Well hello and welcome to SEO shirts a private podcast by the very same co host of the simple and smart SEO show, Brittany and
Krystal. Here you can experience way more actionable episodes, give them as many SEO masterminds. Each week, we'll be walking you through a different tasks that support your SEO strategy.
You will learn exactly how to take simple and smart action with step by step walkthroughs. And quick explanations of how your effort will impact your business's search ability.
And now it's time for this week's SEO short.
Crystal, are you like super excited to talk about Shopify today?
Oh my gosh, I'm excited to talk about Shopify every day. She really is too intense.
I love it. I can feel your passion for this platform. And I just wanted to share with people like all of the exciting things. So I'm going to kind of play interviewer. And we're going to walk through how to create a homepage meta description on Shopify.
And the reason why I wanted to do this is because when you are using the Shopify platform, whether you're on a blog page, or a product page or a collection page, typically the SEO information is found at the bottom of that particular page. But when it comes to your homepage, you actually have to go under the header sales channels, and then click on Online Store and there's yet another menu under that. And you want to choose the final one or the one that's
called preferences. And that's where you'll find the title and meta description area for your homepage. So I thought this is a really important thing that I want to make sure I share with all Shopify store owners.
Yeah, Man that sounds like super secretive and hidden and like something that you should know about.
Yeah, well, what's crazy is I've worked with Shopify store owners to optimize their sites. And I've come to this area, on their Shopify online store, and there is nothing here. So at the top of the page, there's the homepage title. And we've talked about, you know, page titles and descriptions before. And just like every other page, title and description, you want that title to be between 50 and 60 characters, and then the meta description 150 to 160
characters. And so it shows you when you put in, you know the title and the description, like how many characters you've used, but you want to make sure that this space is pulled up, because this is what Google uses to, you know, to show your main domain in the search results. So if there's nothing here, Google will just kind of fill in something from your website. But this is a huge opportunity for you to tell Google and a searcher exactly what your site is about. Yes. Okay. So
that answers one of the questions that I had, which is like, why is it especially important for homepage. So now we know that let's back up like a little bit because you kind of talked about it, but maybe we can give like a one liner about what a meta description is, especially with like the homepage in mind for Shopify?
Oh, absolutely. Okay, so the title and meta description just help define how your store shows up on search engines.
It's the I like to draw the picture. I mean, you can go do a Google search. And when you pull up the Google search, it's going to have the blue hyperlink text. That's the SEO title. And then that little like few lines, usually, like when did you lines underneath? That's your meta description. So it really matters when people are looking for an answer to their problem.
They want some help. They just gives you a little bit of a place to kind of like, tell them what it is told them, how you help them, all of that good stuff. So shall we tell the people how to create a meta description?
Well, I mean, really, all you want to do is use like your top keywords for your title, like, what do you want that page to show up? Like, I like to say for everybody's pages, every page has a keyword, and that keyword has a job. So you want to you know, just kind of take a high view of your website and say, Okay, what do I want its job to be. And so that's the keyword that you want to focus on. So you want that
keyword in the title. And you want that keyword in the meta description, ideally, close to the start of that meta description. Element. Well, yeah, but there's a couple other things I wanted to say really quickly, though, about this Preferences page, because the other things that are on this page that are really important, are a social sharing image. So let's say that someone shares a, like a product from your store
or something like that. When it is shared to social media, whether that's Twitter or Facebook or any other platform, there is an image that can come up as like your defining image, you know, so it could be your logo, but when you specialize in a certain product, this is a great opportunity to put a product image that, you know really says who you are. So that's really important to put there as well. And then this is the page where you can add your
Google Analytics code. So unfortunately, right now, you can't add GA four, but you can add your UA, your Universal Analytics on this page. And then finally, you can also add your Facebook pixel. So a lot of people are like, where do I put this information in my Shopify store, it's all under preferences. But again, the most important thing is that title and meta description at the top.
Yeah, and I'm gonna throw in an additional step for that social sharing image, which is such a tongue twister, make sure that you're titling it, so that it doesn't just say like, IMG 3294, you really wanted to have the keyword in there. So it might have crystal, you might have a different idea on this since its products, but it should have a keyword somewhere in there. Do you have any best practices for image titles, just like it was like a really quick one?
Well, I just think that number one, it should describe exactly what's in the image. Number two, it's not a bad thing to put your store domain in there as well. Because if it's shared and reshared, you want people to be able to get back to where it came from. And you always want to make sure you get credit for your product photos. So those are a couple of things that I would think about. And for Shopify, that image, whenever it's shared, it defaults to the homepage title, and the homepage meta
description. So you just want to make sure that it aligns with, you know, that keyword that we talked about being you know, that's its job for the homepage, you just want to make sure that image and that that keyword in the title align. That's really
good. So definitely, when you go to create those, you're going to want to focus on the image, titling the image, and then creating your SEO title and meta descriptions. If you're doing those all at the same time, it's going to really help you. And what we would love is if in the conversation thread, this is your homework, if you'll drop your meta description in that thread for your homepage, so we can see just kind of like what you're doing and what you're up
to. And then it's really cool too, because other people get to like, see and be inspired. And it makes this feel a lot less lonely, don't you think?
Absolutely. So and then who knows, you may get an idea from someone else that make sure it's better. There's no doubt that taking a moment to make sure that your home page title and your meta description is set up. There's no doubt that it's going to help you. So just take just a little bit of time today, make sure that you've got a homepage title that's 50 to 60 characters, the homepage description, it's 150 to 60 characters and then share that description with us so we can take a look.
Yeah, we can't wait to see what you come up with.
Awesome. All right. Well, thanks for letting me share about Shopify.
Yeah, it was really cool. I knew nothing. And now I feel like I noticed.
Yep, now you're a Shopify Pro. So we'll see you guys next time.
you're well on your way to being the answer to even more Googled questions. Thanks so much for joining us this week.
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