[Shopify] Three SEO tips that small and medium-sized e-commerce sites should take

"SEO" is a word you will always hear when creating a website, regardless of whether it is an e-commerce site or not. Simply put, it means raising your "Google search ranking" .

I'm sure there are people who have thought about asking a company for help. Sometimes they receive a surprisingly high quote.

In this article, I will not write about technical matters. I will write about abstract matters, but I think you will be able to find a suitable measure for you if you know the realistic difficulties, so I think you will be able to learn the conceptual part.

After that, you will eventually be able to see the ``three points'' that you need to do on your own.

Now, when you search on Google, you probably click on the top of the results, right? Sometimes you may have to go to the third or fourth page to look for something, but most of the time the information you want is displayed at the top, so you're satisfied.

This is something that applies to everyone.

Therefore, if you rank high in search results, you will inevitably get more visitors. Since attracting customers is important for an EC site, if you rank high in search results, a lot of people will come to the store , so naturally, you can expect sales to increase!

However, that's a state that everyone wants to be in!

Popular search terms are a system in which all your rivals are aiming for the top spots, and as I will explain later, it is a system that favors "large companies," so it is not easy for small and medium-sized companies to advance to the top. However, it is not impossible!

There are even small and medium-sized websites that rank highly for unexpected popular keywords!

If you understand how the system works, you can advance to the top, so let's first briefly explain how it works!

The reality of SEO

When creating a website, we are often asked casually to "include SEO measures as well," but to be honest, there are almost no cases where this works well!

There is no doubt that "SEO measures are important," but if it were just a matter of doing it casually and ranking highly, all companies would appear at the top.

But how many companies can rank highly on Google's search results page? That's right. In reality, there isn't much space !

Despite this, web development companies are very happy to receive orders for "SEO measures." I think you'll get a response like "We'll get it done!", and in most cases, I think they actually do the bare minimum measures during the construction stage .

However, the key point here is that SEO measures do not end with the "construction phase"!

SEO measures start with choosing the right words

I will write about what requirements are necessary in the next chapter, but I would like to understand that this does not end with the construction phase.

First of all, one important thing about SEO is which "search word" your website corresponds to.

In the past, you have consulted me on a question that made me honestly think, "Hey, that's crazy!"

• Bed Mattress
• shampoo

For example, when someone casually asks me about this, I always tell them the reality.

When you search for "bed mat," the top results are from major furniture retailers such as "Nitori," "IKEA," "Otsuka Furniture," and "Don Quijote." Comparison sites also tend to rank highly. I'll explain in a conceptual section later how comparison sites rank highly.

When it comes to "shampoo," the top rankings are dominated by major companies such as "comparison sites," "Shiseido," "Kanebo," and "Kao." Moreover, major companies produce many different shampoo brands, so the beauty industry is truly a red ocean.

However, when you search, don't you also enter a "second search term"? If you want a bed mat , searching for just "bed mat" won't bring up the information you want, so you'll probably add another search term.

In order to increase the precision of the information you are looking for, most people probably enter a second search term into their search, such as "firm bed mat" or "memory resilience bed mat."

This is something that everyone is likely to do. And if the second search term doesn't work, try adding more words.

You may also enter a third search term, such as "firm single bed mat" or "memory-resilience summer bed mat."

First of all, when choosing a word, start by looking for words that seem to have an "opening". It's difficult to rank high unless you actually search for words and look for places with few rivals that make you think "Maybe I can rank high with this word?"

By the way, popular words with a small number of words are also called "big words" , so it's good to know them later. Big words are not easy to target.

However, for niche or specialized products, it's okay to target big keywords. Since the number of searches is small to begin with, it's actually quite possible for them to come up in the top rankings. However, for very specialized products, you may not need to take SEO measures. In the first place, it only sells to enthusiasts, and only enthusiasts search for it...so if the number of searches is only around 20 per month, there are no rivals.

SEO keywords aren’t forever

The difficult thing about SEO is that words aren't eternal.

If you think about the words "memory resilience summer bed mattress," it's easy to imagine that there would be a lot of searches in the summer but fewer in the winter, right?

There are also other factors that could cause a sudden increase in rivals, such as a boom.

So if you think about it like that, does it mean that the same keywords will continue to rank highly? Not necessarily.

Even if you work hard and manage to move up the ranks, your ranking may drop before you know it, and there are many cases where your ranking does not improve as expected for the words you are targeting.

In other words, SEO cannot be considered truly effective unless you continue to brush up on it constantly.

SEO measures don’t end at the “construction stage”

I think that if you understand the concept to this extent, you will be able to understand what I wrote above.

In the next chapter, we'll summarize the necessary elements!

Necessary elements for SEO

There is a way to fight SEO. This is decided by Google!

There are Yahoo search and Bing search, but about 70% of the world uses Google search. Yahoo search also uses Google's engine. So

★Rules (algorithms) created by Google = SEO measures

It is no exaggeration to say that.

And as long as there is someone who sets the rules, the current situation is that Google can decide to change the rules as well.

Even Google has not said clearly what is most important. They have said vague things, but the current mainstream view is

• Article contents (contents on the homepage)
• title
• internal structuring
• Backlinks
• Update frequency (freshness)
• Domain Authority

I think it's a good idea to get to know the area.

Again, I will leave the technical details aside and try to give a conceptual explanation.

Article Contents

There is no doubt that this is the most important thing! Google's mission is to "display information that is useful to people," so it displays articles that are likely to be useful for the search term at the top of the results.

Sites that only write random sentences or short sentences are generally judged to not have "good information" and will not rank highly.

For example, it is recommended that you write about 3,000 characters for a blog post. On manuscript paper, that's about seven and a half pages. If a student were given that amount of homework, they would probably be like, "Wha-aat?", but that's the reality.

I think the main reasons why the comparison articles I wrote earlier tend to appear at the top of the results are that they are more likely to contain "desired information" and that they contain a lot of text .

People who want to buy a bed mattress want to compare, so this is the information they want.

title

When you search, the title is displayed, right?

You probably decide whether or not to click on a title. Sites with a high number of clicks are more likely to be seen as providing "desired information," and therefore more likely to rank higher in the future.

So the title is very important. I think it is necessary to give each page a title that makes people want to click on it. Why did you come to this blog?

Did they come from a Google search? From social media? From a link on the page?

I don't know why, but I think it was because the title caught my attention.

The title is a bit provocative, "Three SEO Tips for Small and Medium-Sized EC Sites," but I think people were probably hooked (lol).

But just catching the fish isn't enough!

If you lure people with a title like "Top 5 Comfortable Bed Mattresses for Summer" and only talk about sheets at the beginning, even if there is a detailed comparison later in the article, people will probably move on to another page before that, right? (This is called "dropping off").

Make sure to write at the beginning that the content matches the title!

internal structuring

I think this is a word that comes up often when researching SEO, and I also think this is where SEO specialists focus most of their efforts.

Homepages are basically made using something called "html," and there is a way of writing that html that tells Google "this is important."

I won't go into details, but if the structure is easy for Google to understand, your search ranking tends to improve.

Internal mobility is also an important aspect of structuring.

As an e-commerce website, our company takes this "mobility" factor quite seriously.

• Display related products
• Recently viewed products
• Breadcrumbs
• Related Links

In short, it is important to have a structure that allows visitors who visit once to continue looking at the information without getting bored!

Although I only briefly explained this, this is a difficult field with a lot to do, including metadata, and it is definitely a field that requires expertise. It is difficult to say there are pros and cons, so it is a chance for SEO specialists to show off their skills, but to be honest, the "content of the article" is far more important than this!

Backlinks

The term "inbound link" can be hard to understand, right? Inbound links are when you are linked to an external website .

For example, when you release a new product and receive interviews, the source of the interviews will provide a link, right?

Google places great importance on the "veracity" of the information.

Externally linked sites are more trustworthy

This will make it more likely that your site will be displayed at the top of results.

However, there was a time a long time ago when you could get a high ranking by simply increasing the number of inbound links! In those days, SEO specialists would set up a lot of dummy sites and link their clients’ sites to them.

This helps you rank higher in Google searches, but it also makes it easier for people who search to find sites that are "crappy" (there are a lot of affiliate sites).

If that happens, Google's value will decrease if things continue like this!

We decided to change the algorithm so that sites with a lot of shitty links would be demoted from the top rankings.

As a result, nowadays, unless you have solid backlinks, your search ranking will no longer improve.

Update frequency

Freshness of information is vital .

For example, if you searched for the popular topic "generative AI" and found an article written in "2021," would you read it? The generative AI boom started in 2023, right?

Unless you specifically look for stories from 2021, the information in those articles is outdated and therefore unusable.

Therefore, recently updated items tend to be given higher priority!

And a page with lots of the latest information is great, right?

"A lot" of information is judged to mean a "living site" that is updated frequently, so Google tends to display such lively and fresh sites at the top of the results.

I made a website but I never update it.

Such sites will no longer rank highly as new information comes out from elsewhere.

So it has to be constantly updated.

Domain Authority

It's a difficult word to understand, but it's a pretty important element. And it's the most difficult area for small and medium-sized enterprises to tackle.

Domain power is the "○○" part of "○○.com". The components of domain power are

• Domain Age
• Number of backlinks
• Number of citations
  
• Site Views

It is said that it is decided around here.

A newly acquired domain... in extreme cases, it may be a "scam site", right? A site that has been around for a long time is unlikely to be a "scam site". So, the weight of history accumulates.

The more inbound links there are, the more trustworthy it is.

The term "citation count" may seem confusing, but it is an indicator of how many times a website is mentioned on the Internet, even if there are no links.

This is one of the reasons why we can never beat big companies.

I think there are a lot of websites that mention "Nitori bed mats," but it's hard to find bed mats from smaller companies...

Also, if your site gets a lot of views, it's easier to grow!

This means that it is a popular site that is likely to contain useful information.

In other words, domain authority is not easy to increase, so it is a major reason why it is difficult to improve your ranking even with SEO measures. You need to steadily increase it and earn trust.

By the way, there is also a technique called used domains. Domains that were once used and have a lot of backlinks are sometimes sold on the used market. High-powered domains can be worth hundreds of thousands of yen in themselves... it's like buying trust with money.

In other words, the three points are (summary)

So when it comes to SEO, you may be wondering, "What should we do?"

I can hear you say that, so I will summarize it. The most realistic way is

Please update it

If you ask a production company to do SEO, they will take care of the "internal structure" aspects to a certain extent. You can expect some effect from that in itself.

However, earning "domain power" and "number of inbound links" are external factors, so they are problems that SEO companies cannot do anything about.

(I know a company that is an SEO company that creates websites that provide useful content to increase the number of inbound links, and there is also a company that gets paid to link to their clients' websites.)

Don't compete with the big companies!!

Therefore, the three key factors are "high update frequency , " "article content," and "title" !

In short, these three key points all come down to "please update frequently."

I think there are many SEO companies out there who will write articles for you.

By the way , recently some people have been thinking about using "generative AI" to write articles, but this will actually lower your ranking.

From Google's point of view, "generative AI" is a rival to search. Since the ads that appear when you search are Google's source of revenue, they will not evaluate articles with content that can be produced by generative AI. That's how much Google has the ability to see through.

In other words, a realistic approach for small and medium-sized businesses is to increase the frequency of updates using text written by humans!

By the way, it doesn't necessarily have to be a new article. "Rewriting an existing article" is also worthy of being evaluated as an update, so in the beginning, post a lot of new articles and rewrite the popular articles. Continuing to do something like that will be an SEO measure.

Q: Isn't that difficult?

A: Yes, it's difficult.

So you have only two options: outsource or do it yourself.

The important thing is that your competitors are doing it! Internet business is not easy, but it is also a place where you can get a fair evaluation for your efforts if you put in the effort!

Also , in the case of an e-commerce site, "product information" is also included! If you write solid product information and update the product frequently, your rating will likely go up.

If you do it, you will grow

We have a client who updates their website extremely frequently, and despite being a small to medium-sized business, their website ranks highly for unexpected big keywords, and their sales are growing rapidly.

We can certainly help with the internal structure, and there is no doubt that it has some effect , but more than that, we believe that the client's efforts are what ultimately lead to results. Since SEO measures do not clearly state the "answer," it is not possible to say for certain which part was good.

I'd love to proudly say that I provide consulting services for websites that rank highly, but to be honest, I don't think you'll be able to improve your ranking if you hire us just for that! What we can do is help with the "internal structure" and give advice on what kind of content you should increase, or which pages you should improve.

Customers have two options for daily updates: either do it themselves or ask for someone to do it for them.

If you understand this before requesting SEO measures, I think you will be able to overcome the problem of ``rankings not improving at all'' that often occurs when requesting SEO measures!