SEO
Search engine optimisation
SEO, or search engine optimisation, is the work of helping search engines understand your pages so the right shoppers can find them.
What it means
SEO stands for search engine optimisation. Google describes it as “helping search engines understand your content, and helping users find your site”.1
For a shop, most of that work is product data. Search engines match a shopper’s words against the words on your pages: the product title, the description, the specifications. A page that never says “single ended” gives them nothing to match against a search for a single ended bath.
Some of it sits where shoppers never look. The meta title and meta description live in the page’s code, and so does the structured data that labels price and stock. The words themselves matter too. Shopify advises resellers not to copy a manufacturer’s exact description, “because you want your products to be unique to search engines”.2
Think of it like this
SEO is like the signs over the aisles in a supermarket. The goods are already on the shelves, and signs in the words shoppers use lead them there.
For example
A supplier’s title column reads “Bath 1700”. Rebuilt from the row’s other columns, the product title becomes “Single ended bath, 1700 × 700 mm, white, no tap holes”. It now holds the type, size and colour a shopper might search for.
Why it matters
Search engines can only match what your pages state. A product named by a code, with blank specifications, gives them little to work with. So does a supplier paragraph that every other stockist has pasted too.
Not to be confused with
SEO covers the unpaid results. Shopping ads are paid placements, bought separately, though both depend on accurate product data.
Sources
- Google Search Central. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Starter Guide.
- Shopify Help Center. Product details page.