Stop Obsessing Over Page Speed. Your Shopify Store Has Bigger Problems | With Parth Suba, Part 1

0:00Parth Subahaving content below the product grid on the collections pages

0:04it's, is very, very helpful because

0:05those are the questions, and those are the keywords and especially prompts on these AI surfaces which are very, very important for search demand out there.

0:14CrystalWelcome to the simple and smart SEO show podcast! I'm your host, Crystal Waddell, here to bridge the gap between SEO strategy and real world business success. By bringing you insights, stories, and conversations from the SEO community and beyond.

0:28Grab a coffee. Or your favorite tea. And let's dive into Smarter SEO for your business.

0:33hey, guys. Welcome back to The Simple and Smart SEO Show Podcast. I'm here with a new colleague I met at SEO Week in New York City. It was so great, Parth Suba. Parth is an AI search consultant and SEO systems architect. And he has a lot of knowledge Shopify.

0:51Which was great because I love to talk about Shopify, and it's hard to find e-commerce SEOs, at a lot of the SEO conferences that I go to. So Parth,

1:00welcome to The Simple and Smart SEO Show Podcast.

1:02I'm so glad you're here. If you could give people the one-line version, who is Parth Suba?

1:09Parth SubaSure. First of all, thanks for having me Crystal. Appreciate it. And it was lovely bumping into you at, at SEO week.

1:17And you captured me through those Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses. And that was a great experience. For the folks listening to this or watching this podcast. Parth Suba with what you cannot find online, I'll give my very candid introduction.

1:31I have been an avid chess player since grade one. And I've played at district level, I've played at state level, and, and I won a couple of tournaments.

1:41And it, and it's my passion. So apart from SEO, AI search, I, I do play chess, and, and you can find me on chess.com.

1:49But yeah, professionally I am an AI search consultant. I help e-commerce and SaaS brands drive revenue pipelines through organic search strategies.

2:00And that's where I help these brands. And yeah, I'm here to

2:04kind of share

2:05my thoughts around Shopify and e-commerce SEO.

2:09Once again, thanks Crystal for having me.

2:10CrystalAwesome. Thank you so much, Parth.

2:13That's so neat that you play chess. I've never been a chess player. My son started playing chess when he was six.

2:20I was just amazed because I thought, "Oh my gosh, he's six and he can play, and I still don't even understand, what the pieces are. So that's awesome that you're on chess.com and you've won tournaments. good for you.

2:30Parth SubaThank you

2:31CrystalThanks for sharing that! So with SEO, you've said that e-commerce SEO is such an underrated category. what does that mean?

2:39Parth SubaSo over a period of time e-commerce SEO has evolved more than those blue links.

2:45More than those schema markups that we use to show up in product snippets where we had information about if the product is in stock or out of stock.

2:55What are the offers? What is the price range? And a couple of other additional features

3:00on the SERP.

3:02Now, The search engine results page has evolved beyond that. And what I mean to say is there are sh-shopping product catalog being shown organically.

3:12So earlier, the performance marketer had leverage of optimizing the product feeds on Google Merchant Center. And running the shopping ads campaigns.

3:21But nowadays as SEOs, we can kind of go ahead and capture those organic listings.

3:27Which are product snippets on a SERP results page. And that can be thoroughly optimized through the Merchant Center. and we have a lot of control over the product feed that we upload. And at the same time now with these AI platforms that we have uh, ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and a couple more. We have more control.

3:48So there's this Universal Commerce Pro-- UCP and, and there's one more open commerce protocol from Google. So these are both the protocols that we can go ahead and use. We can upload the product feed on

4:00ChatGPT as well. So when someone is searching for those transactional intent queries, prompts on ChatGPT, they can go ahead and discover our products if we optimize those feeds as well.

4:09CrystalInteresting that you say that. this summer one of the big projects I was working on for my own Shopify store. I realized that a lot of my product fields, the data fields and meta fields for product information in Google Merchant Center, were either blank or miscategorized.

4:26And I was like, "Oh my gosh," I had never really thought about product feeds before. And like you just said, like performance marketing, I'm assuming that's more like the ad side of, e-commerce. they dealt more with product feeds. But a lot of my organic searches come from free listings in Google Merchant Center.

4:45When I realized that like my data wasn't aligning correctly, I thought, "Oh my gosh, like I totally missed this."

4:51And I thought to myself, "There's probably a lot of people out there who are experiencing this, whether they realize it or not." I'm so glad that you brought that up.

4:59I just

5:00shared that on social media about like my own errors that I'd found.

5:04And not only that, but not having an internal taxonomy that that allowed me to make sure that the Google taxonomy

5:13aligned.

5:13And so done a lot of learning over the last few about those things. Definitely don't know as much as I should. But I'm glad that you shared that because those, product feeds are so important.

5:24Parth SubaI think shopify store owners there's a certain structure to, to the URLs that you can only have your categories under collection pages. You can have your product pages and go ahead and optimize those collection pages and product pages.

5:39We are just limited to the inventory and then the categories that we think from when we start our business.

5:46So probably we have fifteen, twenty, twenty-five categories that we have as collection pages on our uh, Shopify store.

5:52Once we start running a particular store on Shopify, three months, six months down the line, we, we get a lot of information that people are

6:00searching for these very niche products.

6:03And we can go out and build those category pages. And we can group and tag all the products that are relevant to that new category. So coming up with new category pages is, is a very underrated thing. We shouldn't be fixated to a particular taxonomy and particular set of categories. I'll give you an example here.

6:22I was working with a, a grocery store mid-segment brand based out of Canada, and then they had a fixed set of categories which they had in-housed and on their website, on their Shopify store as well. But what happened was their inventory and then their back-end management system, everything had the same kind of forty-seven categories.

6:41But when we went out and did a lot of research, what I figured out that, hey, because you had a system which, which is back-end and front-end, and you wanted to keep the categories very much fixated because it was an online/offline game. But still there was a lot of opportunities. So we could go ahead and find twelve to fifteen more

7:00category opportunities

7:01that could help increase the overall search demand kind of go out and capture that search demand.

7:06So that was very kind of quirky way of finding, but it was super helpful to increase their revenue by sixty percent.

7:13CrystalDo you happen to remember the category that they had that then branched off into new additional categories?

7:20Parth SubaSure. One of the examples that I can recall is so they had a very kind of fixated categories. For example, eggs and milk cereals, [uncertain]. There were a lot of queries around vegan. There were a lot of queries around cereals with high protein and, and stuff like that.

7:38Because protein is coming up. Vegan, is a new trending thing. So there were a lot of search demand. And it's not that they had not gone out and captured the category. The category was missing. But they already had those set of products which the customers were asking for, which the customers were searching for.

7:55And those queries had a good amount of impressions on Search

8:00Console.

8:00They were landing upon a very broader category where probably they couldn't filter out those products. So it was very much important to kind of go ahead and tag new categories. And, and tag the relevant products. So that would increase the overall the AOV of like your average order value of customers and and the LTV also increased.

8:21CrystalAnd did you create those based on smart collections or did you create them manually?

8:26Parth Subathose were created with Smart Collections. Yeah.

8:28CrystalAwesome. That's something that I just learned about too.

8:30Because when I first set up my Shopify store, I didn't know that you could do the smart collections.

8:34For those of you don't know, when you set up manual collections, you have to actually add to those collections.

8:40But if you set up smart collections, you can tag or use metafields, which is my preference.

8:45Then, anything that matches that metafield it's like, say, high protein cereals.

8:50Anything that's marked with high protein will then magically appear in the new high protein category, which is cool and so fast.

8:59And I love

9:00the fact that guys recognized that and then were able to build a new smart collection that way. so smart.

9:05Parth SubaYep. Yep. Yep. And one one quick thing which I wanted to add to categories. There are a lot of I would say URLs with query parameters were generated because if someone was searching for a particular search term on, on the Shopify store search. They used to come up with custom URLs which were query parameter.

9:23So the internal search on the store also gave us a lot of information about what the users are not finding on the store right away from the header navigation menu and, and they were searching on the

9:36internal search store. So that information also helps. So we can go ahead and set it up using Google Analytics four.

9:43And we can find more details into it.

9:44CrystalYeah. Okay. So that's something I'm gonna follow up with Claude, to pull that data from my own store. So thank you. That was really awesome. going back to just like general SEO ideas and thoughts. What ideas do you think the e-commerce stores or Shopify stores currently have about SEO

10:00that's just completely wrong?

10:01Parth SubaI think anyone running an e-commerce store on Shopify shouldn't prioritize optimizing for page speed. The core web vitals. I think so Shopify stores are, are well-optimized by default. Only focus if you are adding a lot of pop-ups and other tracking scripts. That's the only thing.

10:21Otherwise, the store doesn't need-- the pages, it doesn't need any optimiz-optimization with respect to page speed and core web vitals. Apart from that I think so meta description is one thing which Google keeps on rewriting. So kind of putting a lot of priority and emphasis , on rewriting the meta description and optimizing the meta descriptions, I don't think so it's, it's working anymore because Google picks up the best possible description.

10:43Rather making sure that collections pages, that's, that's the product landing pages, the PLPs. Should have enough information below the product grid. you have the right questions, you have the right FAQs, and you have the right pricing structure with

11:00schema. And, and people also ask questions.

11:02You kind of scrape it through the SERP and use it in the fAQ section. So having content below the product grid on the collections pages...

11:11it's, is very, very helpful because those are the questions, and those are the keywords and, and especially prompts on, on these AI surfaces. Which are very, very important for search demand out there.

11:22CrystalOkay, so I want to ask a follow-up on that, but I have to point out the first time I ever noticed this from a SEO perspective was when I was, you know, looking at a product page on CVS.

11:33It had the page title, then it had the products grid, and then underneath of it was all this text that I had never actually looked at And that was kind of one of my first ahas about how text worked on a page. So, in terms of AI search, what do you think are the must-have elements?

11:51Parth Subaokay.

11:51we as e-commerce store owners. We should be aware about our-- obviously we know the ICPs and then the target customers and, and what

12:00are their pain points? So obviously in our category, there might be multiple stores out there. One of the stores that we run, and there might be twenty other stores in the similar category. And all of them might have almost eighty percent similar content.

12:14Where can we kind of be a differentiator? A, we go out there and scrape Reddit for particular subreddits and other niche communities. And, and that's possible with AI. That's possible with Claude or whatever system that you have. Built with Antigravity or ChatGPT Codex or Claude. So go ahead and, and kind of scrape the pain points.

12:35And once you have those pain points you can plug it into your ICP doc that you have created before you generate content.

12:42That's one thing. And apart from that, you have feedbacks.

12:46You get feedback after your product is delivered to your customers. So collect all those feedbacks and, and again, try to find those pain points.

12:54And be as descriptive as possible on your product description

13:00pages. Especially because if someone is searching on on ChatGPT with a very specific question, if your content answers those pain points, then for sure that product page would show up on ChatGPT or Google reviews.

13:15And one, one quick thing which which is important is like we shouldn't only optimize for the prompts or the first questions that our target audience will ask on any of those ChatGPT or Perplexity, but rather we should go ahead and also think of follow-up questions that they might ask. Or what could be the use case where they are stuck?

13:36And for example, if a car gets, if, if car breaks down in the middle of the road not-- you're not only looking for someone to repair it, but you're also looking for

13:46probably new tires to purchase.

13:48So if you, if you are selling tires online,

13:51You should have that journey in your content that if, if someone wants to get new tires,

13:56It should be recommended in, in that content funnel.

14:00So

14:00that is where thinking not only about the base prompts, the first questions, but rather going ahead and, and thinking about the follow-up questions also helps in, in the whole content journey.

14:09CrystalI always think about applying this back to, handmade businesses and, my own I make giant wooden letters this, and, I am an artist, so I create, custom keepsakes for athletes. Or say if you had a major chess competition wanted to commemorate it, I could do something like that for any event, any loved pastime that people have.

14:30But sometimes people will just buy the wooden numbers or letters from me, by themselves.

14:34Because they want to create the keepsake. They want to be the one to do the collage or whatever it is on the letter. And I've had people ask me the follow-up question of like, "Do you have any tips on how to do this?" I don't know how many times I've answered that question. And I created a guide for it, right? And it's hosted on Amazon Web Services. I never thought until this moment that that should be on every wooden letter, number page because

15:00that's a lot of times what people buy my particular product for is to do that for themselves. because they've seen the, they've seen the pictures of it.

15:08They just may not wanna pay my price point, but they're willing to do it themselves. And I'm like, is a definite follow-up question I've never addressed on those product pages.

15:16Parth SubaYeah, that's, that's such an underrated way to go ahead and optimize the content on, on those category pages and then the product pages.

15:24One of the common things that I observe is there are duplicate product URLs. One product URL under the collections pages and one dedicated product URL. So this is one common mistake where both the versions of product pages are live, crawled, and indexed.

15:40That affects the crawling and indexing budget of, of that particular website because having those unique product pages under the root domain is important and removing those product pages which are under the collections subfolder.

15:55Because

15:56having unique product pages, you can go ahead and tag it into multiple

16:00categories, multiple collections pages. But having a fixated product URL under a collections page

16:05You cannot tag it under multiple different collections pages.

16:08So that's, that's one of the common things that I observe.

16:11CrystalJust real quick, a follow-up on that. Is that something that's theme level that you have to go in and adjust?

16:18Parth SubaYes. Yeah, there, there's a toggle to it. Like there's a simple setting. you go ahead and then change that setting and you are good to go. It's theme level.

16:27CrystalOkay. I think I'm... One of my friends, Freddie Chatt, I'm not sure if you know him. He's over

16:32Parth Subayeah.

16:33Yeah.

16:33yeah,

16:34Freddie, Freddie is an awesome guy. Yeah, I keep on referring to his blogs and content online.

16:38Yep. Apart from that it's the content part and based on the query that, that you want to rank for.

16:45So for example if you're selling black tie versus white tie or something like that, like wedding suit website.

16:51You know that how to tie a tie has a clear intent of a video because now no one goes out and reads like how to tie a tie.

16:57There's always a video. So go ahead

17:00and, and add that YouTube video, embed it onto your collections page below the product grid where you have the content and use the video object schema. So not that you only get visibility through your product, you also get visibility through your YouTube video because if someone is searching and adding that particular collections page URL in the YouTube video description, so that gives a two-way effect.

17:25So your YouTube video is ranking, your, your video is ranking on the SERP, and you get authority out of the URL mentioned in the description. So that's, that's again an underrated thing that a lot of store owners miss out. Apart from that having those images, using the right schema, video object schema uh, image spec, and, pricing schema, and then if you have your products out of stock, just go ahead and include it in schema.

17:50So making sure that

17:52Google or any search bot can kind of access the page,

17:56read the schema, and get to know what is the exact

18:00kind of characteristics of that particular product and, and all the information is machine readable because now it's not only search bots, but it's AI bots also visiting the website.

18:10CrystalOkay, so with regards to schema, do you think it's necessary to add your own coded schema? Or does Shopify have it built in well enough to where you can just fill in the fields on Shopify? What are your thoughts on that?

18:26Parth SubaOh, that's a good one. I think,

18:27I think so eighty percent of the schemas are, are available on, on Shopify store.

18:33I wouldn't say that custom coded schema is required for any e-commerce, at least. Yeah, we have all the major options and we get a, a script section where we can also add schemas which are also available on schema.org, which is the official documentation on the website.

18:51So yeah, we are sorted there. In, in majority of the cases, we don't need any custom schema.

18:56Currently it's, it's the same set of schemas that were available for

19:00search bots. The JSON LD schema uh, which helps to understand the product, product description, whether the product is available in stock, out of stock, what is the offer going on right now? What is the uh, return policy? How many days you can return or replace, and all of those granular details.

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