Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Is the eCommerce site Shopify SEO friendly?
-
We ave a prospect client that wants to start doing SEO for his Shopify site, we are unsure if this will be SEO friendly. Will we have enough control to get great placement? Are we better off rebuilding the site for the client in an OpenCart?
-
Let's export Shopify to OpenCart. OpenCart is designed in a way that all of its pages can be indexed and identified in search engines. So by providing the identification information through Meta Title, Meta Description and Meta keywords, you are making it easier for search engines to get your store data. OpenCart allows the use of search engine optimized URLs for product, category, manufacturer and information pages. SEO keywords are defined per product, category, manufacturer and information page, stored in a database table (url_alias), looked up at each page request, and translated into an internal URL. Here is some SEO tips for optimize OpenCart site: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/11-seo-tips-boost-your-opencart-online-store-sourabh-nagori
-
Yes it is.
I am a Shopify Expert on the marketing panel. I have clients that ask me this question every other day at least. So much in fact that I ended up just creating a White Paper to refer clients to so that I don't have to repeat myself over and over again. If you are curious about what makes Shopify SEO friendly then you can check out the White Paper at http://www.denverseo.bz/is-shopify-good-for-seo.html.
I hope that this helps clear up this issue for anyone that might have questions about Shopify and SEO.
From what I have found you can really optimize any platform well, it just really depends upon who is in the driver's seat, their previous experience, and how talented they are when optimizing websites.
Cheers,
Martin
-
As ever with these things, I tend to think it depends on the client and budget. We can certainly do something better with WordPress but the costs are going to outstrip working with Shopify considerably. If the client has no technical staff and does not want to be responsible for the management of the store and just wants something that works and can be lightly SEO'd then, shopify is not terrible.
Sure, it's not great, but you have enough control to do the basics and if you want to get into the templating features it can be fairly powerful.
Also, unlike volusion and other similar packages, it includes a blog platform (very basic) that allows you to have a blog on the same domain instead of having to manage a separate blog.
Personally, I go WordPress + WooCommerce now if the budget supports it as you can really optimise that platform to perfection.
-
I've looked at Shopify and it does look like it is a good platform for most uses depending on the kind of market that your client is in however I would be careful. I'm sure that it's all shared hosting which could be a speed/performance problem and the lack of control of the backend would be my main issues. I would just hate to have an issue that I have no control over make the site less optimized.
I think if you're in a niche market that isn't too competitive you should be okay with it. I know they handle all the PCI compliance and stuff like that. I would however probably choose Wordpress over it any day just because of the features and controls.
-
Is the eCommerce site Shopify SEO friendly?
It depends on how you define "SEO friendly". Have they taken some steps to improve SEO? Yes. Would I ever build a business site on that platform? No.
The nice benefits are you can get your site up and going quickly and they offer excellent hosting.
Aside from the financial expense of needing to pay monthly for the service, there are far too many limitations from any hosted solution. There are tons of SEO optimizations which are desirable but cannot be made due to you having no control over the software nor the hosting environment. Sure you can change title tags and some other changes, but that is not close to enough.
I would recommend WordPress + the eCommerce plugin or Joomla + VirtueMart over Shopify. I mention these two specifically because they offer a nice balance between a cart and a site. If you only need a cart, there are several cart solutions available.
If you do go with Shopify, be sure to get your SEOmoz discount: http://www.seomoz.org/pro-perks
-
I think that you can do a virtual machine instance of OpenCart and see what the system returns by viewing page source. I haven't personally used Shopify but as a hosted solution, you'll have to test to see how that works out. Then do an audit of the code both spit out. Remember, the on-page optimization is only one part of your solution.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Breaking up a site into multiple sites
Hi, I am working on plan to divide up mid-number DA website into multiple sites. So the current site's content will be divided up among these new sites. We can't share anything going forward because each site will be independent. The current homepage will change to just link out to the new sites and have minimal content. I am thinking the websites will take a hit in rankings but I don't know how much and how long the drop will last. I know if you redirect an entire domain to a new domain the impact is negligible but in this case I'm only redirecting parts of a site to a new domain. Say we rank #1 for "blue widget" on the current site. That page is going to be redirected to new site and new domain. How much of a drop can we expect? How hard will it be to rank for other new keywords say "purple widget" that we don't have now? How much link juice can i expect to pass from current website to new websites? Thank you in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | timdavis0 -
Onsite SEO vs Offsite SEO
Hey I know the importance of both onsite & offsite, primarily with regard to outreach/content/social. One thing I am trying to determine at the moment, is how much do I invest in offsite. My current focus is to improve our onpage content on product pages, which is taking some time as we have a small team. But I also know our backlinks need to improve. I'm just struggling on where to spend my time. Finish the onsite stuff by section first, or try to do a bit of both onsite/offsite at the same time?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey1 -
Does it hurt your SEO to have an inaccessible directory in your site structure?
Due to CMS constraints, there may be some nodes in our site tree that are inaccessible and will automatically redirect to their parent folder. Here's an example: www.site.com/folder1/folder2/content, /folder2 redirects to /folder1. This would only be for the single URL itself, not the subpages (i.e. /folder1/folder2/content and anything below that would be accessible). Is there any real risk in this approach from a technical SEO perspective? I'm thinking this is likely a non-issue but I'm hoping someone with more experience can confirm. Another potential option is to have /folder2 accessible (it would be 100% identical to /folder1, long story) and use a canonical tag to point back to /folder1. I'm still waiting to hear if this is possible. Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | digitalcrc0 -
Multiple Ecommerce sites, same products
We are a large catalog company with thousands of products across 2 different domains. Google clearly knows that the sites are connected. Both domains are fairly well known brands - thousands of branded searches for each site per month. Roughly half of our products overlap - they appear on both sites. We have a known duplicate content issue - both sites having exactly the same product descriptions, and we are working on it. We've seen that when a product has different content on the 2 sites, frequently, both pages get to page 2 of the SERPs, but that's as far as it goes, despite aggressive white hat link building tactics. 1. Is it possible to get the same product pages on page 1 of the SERPs for both sites? (I think I know the answer...) 2. Should we be canonicalizing (is that a word?) products across the sites? This would get tricky - both sites have roughly the same domain authority, but in different niches. Certain products and keywords naturally rank better on 1 site or the other depending on the niche.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AMHC0 -
Ecommerce Site homepage , Is it okay to have Links as H2 Tags as that is relevant to the page ?
Hi All, I have a Rental site and I am bit confused with how best do my H Tags on my homepage I know the H1 is the most important, Then H2 Tags and so on.. and that these tags should really be titles for content. However, I have a few categories (links) on my homepage so I am wondering if I could put these as H2 Tags given that it is relevant to the page . H3 Tags will my News and Guides etc , H4 Tags will the whats on the footer. I am attached a made up screenshot of what I propose for my homepage if someone could please give it a quick look , it would be very much appreciated. I have looked at what some competitors do a lot of them don't seem to have h2's etc but I know it's an important factor for rankings etc. Many thanks Pete dJSFQwI
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeteC120 -
Using WP All Import csv import plugin for wordpress to daily update products on large ecommerce site. Category naming and other issues.
We have just got an automated solution working to upload about 4000 products daily to our site. We get a CSV file from the wholesalers server each day and the way they have named products and categories is not ideal. Although most of the products remain the same (don't need to be over written) Some will go out of stock or prices may change etc. Problem is we have no control over the csv file so we need to keep the catagories they have given us. Might be able to create new catgories and have products listed under multiple categories? If anyone has used wp all import or has knoledge in this area please let me know. I have plenty more questions but this should start the ball rolling! Thanks in advance mozzers
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | weebro0 -
Best way to merge 2 ecommerce sites
Our Client owns two ecommerce websites. Website A sells 20 related brands. Website has improving search rank, but not normally on the second to fourth page of google. Website B was purchased from a competitor. It has 1 brand (also sold on site A). Search results are normally high on the first page of google. Client wants to consider merging the two sites. We are looking at options. Option 1: Do nothing, site B dominates it’s brand, but this will not do anything to boost site A. Option 2: keep both sites running, but put lots of canonical tags on site B pointing to site A Option 3: close down site B and make a lot of 301 redirects to site A Option 4: ??? Any thoughts on this would be great. We want to do this in a way that boosts site A as much as possible without losing sales on the one brand that site B sells.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EugeneF0