6 tips for boosting your SEO with SEO Manager
Climbing search results pages takes a lot of time and effort. From optimizing metadata, to checking image sizes, keeping on top of trending and long-term ranking keywords, and more. With so much to do, you need tools on your side that will take the stress out of SEO.
SEO Manager is an app built for Shopify, designed to act as a store’s SEO power tool. It comes with a range of features made to automate some of the most time-consuming SEO tasks, as well as creating templates, and fixing broken links. Plus some unique AI tools and reporting that make the process of SEO for ecommerce smoother and more efficient.
Let’s take a look at 6 ways Shopify merchants can boost their SEO using the tools and features of SEO Manager.
#1 - Automatically add structured markup
Structured markup, or structure data, is an easy way to boost a page’s SEO. Code is added to a page that tells Google and other search engines more about that page. In the case of product pages, that might be availability, price, or reviews. For a blog, it could be the blog’s author. This gives search users extra information on SERPs about your page, and to determine if it’s more suitable than other results. For example if they’re looking for something in a specific price range. It can also help to protect pages when a product is out of stock, as showing product availability means that a search user won’t click on your page then immediately leave when they see it’s out of stock.
In order to add structured data, typically you’d need the skills of a developer. That is unless you have SEO Manager installed. Adding structured markup with SEO Manager is as simple as hitting “Enable” in the structured data settings.
You can control what structured data you want to be added, as well as allow SEO Manager to auto-detect the review app you use to pull data from. From there, structured markup will be added automatically when you create a new product or other type of page.
#2 - Optimize meta data with templates
Metadata is a vital part of your store’s SEO. After all, this is what’s used to display your page in search results. Having a well optimized, consistent approach to metadata is part of the foundation of a good SEO strategy. However if you’re managing a large catalog in addition to lots of other pages on your store, then optimizing every single meta title and meta description will become a massive task.
With SEO Manager, you can create templates for the metadata for different pages in your store.
Using variables, you can tell SEO Manager which information you’d like to display and then view a sample of how it will look in SERPs. That way you can tweak the information and how it looks so that it’s well optimized for displaying in search results.
Templates are simple to set up and edit, making the process of optimizing your metadata more efficient. When you create a new product or page, SEO Manager will automatically apply the template to the page type meaning the process of editing your metadata is taken care of.
#3 - Target and fix broken links before they harm your SEO
Ever been browsing a website, clicked a link, and been hit with a “404 page not found”? It can be very frustrating, and even more so if you’re trying to find a product to buy or learn more about a brand. In fact, 79% of site users who experience poor performance won’t return to that site. Too many broken links can start to harm your store’s SEO, as your site is seen as unhelpful to users. And it also makes for a poor user experience - a vital ranking factor.
However if you’re managing a site with hundreds of pages, it can be difficult to keep on top of 404 errors. After all, you need to know it exists in order to fix it and it may take a while before you notice a broken link. That’s why SEO Manager comes with 404 management tools.
SEO Manager will be able to identify broken links, and report back on them in real time. You’ll then be able to action a fix quickly, before it has a chance to disappoint your customers. If you’re managing a store with a large catalog, it may be that you find a high number of broken links from things like mistyped URLs or retired products. The bulk editor allows you to export all broken links in your store, add the new URLs in a CSV file, and import them all at once to SEO Manager.
#4 - Protect pages with an out-of-stock redirect
Similarly to a 404 error, it’s just as disappointing to find a product you’re interested in is out of stock. This may only happen occasionally throughout the year, however in the run up to major events like Black Friday and the holiday season, you may find products out of stock more often. When this happens, many customers will simply leave and find something else to purchase instead. And you as the merchant can only hope that the alternative product is still from your brand.
And again similarly to a 404 error, the more customers navigate to a page to find a product out of stock, the more likely it can be to harm your SEO. They will visit the page from SERPs, see it’s out of stock, then leave your site. This increases the bounce rate for that page, indicating to Google that it isn’t a good fit for certain search terms and pushing your page down the rankings.
Protecting your store’s SEO in these cases is crucial. SEO Manager’s out-of-stock redirect feature allows merchants to send customers to an alternate link when a product is unavailable.
When enabled, the redirect will be active when a product becomes unavailable. The redirect link is specified by the merchant, so that might be an alternative product, landing page, collection, or some other page. When the product is back in stock, the feature automatically removes the redirect. This protects product pages, leading to a better user experience and reducing bounce rates.
#5 - Use AI to optimize titles and meta descriptions
Meta titles and meta descriptions are an important part of your store’s SEO. They have the power to catch the attention of your target audience in SERPs, and to add crucial keywords to help your page climb page rankings. That importance means that even though it’s just a few hundred characters total, you need to spend time ensuring that they’re well optimized. And whether you have an entire team managing SEO or it’s another hat your marketing team wears, speeding up this process allows your team more time to focus on other optimizations.
SEO Manager’s AI assistant is the ideal tool to make the process of creating metadata efficient and intelligent at the same time. Users can input keywords and topics and select the tone of voice, and the AI assistant will generate suggestions. Merchants can then use this either as a starting point, or tweak it to suit their strategy, before reviewing and using the title or description.
AI is an incredibly useful tool for any marketing team, and especially in SEO it can provide a method for creating and optimizing metadata. This helps to speed up the SEO process, and enhance your strategy with the power and intelligence of AI.
#6 - Get actionable results using real-time reporting
Search engine optimization is an ongoing, evolving process for every page and site on the internet. It’s not a one-and-done type of task - it requires constant monitoring, tweaking, and strategizing to be effective. That monitoring is a time consuming task in itself, and it can be difficult to know where to spend time optimizing for the best results. You could take the time to optimize all your images, but it might be another aspect of your page bringing its speed down.
With SEO Manager, you can get reports on your store’s SEO performance in real-time. The app keeps up to date with your store, checking every page and giving you an overall SEO health score. SEO Manager will also be able to highlight pages with a lower SEO score meaning you can then dig a little deeper and receive some actionable insights you can use to improve that score. You can also quickly run common SEO related tests such as PageSpeed Insights or a mobile friendliness test.
This kind of reporting is invaluable to the ongoing health of a store’s SEO. It gives merchants the power of efficiency in optimization, removing that manual effort of running tests and making checks and trying to determine what exactly is needed for improvement.
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Ensuring your store is discovered in SERPs is one of the most important things you can do to find those all important new customers. Finding new ways to boost your store’s SEO is the key to staying on top of optimization, and climbing the rankings to catch the eye of search users. By using the tools SEO Manager offers, Shopify merchants can make their strategy more efficient and intelligent.