Shopify is one of the leading ecommerce platforms. This all-in-one platform powers over one million online stores, so if you’re thinking about starting a Shopify store, you’ll be in good company.
Regardless of your business plan, digital marketing will be a key part of selling products online. And SEO is one of the most powerful tools you can use to enjoy sustained business growth.
By focusing on SEO from the start, you can build an ecommerce site that generates organic search traffic every month. The people looking for what you are selling will find it much easier to track you down. And this can lead to impressive sales and company growth.
Data shows that in 2023, ecommerce sales accounted for 19% of all retail sales worldwide. By 2027, this number is expected to be closer to 25%. If you want to be part of this gold rush, you’ve got to be willing to play the game.
It can feel helpless competing with the likes of Amazon, but it’s important to remember that SEO helps to level the playing field. SEO does not reward size or scale. It rewards relevance and reputation.
Let’s look at the role of SEO in more detail and how you can make this digital marketing activity a core part of your Shopify ecommerce strategy.
What is SEO?
You can of course ignore this section if you know the basics, however, read on if you are not. Before getting started with optimising your Shopify store, let’s refresh on the basics. SEO stands for search engine optimisation. It is a part of the digital marketing toolkit that helps your ideal target customers find your website through search engines.
Search engines operate by selling advertising space. And the only way they can guarantee lots of eyes will see these advertisements is by offering a free service to the end user. That service is a search engine that helps individuals to find the web pages that will best answer their query.
Every time you enter a search query into a search engine, the search engine crawls its “database” to return the best possible results for that query. Website owners can either pay to be included in results (PPC), or they can optimise their website in such a way that search engines know to include their content (SEO).