Why Do Shopify Stores Rank So Low on Google?
They all have a poor rating on Google.
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Shopify claims to be the world’s leading provider of store systems and many companies believe that by using Shopify, they have a real technological advantage over other store systems.
I took a closer look at Shopify’s well-known brand stores and came to a surprising conclusion.
They all have a poor Google rating.
Shopify, the Software as a Service (SaaS) software that promises to be able to set up a successful online store in just a few clicks, has many SEO flaws. But what makes a successful online store? What is the marketing strategy behind the store?
You should always ask yourself these two questions when deciding on Shopify stores and I’ll show you in the following sections why this is so important if your choice is to be Shopify.
Google organic ranking explained
Organic ranking on Google refers to the visibility of a website in Google’s normal search results, without ads.
This visibility is crucial for many small businesses because they can sell there without hiring expensive Google ads.
For this reason, the topic of search engine optimization (SEO) is a constant theme for almost all store operators in the context of offering the user a relevant search result — regardless of whether it’s a big brand store or a small retailer in the pedestrian zone.
Many companies invest a lot of money in SEO work inside and outside Shopify.
This visibility is not only influenced by the content of a site, the technical quality and readability of the page for Google bots, as well as the location of the web server, and its quality is also a decisive criterion.
Comparison of the international brand store belstaff.com, the larger Shopify store jeffreestarcosmetics.com, and bettermarketing.pub
What could be more obvious than comparing belstaff.com — the historic British fashion brand, the largest Shopify store (jeffreestarcosmetics.com) — with Medium publication bettermarketing.pub.
If it sounds stupid, it is.
I once thought it was very funny because Medium Better Marketing hardly puts any budget into SEO visibility, it doesn’t generate millions of multi-digit annual sales like a master digital company.
We use the SEO tool XOVI, which today is often found in court filings due to its simple representations. Of course, you can also use any other tool. The OVI value — Online Value Index — is a global value that brings together all the values that Google offers.
Amazing, right?
Even here the visibility is different. belstaff.com simply has a bad ranking and our simple agency website stands out in terms of online visibility in an online store with a million sales. We can add additional brands with Shopify: Vogue Collection OVI 2.29 or Freeletics 6.72.
It doesn’t matter which store I search for or check Shopify’s reference information. All Shopify stores are not ranked properly in terms of brand importance and certainly also in terms of assumed sales. But let’s stick with belstaff.com and https://jeffreestarcosmetics.com and https://bettermarketing.pub/.
This figure shows the development of the keywords in the top 100 compared to jeffreestarcosmetics.com and belstaff.com. Good for us at https://bettermarketing.pub/ .But terrifying for Belstaff. What the hell is going on?
Of course, for big brand stores, organic visibility plays a smaller role in sales, but we can assume that an SEO team with a lot of budget takes care of this store.
Presumably, 100,000 euros are invested in the store’s operations every year. How sad it is when every mediocre online store can rank better than your brand’s store with long-tail keywords and you constantly have to buy the top positions with paid ads.
If we look again at the ranking trends in the graph above, they are almost identical, and yet the prospects for fietz-medien.de are better and the trend continues upward there.
Final: Why is Shopify so poorly received by Google?
Google values the readability of the site.
Technical readability and content comprehension are absolutely important for Google to be able to recognize a relevant search result.
I don’t want to go into too much detail, but Shopify violates exactly this rule on 2 key points that the Shopify store operator cannot influence and will therefore never — really never — achieve a good organic ranking on Google.
Server location
Code quality
Even Shopify Plus packages, which are very expensive to buy on Shopify, won’t help him. But we also don’t know if Belstaff is also a Shopify Plus customer. It’s highly suspicious. You simply can’t influence these two points with Shopify.
The server location is always Canada. There, Shopify hosts thousands of online stores on busy nodes with the cheapest quality. That alone is a disaster.
While 10 years ago it was true that you needed an IPv4 for every domain and store to create a successful store, today there are hundreds of thousands of stores on one IPv4 at Shopify. Every cheap German Shopware online store does better. What will Google think of this? There’s no evidence, just a hunch. Nothing.
Shopify integrates numerous libraries into the source code, which cannot be removed or influenced by the store developers. This creates a secure store system, but at the same time it creates a high level of dependency on the manufacturer, and, if the latter is a technical dreamer, the store simply won’t rank.
And there’s nothing you can do about it. We’ll go into detail elsewhere about which code locations are involved and what exactly Shopify does there.
However, these two points, which cannot be influenced by store operators, are likely to be the cause of poor Shopify store ratings. And there’s nothing you can do about it!
Who can use Shopify?
If you have a marketing plan, if you know exactly how to sell with your marketing strategies. What if you have enough budget for sales funnels? If you know how social media shopping works, Shopify will be interesting for you.
So it doesn’t bother you to know that you’ll never reach the top positions for competitive keywords.
If you’re hearing that for the first time, SEO is a foreign word and you think I’ll just create a store and the rest will fall into place, then stay away from Shopify!
Seriously, listen to me, stay away from Shopify.
You won’t sell anything, really anything. You won’t have scalability and you’ll still spend a lot of money every month.
If you don’t agree with me, let’s discuss it in the comments. Maybe you know some highly rated Shopify stores? I’d be interested to know what they are and look forward to hearing from you.
The alternative to Shopify, Shopware 6
If you compare the costs that arise with a Shopify store with a much more individual Shopware 6 project in the premium middle class, you will quickly realize that the one-off entry costs to achieve the same level of appropriate graphic customization are the same for both stores are almost identical.
If you look at the monthly fixed costs, you’ll see that small Shopify stores in particular cost much more than the costs of a small Shopware 6 store.
In addition to Shopify’s monthly fees, the reason is the payment and rental fees for the modules, as well as the fees for operating an external domain with SSL and email, which Shopify has not included. I will dedicate another text to Shopify’s costs to clear up myths and bring facts to the table.
Nowhere are there more lies than with store manufacturers and agencies, who often only have one of these store systems in their portfolio.
If you have an overview of the store systems market, the associated costs, and the development of the projects behind the costs, many assumptions can be quickly proven.
In addition, there are my insights as an expert in civil litigation proceedings, which often involve Shopify.
Wrap it up
But now you have to assume that all these Shopify operators aren’t stupid with their stores.
Technically, they will have done everything to present the store in the best light. However, the results are extremely poor and the reason is probably because the store operators have simply reached the technical limits of the Shopify system.
Shopify is simple and expensive.