Is the eCommerce site Shopify SEO friendly?

[SEODinosaur]

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?

[Nayotanguyen]

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

[Martin.Masin]

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

[Marcus_Miller]

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.

[Joe_Nickdow]

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.

[RyanKent]

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

[SystemIDBarcodes]

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.