So you’ve finally set up your first Shopify store.
Everything is in place, you’ve found the perfect products, set up your email list, and learned everything there is to learn about the Shopify platform.
But despite your hard work, no one is visiting your store.
What you need is traffic, what you need are the best Shopify SEO apps available on the market right now.
What Is SEO?
For your Shopify store to get sales, you first need traffic.
There are plenty of free methods to drive traffic to your store, but SEO or search engine optimization is one of the best ways to get free organic traffic.
Search engines use a specific algorithm to figure out what to rank first in search results. There are over 100 factors that make up this algorithm and even Google engineers don’t know exactly what they are!
Here are a few important SEO factors.
- Backlinks to your website
- On-page optimization for target keywords
- Page speed on your website
- Mobile-friendliness
- Page content quality and length
- Having a secure site (HTTPS instead of HTTP)
These are just a few of the main factors in 2019, Google has over 200 ranking factors
Can You Optimize For SEO With Shopify?
First off, you’re in luck as Shopify already comes with many SEO-friendly features. This means you’re one step ahead of anyone who’s using other platforms.
But, your work doesn’t end there. Shopify can definitely be optimized further for SEO. One way is to use a Shopify SEO plugin.
Another method is to get links pointing back to your Shopify store.
If you don’t do SEO for Shopify, you’ll fall behind on the millions of other Shopify stores that are doing their best to optimize for search engines.
Not just that, all the organic traffic that you bring to your store means more potential revenue that you can then invest in paid ads more even more traffic.
The Best Shopify SEO Apps
Some SEO factors won’t be improved just using a Shopify SEO plugin.
For example, if you want to build more quality backlinks, you’ll need a solid backlink building strategy.
On the same note, even the best free Shopify SEO app won’t magically create quality content that signals to Google that your store is full of valuable information.
But Shopify SEO apps can definitely give you a boost for factors like page speed and on-page SEO, which will go a long way to improving organic traffic.
Here are the 5 best Shopify SEO apps to help you get higher Google rankings in 2019.
1. Plug In SEO
Plug in SEO is just amazing, it’s like your very own SEO assistant that warns you when any issues come up.
Right now, over 90,000 Shopify users have Plug in SEO on their stores. That says a lot about its usefulness and including it in this list of best Shopify SEO apps was a no brainer.
The main feature of this app is its automatic SEO problem check. Once it’s installed on your store, it will run automatic tests on a regular basis and give you the details of your SEO results.
But that’s not all, it will even give you free code snippets and directions to help you fix the problems yourself. If you email the developers, they can even send you extra help, free of charge.
Here are some of the checks you can expect once you run a test.
- SEO problems – The app will check your entire website and product listings to ensure there’s nothing dragging down SEO for your site.
- Speed – Is there something slowing down your web page?
- Blog – If you don’t have any blogging content, the plugin will recommend paid options for getting blog posts prepared for your store.
- Broken links – This checks to ensure all the links on your site are up to date and still functional.
- Keywords – Are your pages and metadata optimized for your keywords?
Pricing
You have two options for pricing with this plugin.
There’s a Free Forever plan that gives you access to unlimited SEO, blog, speed problem checks, fix instructions, automatic email alerts, and email support.
However, the real gold is in the Plus plan.
For $20 a month, you get automatic SEO improvements, instruction videos, title and description editing (including bulk edits), premium support, powerful SEO control and structured data that comes with full JSON scripts.
You even get a free install of the plugin on your Shopify store , a great bonus for my less tech-savvy store owners out there.
If you want to try out the Plus tier, you get a 7-day free trial. You can always revert back to the Free tier if you don’t see the use in the extra features.
Related: Loox Review: Why Do You Need a Photo Review App?
However, I recommend splurging on those extra features. Think of it as an investment, that extra $20 a month can help you bring extra traffic that will result in much more than $20 in sales.
The automatic SEO improvements alone could save you loads of time, so you can focus on the other aspects of your business.
This Shopify SEO plugin integrates with Google, Bing, Langify, Locksmith, and any other search engines your potential customers could be using.
2. Ultra SEO
Don’t get me wrong, Shopify is an awesome platform for online stores. However, they do have limited options for editing titles and descriptions.
It’s kind of difficult to edit the meta tags for your product pages.
In short, mega tags are those hidden HTML tags that exist for every page of a website. This is what Google uses to display the title and description snippet when your site pops up on a search result. This is what I mean…
Taking full advantage of these meta tags is key to getting people to click on your product descriptions. If you can’t edit these, Google will do the job of pulling text from your page automatically based on what it feels is most relevant, but in some cases, it might get it wrong.
Ultra SEO is your solution to get full control of these options.
Features
Ultra SEO gives you a full featured dashboard to change everything about your product’s meta tags.
You can edit the following.
- Title
- Description
- Keywords you want to target
- Name of the author
- The preview that pops up on search results
The plugin is easy to access, all you need to do is select it in your ‘More actions’ tab when editing a product listing on your Shopify store.
On average, you can expect the meta tags to show up on Google within one week of editing them. The app also gives you suggestions on the number of characters to use for maximum optimization via a ‘Characters remaining’ text.
You can go over this limit, but know that Google will probably cut down your text if you do.
Ultra SEO is a one-click install and won’t ever require you to code anything.
Pricing
This Shopify SEO plugin is definitely affordable at $10 a month.
You also get a free 7-day trial to take it for a spin before committing to the payment.
3. Smart SEO
In the previous section, we discussed the importance of meta tags for the SEO health of your Shopify store. Of course, Ultra SEO is a great tool for meta tags.
But do you know what's even better than a feature that enables you to edit your meta tags?
Not having to manually enter your meta tags at all.
This is where Smart SEO comes in. Using flexible JSON-LD structured data, this amazing tool drastically reduces the amount of time you'll need to spend optimizing your store's SEO.
When it comes to efficiency, Smart SEO is definitely the best Shopify SEO app out there.
The developers of the plugin go so far as to state that you can cut down 80% of the time spent on optimizing your store.
Features
Smart SEO will automatically generate meta tags and alt tags for all the products listed on your store. How does it do this, you might ask?
With this plugin, you get a handy tool that allows you to create templates for metadata generation. This template will act as a set of rules which Smart SEO will use to generate new tags when you add new products and pages to your store.
As you can see in the image above, you can create these templates using straightforward scripting rules. There's no need for intense, complicated lines of code.
That's because Smart SEO supports JSON-LD integration instead of relying on languages like liquid and javascript.
If you're not familiar with JSON, don't be intimidated. It's quite simple to use, and the plugin gives you example tokens to choose from, as shown in the screenshot.
Smart SEO will also automatically generate alt tags instead of needing to wait for hours or days.
One core feature that Shopify lacks is the ability to manage your sitemap. However, this Shopify SEO plugin also has a sitemap feature, enabling you to edit your store's sitemap directly from within the app.
Having a sitemap is key to a healthy SEO, and this feature saves you the need of implementing yet another plugin. You could always find a dedicated sitemap plugin,.
The more apps you needlessly install to your site, the more chances these plugins will slow down your page speed. This goes counter to your goal of improving your SEO!
Pricing
With Smart SEO, you get a 7-day free trial. Once those 7 days are up, you can continue using the app for the low pricing of $4.99 a month! That's some incredible value right there.
For a measly 5 bucks, think of all the time you'll save! This one is definitely worth adding to your list if you want to simplify SEO for Shopify.
4. SEO Audit
This app is quite similar to Plug in SEO, but mainly focuses on giving you a benchmark of your SEO rankings.
Benchmark Hero focuses on giving you the most in-depth and detailed site audit to help you understand why your site isn’t getting traffic. It's definitely one of the best Shopify SEO apps to give you a proper overview of your store's SEO health.
Here are the main parameters the app checks for you during the audit:
- Speed of the site, how fast it could become, and what this could mean in sales
- Trustworthiness of your store
- Lifetime value of your customers
- Percentage of recurring customers
- How customers see your site
- How Google scans your site
- Easy ways to improve your results
Because it gives you insight into your customers, this app helps you understand where your traffic is coming from, and whether or not you’re generating many new customers and retaining previous customers.
No other plugin on this list allows you to do that.
That’s about all for the features – it is quite limited, but Benchmark Hero is really good at what it does.
This app is 100% free , no paid options available! Give it a spin and you might learn something valuable.
5. Bulk Edit Image SEO
So far, I’ve shown you the best Shopify SEO apps for performance and text-related optimizations.
But, there’s one factor we haven’t looked at yet, this factor is a huge part of any e-commerce store.
No doubt that images make up a sizable portion of your Shopify store. When left unchecked, images can dramatically drag down your SEO rankings.
That’s because large images will slow down your website significantly, you’re missing out on a huge SEO opportunity if you don’t add the right alt-text and file names to your images.
Several of the best Shopify SEO apps enable you to edit your images one-by-one to take care of this issue. But that might not be enough, what if you’ve already set up hundreds of products on your site?
This is where bulk edit comes in.
Related: 11 Best Shopify Print On Demand Apps To Create Custom Products
Features
The main feature that sets this plugin apart is the ability to bulk update your image alt-text and file names. They let you do this via customizable templates that will represent your overall store.
This means all of your products will have a similar image SEO format.
You can also use a set-it-and-forget-it option to automatically update any new images you add to your store.
This will save you loads of time, since you can establish what type of alt-text and file naming you want to follow and the app will do it for you afterward.
Work once, reap the benefits forever.
You can also:
- Add watermarks to your images to protect yourself from shady competitors
- Optimize image size without losing quality
- Resize, crop, frame, and trim your product images – or set them all to a square shape
- View changelogs to see all the changes on images after a bulk edit
- Revert changes you’re unhappy with
Pricing
With its starter option, this app is definitely the best free Shopify SEO app for image optimization. However, you can expand your services with a total of 5 different tiers:
- Starter: Free
- Basic: $9.99 a month
- Premium: $19.99
- Advanced: $49.99
- Enterprise: $99.99
All plans offer unlimited Alt Text edits, minimize options, PNG to JPG edits, making your images square,and email support.
The main difference between the plans is the number of monthly image edits you’ll need and the number of days your image are backed up for. All plans except the Starter plan offer advanced edits as well as theme and asset image optimization.
If you need over 25,000 image edits per month, they offer custom pricing.
Conclusion
Optimizing your store for SEO is a no-brainer in 2019 – with all of the best Shopify SEO apps available on the market for affordable prices (and sometimes no fee at all!), you have no excuse to lag in this department.
Together, the 5 apps in this post will take care of all the aspects you need to win the game of SEO for Shopify in 2019. Whether its site speed, meta descriptions, image optimization, or mobile-ready pages, you’ll be ready to tackle it all.
Even if you’re a complete newbie to the SEO game, you can maximize organic traffic to your store. We recently did a review on a new Shopify product app that just same out! Read our review here.