Shopify SEO branches out to many aspects of your storefront, including technical.
Is it possible that you are only fixing the On-Page Shopify SEO Issues and not the Technical SEO Issues with Shopify?
Given the Google ranking indicators, entrepreneurs employ the best Shopify SEO strategies to boost Shopify crawlability and visibility. You can only hit the right chords by first identifying the types of Shopify SEO Problems that are slacking your store.
Find out in this actionable guide on How to Fix Technical SEO Issues for Shopify Stores. We’re discussing some common yet highly affecting issues like Shopify Canonical URLs, Index Bloating, Unoptimized Page Speed and more.
Let’s get right into the technical stuff.
What are the Technical SEO Issues with Shopify?
Technical SEO issues negatively impact the ranking potential of Shopify Stores.
A well ranking store must be optimized and free from Shopify SEO Problems. This is where technical SEO comes into play. Technical SEO Services help Shopify Entrepreneurs like you ensure that their store is indexable on Google.
Before getting to the types of technical SEO issues affecting your store, take a look at the number of Shopify Sellers worldwide.
Number of Shopify Buyers and Sellers
Basis | Year 2020 | Year 2023 (Estimated) |
Sellers on Shopify | 1,749,000 | 1750,000 |
Buyers on Shopify | 475 Million | 700 Million |
Shopify is used by 1.75 million sellers online and the customer base is huge.
With large numbers like this, comes the crawlability issue.
Not all stores rank on top…
But how do some storefronts manage to rank in Google Search?
Technical SEO Factors for store rankings on Google push out certain storefronts more compared to the rest. The most common Technical SEO issues with Shopify include Unoptimized Shopify URL Structures, Broken Backlinks, Irrelevant Do-Follow Links, Content Duplication on Webpages, Missing Meta Descriptions, Multiple H1 Tags, and more.
These issues are just the tip of the iceberg.
Many other Technical SEO Issues with Shopify slack the store rankings even more.
Do you think any of the following Shopify SEO Problems have been affecting your store?
- Shopify Canonical URL Issues
- Shopify Google Indexing
- Unoptimized Page Speed
Shopify SEO Problems affect the crawlability and indexability of your store.
Shopify SEO Consultant builds customized strategies that tackle all your Shopify Technical SEO issues. Our SEO Services range from On-Page SEO, Off-Page SEO and Technical SEO.
Our in-depth technical SEO audit checklist helps businesses understand where they’re lacking. Based on our client’s store, we fix their Shopify Technical SEO issues and deliver them a well functioning and indexable website.
Fix Shopify Canonical URL Issues
Multiple URLs leading to the same page confuses Google.
This leads to indexing of the wrong page. Sometimes, Google even splits the link equity between multiple pages. This is never good as it leads to lower search rankings.
Fixing Technical SEO Issues with Shopify like these Shopify Canonical URL Issues solves this issue.
The Shopify Canonical URLs exactly tell Google which page to index and which page to ignore. It is a preferred URL of a page that search engines should index
A canonical URL tells search engines which URL is the preferred one to index.
Check for Shopify Canonical URL Issues
If you want to check for Canonical URL Issues on your Storefront, navigate to any page of your store. By right clicking on the page, you’ll see “View Page Source”. Click on it and press Ctrl+F (Command+F on Mac) to open the search bar.
Then you have to type in “canonical”
If you have canonical URLs set up correctly, then you’ll see a line like this:
<link rel=”canonical” href=”https://yourshopifysitename.com/page-url”>
The absence of the Canonical HREF line indicates that you have a canonical URL issue that needs fixing.
In addition, if you see an incorrect URL, then also you need to fix the Shopify Canonical URL issue.
Install Canonical URL Plugins
Installing a Canonical URL Plugin is the best way to fix Shopify canonical URL issues on your Shopify Store. The plugins automatically set up the canonical URLs for your pages. As a busy entrepreneur, this will help you save time as you don’t have to do it manually.
However, the Shopify website technical terms can be confusing for many entrepreneurs.
Our Technical SEO Services can come handy for the businesses that aim to rank on Google this year itself. We handle the technical front of our client’s storefronts and help them understand the process better.
Technical SEO Issues with Shopify Google Indexing
Shopify Google Indexing is a process in which Google adds your Shopify Store to its rankings. This depends on some ranking factors. On the basis of the indexing, people are able to find your Shopify store in the related searches of your niche. Let’s say your store offers the best non-stick egg poachers.
How indexing works is that it shows your Shopify Store to people searching for “quality egg poachers,” “non-stick egg poachers,” “stainless steel egg poachers,” or “tools to make the best poached eggs”.
You get the point.
Having many low value or thin content pages are a big reason why Google may not be indexing your store well in the search results. This leads to outranking of the primary and most important pages on your store. This is called Index Bloat. T
You can fetch the target audience only if your Shopify product pages containing high value keywords must be well-indexed. This is how you can fix the Index Bloat SEO issue.
Remove Low Quality Pages
Unoptimized Google Indexing can be fixed by completely removing all the low quality pages from your Shopify Sitemap. When these pages are removed, Google stops wrongly indexing them. You can build these pages again with the right target keywords to help Google understand the significance of each page.
Add No-Index Tag to Low Quality Pages
There are times when you have low quality pages on your store but it is not possible to eliminate them. In this case, you can add a Shopify no-index tag to these pages. You can apply this tag on the pages such as pages associated with user accounts, pages of the products you are not selling currently, guest checkout pages and other pages with unique URLs that are really only used once. Basically, you must add a Shopify No-Index Tag to any page that is not actively used for bringing traffic from Google.
Technical SEO Issues with Shopify Unoptimized Page Speed
Any Shopify Store that takes more than three seconds to load, is a bad ranking indicator. Optimizing your Website with Shopify Progressive Web Apps is the best way to fix unoptimized page speed. Applying PWA (Progressive Web Apps) results in:
- Faster loading times even in low internet connectivity areas
- Allow users to receive push notifications
- Caches static elements in user’s devices
Niche-specific Shopify SEO Experts in our team fix your unoptimized page speed. They make sure that the static items are not downloaded each time the page is loaded. When your scripts, logos, stylesheets, and images are cached in users devices, your store simply loads quicker. Depending upon our client’s storefront, we apply the best PWAs on their storefront.
By regularly monitoring and addressing these technical issues, you can keep your store optimized for search engines. There are certain SEO Benchmarks that help businesses rank such as:
- page load speed time
- average session duration
- number of indexed pages
- page authority
- keyword rankings
- bounce rate
- conversion rates
Use technical SEO tools like Google Search Console and SEMrush to keep up Shopify Technical SEO rankings.
Technically, it’s not a hardball
Once you eliminate the Technical SEO elements that slack your store’s crawlability, you’re all set. These are just some of the more common issues we have seen in our client’s stores. We conduct comprehensive technical SEO audits for our clients to help them achieve a technically sound storefront.
A well-functioning canonical URL structure can be the difference between a crawlable Shopify Storefront and a badly ranking one. Moreover, Shopify Google Indexing and Unoptimized Page Speed can be some of the Technical SEO Issues with Shopify Store causing low rankings.
If you are experiencing these Shopify SEO Problems, it is important to address them right away.
Fixing issues may take some effort, but the end results are well worth it. At ShopifySEOConsultant.com, we undertake Shopify Store Audit to help clients eliminate technical SEO Issues before they affect google rankings.
Get in touch with us!
Once you have your Technical SEO in place, it’s time for conversion boosting.
We highly-recommend you to check out the our next guide Shopify Google Ads Conversion Tracking