI-generated suggestions to optimize the SEO factors.

2. Image Optimizer

With this feature, you can compress the file size of the images and reduce their loading time. 

You can add and edit images’ file names and alt texts which improves the rank of the image on SERP; additionally, alt text explains the context of the image to the users.

Finally, you can also change the file format of the image according to the requirements of the website.

3. Rich Snippets

Rich snippets allow the website to take more pixels on the results page by providing additional information about the website and its content to the users. Thus, helping the website to stand out on SERP.

With the help of SEOKart, you can add a Product Markup Snippet, FAQs Snippet, and Home Page Snippet for your website, and make it stand out amongst its competitors on SERP, which can help your website enhance its click-through rate.

4. Bulk Optimizer

This is an amazing feature of SEOKart that allows you to automate the process of optimization. You can customize a template with diverse labels, like product name, SKU, type, etc., for different pages on the website and optimize them in bulk. 

It will run in the backend without interfering with the frontend tasks. Thus, allowing you to save the time of carrying out repetitive optimization tasks.

The ‘Bulk Optimizer History’ also lets you revisit the bulk optimization processes.

5. URL Editor and 404 Fixer

With the help of ‘URL Editor’, you can edit and optimize the URL by adding the keyword in the URL and reducing its length, which makes it easy to be shared by the users. You can then redirect the traffic from the old URL to the new one.

404 Fixer lets you find out all the broken links on the website and add the correct URL to redirect the traffic to the right location.

6. Rank Tracker

With this feature, you can track and compare the rank of your website for certain keywords in a particular country, language, search engine, and device (mobile or desktop). You also get the keyword suggestions that best suits your business.

You can also add your three competitors on the app, keep a close eye on them, and compare your website’s rank with your competitors for the added keywords.

7. GA4 Integration

There is an integration of Google Analytics 4 or GA4 with the app, which helps the users acquire insightful data, like traffic, revenues, conversion rates, and orders generated from different channels (organic search, paid search, referrals, etc.).

SEOKart pulls up the data from GA4 and presents it visually in the form of charts, diagrams, and graphs, which makes it easier for the users to make comparisons.

8. Page Speed

This feature helps you to determine the page speed of your website, products, and categories on desktop and mobile devices. You can also pull up the historical information and see the improvement of your website’s page speed over time.

There is also an add-on service of ‘Page Speed Optimization’, which costs $149. However, every month few eligible Shopify stores offer this service for free 🙂.

You can install this app today for free and benefit from its awesome features.

Leesha

SEOKart