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As part of JSON-LD for SEO I’m privy to a lot of questionable SEO “advice”. Part of having happy customers is that they trust what I say and will forward me questionable advice other Shopify SEO apps and consultants give them.

Some of the advice is so bad that I get upset for the customer and all the other stores who’ve followed that bad advice and were harmed by it.

Other times the logic is so bad I can’t help but laugh and poke holes in it. Like this “claim”:

Having multiple copies of structured data will cause Google to read it as spam.

At first that sounds like some expert advice. Something that sounds similar to other advice from Google about content duplication and spam.

But here’s the catch…

Every single Shopify theme comes with structured data by default.

It’s limited.

It probably won’t get any results.

But it’s there.

It was actually required by Shopify a couple of years back and themes would be rejected from the Theme Store if they didn’t have any structured data.

So when this Shopify SEO app is installed and adds their own structured data… by their own claim, they are causing every Shopify store to be considered as spam.

Whoops. face-palm.gif

If a Vulcan read that, they’d conclude either:

1. their SEO app is causing spam and is harmful to install or
2. their claim about duplicate copies of structured data is false

Now if that SEO app did their research like I did years ago, they’d see that Google doesn’t care about multiple sets of structured data at all. All they want is one good set to use and they ignore the rest.

I’ve personally looked at thousands of Shopify stores as part of the by-hand monitoring in JSON-LD for SEO Plus+. I’ve seen nearly every one of stores accumulate Rich Results that have a several sets of duplicate structured data on every page (bad theme coding). Didn’t hurt them one bit because JSON-LD for SEO’s data was so good that Google was ignoring the bad sets.

Doing the research that other app would also learn that getting flagged for spam in the structured data is really hard and only happens with very egregious errors (e.g. fake review, invisible content, keyword stuffing).

I’ve seen structured data get marked as spam four times over the years:

• two were combining product reviews with fake reviews,
• one had invisible keyword stuffed content,
• and one inflated the review numbers in the structured data (due to a bug in that app who made this claim, amusingly).

But I guess it’s easier to use the scare tactic of calling something spam than doing the hard work of researching and educating your customers.

At least until the scare tactic bites backs and the app gets caught in the lie.

For me, I’d rather take the harder path of educating customers on what’s actually happening so they can be focused on the results. It takes longer and more work on my part but that’s why JSON-LD for SEO has such a high success rate over other structured data apps. It’s not just some code someone slapped together and started selling.

The idea of gift cards isn't new. They have been available for years, but only recently across all Shopify plans. Yet still, many Shopify stores don't offer them.

To help you to start increasing your web traffic, I’ve outlined 4 tips that I use for my business and for clients that are proven methods for increasing web traffic

Shopify only protects you at the platform-level. A platform recovery does not necessarily recover your store data.

They wanted to get more products up before they made it public. When I told them the impact of leaving the password on, they were shocked.

The exit rate and bounce rate are similar in that the customer on your website didn't buy anything, but how you use the information is different. 

For many merchants I work with, their goals are usually to increase sales and/or increase conversions - the end result. It's also important to focus on what comes before.

Do a quick Google search for "product description tabs". What I didn't see are the reasons not to use tabs.

Already booking into September, October and November mean that those who want to make changes to their site before the holidays are running out of time.

The purpose of your homepage isn't to sell them on that one item that brought them in from the proverbial sidewalk. Merchants are often too eager to close the sale. 

My freshman high school science teacher taught me one of the most valuable lessons that to this day I still remember.

It’s important to make your search results look the best they can which includes having high-quality titles and SEO/meta descriptions.

Are you thinking your product is any different? It's not. Customers want to know they are purchasing from brands they can relate to and that will treat them well.

Visitors come to your site from a variety of starting points with an end goal of making a purchase. It's your job to help them get to their end goal without getting so lost they want to give up.

What if I told you that designing for inclusivity could be small changes to your Shopify store that will directly impact conversions and they don't have to cost a lot of money?

Clarify shipping delays on your Shopify store

Use Google's special search queries to see how Google shows your store across their search engine.

To those who identify as white, this article is for you.

Last week, Shopify held their annual conference virtually where they announced that local delivery and pickup was going to be rolled out to all Shopify stores.

They are always testing new styles but since I noticed this on April 1st I decided to wait a bit to see if they held steady or were a another April Fool’s joke. Almost two months later, they appear to be the new regular.

Icons are used all the time, and when done correctly, they communicate the core idea or intent of a product. Yet so many store owners don't think about using them on their product page.

A major part of Shopify SEO is product descriptions.

Google loves content and for most stores, product descriptions are the bulk of their content. Some stores have blogs and articles too but they are definitely the minority (hint: sounds like a content marketing opportunity).

But content is one thing that buying an app can’t solve.

An app can rearrange your content.

An app can remix your content.

An app can generate some default content.

But let’s be honest here, Google’s algorithm is much smarter than any app and they will be able to see that all of that content is basically the same.

Google won’t penalize you for reusing the content (that’s a common misconception), but you won’t get as much credit for it at all. You might be better off writing even one sentence of unique content than relying on generated content.

If you’re using a SEO app thinking they’ll handle your content for you and get you ranked, you’ll getting only a fraction of the results as you could have.

Though the great thing about content is that you don’t have to do it all at once. You can work on one product description each day and your SEO will improve a tiny bit every time.

Don’t get intimidated by the amount of content you "should" have, consider it an ongoing project that you chip away at.

One SEO feature that an app can help automatically with is structured data. Mostly because the data helps Google’s algorithm which makes their job easier.

You can either audit, code, and test your store’s structured data by hand or install JSON-LD for SEO and have the structured data you need for several types of Rich Results.

It’s already helped a few thousand Shopify stores with their structured data and it could help you too.

Longer urls give you more keywords in the urls but they also weaken the product’s keywords. Shorter urls emphasize the product’s keywords but you’re more limited in the number and types of keywords you can use.

Customers are like birds. And the rat… The rat is all the little things preventing customers from buying. I call that the conversion killer!