Shopify announced mid-2020 that it facilitates more than a million businesses across no less than 175 nations. In 2022, the number of small enterprises fueled by Shopify has grown even further. It has evolved as the go-to tool for online SMEs around the globe.
Since Shopify is such a competitive platform, it’s important to deploy the right Shopify SEO tactics to make your store more noticeable in search engine algorithms. One of the first things you can tweak is the store theme.
Shopify themes make your store more accessible and appealing. As a result, visitors will hang around longer, and the longer they stay, the likelier it is that they will add to your list of customers.
So, getting the theme right is an essential step toward maximizing the SEO potential of a Shopify store. But, how can you make sure that you have picked the best theme for your shop? Here are some factors you need to look at while choosing a Shopify theme.
Responsiveness And Mobile Compatibility
The first box you need to tic is the responsiveness of the theme. Nobody would return to a store if it took forever to load the first time. An SEO-friendly Shopify store theme will minimize lag time and provide smooth access to the store across all platforms.
That said, you will have to be extra attentive to the store’s mobile compatibility. Statistics shows that consumers prefer shopping on the phone over other smart devices. So, the theme has to make your shop accessible to smartphone users.
Search engines also reward mobile friendliness. Search results are one of the key determinants of a site’s ranking on both Google and Bing search results. So, you can’t make any compromise on that front.
Valid HTML Markup
Some SEO analysts say that you don’t have to worry about valid HTML that much if you don’t face any rendering issues. Regardless, it will be best if you don’t undermine the importance of valid HTML in boosting your search engine performance.
Why is it important? Valid HTML results in better browser compatibility, crawl rate, and user experience. The Google Ads will run much better on your store if you have valid HTML. Also, you will face frequent malfunctions if you are a hreflang user.
Need For Speed
A fast-loading theme is a must for ensuring optimum user satisfaction in a Shopify store. The faster the theme renders, the more improvement you will see in user engagement, navigation, and other metrics.
Ease Of Metadata Customization
The ability to alter metadata is a powerful feature for any theme and can substantially help your site’s SEO. The title tag, meta description, and robots meta are some of the metadata tags you should be able to bring changes to for SEO purposes.
Snippet Friendliness
Featured snippets extract structured data from a website and prominently display it in their dedicated boxes within Google’s search results. The inclusion of feature snippets is a proven technique for outranking your competition. It also drives up zero-click searches.
Although it’s not a given, employing schema markup increases your chances of Google displaying a featured snippet from your website. A Shopify theme or app that automates the addition of markup for product schema is an ideal candidate for your store.
Social Media Integration
You can’t overlook the role of social media in modern-day marketing. So, your Shopify theme should come with built-in social media sharing features. Social media connectivity will help you increase sales and draw traffic.
Shopify SEO experts, Adaptyve Digital, recommend social media marketing to increase user engagement. In doing so, you can effortlessly reach a vast pool of potential customers. So, pick a theme that’s more convenient for social media sharing.
Optimized Media
Unoptimized media will crash your site. It’s a matter of when not if. So, you need a theme that optimizes the media, mainly picture files, and prevents your site from slowing down. You can easily address the video issue by hosting videos on YouTube. But what about photos?
The theme will cache the photos so that the load time remains unaffected. It will also rescale and save images in WebP format to improve the browsing experience. In a nutshell, media management will be far easier with an optimized Shopify theme.
Language And Translation Support
If you don’t want to restrict your clientele within a certain territory, adding language and translation support to the site should be a crucial consideration. So, don’t forget to install a theme that supports multiple languages and translation features to attract international buyers.
Final Words
Instead of name-dropping a few themes, we wanted to let you know which features make a Shopify theme more SEO-friendly. Maybe you will find an affordable theme that mainly flew under the radar but offers the functionalities you are looking for.
