How Shopify Apps can interfere with your SEO

Apps are plentiful in the Shopify App Store, and you can usually find the right Apps for your business, and how you like to conduct yourself to your audience to help convert them into customers. However, there are some Shopify Apps that neglectfully can interfere with your SEO standing when it comes to Onsite-SEO. SEO Audits take place to check out your Onsite-SEO to see where errors and bad practices were taken to populate your content for your products especially. Additionally, certain industries are more prone to bad Onsite-SEO due to the repetitive nature of product sets and categories and then tools can get in the way.

Conditions where Shopify Apps can ruin your Onsite-SEO

Being picky about your Shopify Apps for their functionality and engagements is part of the exercise of getting your online store set up with optimization to fill the shopping cart and get it transacted. However, at times these Shopify Apps have a downside to them. Page Speed is one of the side effects, which also does affect how Google judges the customer experience, a slow speed will dock you down with Google. The costs associated with Shopify Apps can be a monthly burden, but worse yet, certain Apps will affect your Onsite-SEO in different ways.

Safe Shopify Apps that won't interfere with SEO

Whether it is a Countdown timer, Facebook Messenger, Gift Cards, or Social Media, distinct Applications that do not interfere with the Shopify Theme's operation is important. When a Shopify App inserts into your Products and Services pages, your page SEO can be interfered with when it comes to Page Titles, Meta Descriptions, Alt-Tags, Meta Tags, Prices which in turn affects the search queries, keywords, and what Google bots will index/store.

Page Speed with Shopify Apps

For your audience to use a search engine to reach your site, either through Ads or Organic search, requires a fast page load speed. Either the home page, landing page, or blog - every page needs to be cached and AMP'ed if possible to get the users to see your page as soon as a click is made. Taking many seconds (over 5 seconds) becomes a concern where the impatience of the user kicks in and goes to another site. Shopify Apps provides the utilities to assist engagement, promotion, and funneling the client to the checkout - but what's the use if the page is too heavy to load in a timely fashion and the customer walks away before it loads. Your Shopify SEO homework is to test your page speeds with your Apps loaded - if they are too slow, seek out comparable Shopify Apps in the store and check their performance. At the end of the day, "Speed vs. Utility" will have to find a happy compromise.

Meta Descriptions and your SEO

Search Engine Optimization looks at each page to have Meta Descriptions to report back in the search results a brief description of what the page covers. Your marketing strategy for your Onsite-SEO will cover many fields, such as Meta Tags, Alt-tags, Alt-text, and several other fields where the keyword research you have planned is intended to align with Google Search. Your Shopify Store is fully capable of this alignment, it takes work and diligence to differentiate every page, know your keywords to be highlighted, and work on your keyword density on your page such that it has good authority. Product pages are especially vulnerable to duplication (where cut and paste makes it too easy to use), your SEO work must take the time to re-word/re-phrase to be specific on each product and focus on the target keywords.

Marketing Campaigns and Shopify Apps.

Gathering subscribers through promotional activities at times takes a Shopify Subscription App for your target audience to enter their Email addresses to be eligible for the discount. While the App doesn't usually take much time on the page load, the ability to brand the App's entry box and manage its content is critical, especially when linked to Social Media Marketing. In this particular case, Google will capture the event and log it in its search engine results where it will appear still after the event is passed confusing the audience when they arrive on the site. Search Engine work also includes cleaning up the Google cache on your promotional events and keeping your marketing channels clear for the audience to have precise messaging. There is nothing like disappointing your audience with an expired sale.

Filter Apps and Indexing Issues

Here we are talking about the URL, and how Google indexes the link. Filter Apps allow for "Domain.com/collection/product/shirt?Red?Large" - the "?Red?Large" will create additional URLs for every color and every size - multiplying the indexed links for a single product to every variation of the product. This makes the page structures unwieldy and hard to manage when it comes to differentiating them and Google will see these links as "Duplicate Titles, Duplicate Meta Description" etc. an SEO nightmare. If you value your SEO score and authority, try not to have this type of filter App and focus on using the on-site search, tags, and categories.

Conclusion

Not every App adds a clear benefit, and some have unintended consequences. Just keep in mind that there are thousands of Shopify Apps, and their testing is limited primarily to their code, not with other Apps, and unchecked when it comes to the SEO impact. It is up to the online store owner to check and strategically place the right App to do the job with minimal side effects to enhance conversion and utility of the site. If you need assistance on best practices Shopify Apps and SEO, feel free to reach out to us at wish@thegenielab.com