Shopify SEO eCommerce Checklist

Technical SEO (Technical Optimization)

1. Performance optimization
   • Mobile / Desktop
     • Optimizations on page load by Properly sizing images
     • Optimize code, scripts and plugins on site
     • Eliminate render-blocking resources
     • Configure animated content (GIFs) to use video formats to reduce large GIFs files
     • Analyze and Optimize unused CSS
     • Minify CSS
     • Minify JavaScript
     • Minify HTML
     • Defer parsing of JavaScript
     • Reduce external and inline Javascript scripts by combining them into one
     • Properly resize and optimize images to improve the performance on mobile
     • Defer offscreen images
     • Optimize WebFonts loading time
     • Reduce payloads on assets
     • Avoid bad requests - fix broken image links that return 404 responses.
     • Remove popup-modal on mobile, change load time
2. Site Architecture
   • Robots.txt Optimizations
     • Identify and Analyze pages on your site that don't need to be indexed. Update robots.txt file in your site architecture to include adding directions for the unwanted or duplicate pages to be skipped by the Googlebot crawler
   • HTTPS / SSL 
     • Run server assessment scan on website.
     • Identify any pages with missing https
   • Sitemap
     • Optimize website's sitemap structure for both sitemap.xml and HTML sitemap page
     • Submit and tracked generated sitemaps to Google Search Console
   • Preferred domain verification
     • http, https, non-www and www domains
   • Optimize URL Structure
     • Shortened URLs
     • Add target keywords on URLs
   • Canonical URLs rel=canonical to improve duplication of content on Googles SERP
   • Replace interactive buttons for accessibility
   • Optimize keyword name on ALT images attributes 
   • Internal Links <a href> text keyword optimization
   • HTML [lang] element language attribute tag
   • Include apple-touch-icon tags
   • Update internal library third-party scripts
   • Improve Security recommendations for  rel="noopener" and rel="noreferrer" on external Links
   • Include Document Meta Description on homepage
3. Site breadcrumbs links and Schema Markup optimization
   • parameters: itemListElement, name, item, type and position
4. In-depth keyword research
   • Research keywords to find the most relevant keywords for your site
   • Narrow down keywords list based on the insights on how often relevant words are being searched
   • Target key searches
5. Add Internal links
   • Blogs Articles, Category links, related posts links
6. Product Schema Markup
   • parameters: url, image, name, description, price, availability, reviews, brand and aggregateRating
7. Video Schema Markup
   • parameters: name, description, thumbURL, duration and uploadDate
8. Article (blog) optimization Schema Markup
   • parameters: headline, dataPublished, dateModified, author (name), publisher (organization) and description
9. Corporate Contact Schema Markup
   • parameters: organization name, url, contact (address, telephone), logo 
10. Navigation Schema Markup

On-page SEO

1. Product Schema Tags
2. Title Tags Keywords Research
3. Meta Description Keywords Research
4. H1, H2 and H3 tags configuration on site
5. Content optimization structured (Blog)
   • Ensuring keywords are used properly (in the title, first paragraph, etc.)
   • Optimize keyword ratio
   • Internal linking (related)
   • NoFollow linking
6. Building natural backlinks (internal)
7. Image Alt Tags and Title Description
8. Mobile-First Indexing
9. 404 redirects

Off-page SEO

1. Backlinks
   • Identify the amount and quality of other websites linking back to the site, update title tag on all current backlinks.
2. Influencer Outreach
   • Reach out influencers in your industry to request backlinks
3. Social Media Engagement
4. Publish page articles on online publishing platforms
   • Medium and LinkedIn

Implement ASAP:

1. Page Title
2. Meta Description
3. Alternative text
4. content (product descriptions, blogs)
5. JSON-LD ( structured data )
6. No broken pages
   • broken 404 pages are consider broken to Google bots so make sure to fix them
   • 404 errors are important for search ranking
7. Submit your sitemap 
   • HTML sitemaps does not help with SEO
8. Compress your images
   • https://kraken.io/, for compression of photos 
9. Reduce the load time on any popups on your site