SEO Apps for Shopify: A Cautionary Tale

During a working session with a client, we determined that some applications may be hampering their SEO. Despite thousands of positive reviews for a particular app, a review of negative reviews revealed code integration problems and possible adverse effects on search engine rankings leading to a less-than-ideal result.

Do your due diligence before using Shopify apps and WordPress plugins and proceed with caution. Your SEO may depend on it.

The Transcript

0:00 I was having a working session with a, with a client the other day, they were having some technical issues, so we got on the line for about an hour, and, uhm, started going through the website.

0:10 This was a Shopify site, and it became pretty clear that a lot of the issues we were discovering in the SEO audit were because of multiple apps that were maybe connected, conflicting with, uhm, the source code, the default source code, and with some other apps, and maybe the apps themselves weren’t working

0:34 as, uhm, as they were supposed to, right? So we’re still detangling, but, uhm, what I want to bring to you, to your attention is sometimes what you buy through an app and what it’s supposed to do may not exactly work.

0:51 Now, I can’t be 100%, 100% sure with this Abada SEO Image Optimizer, but it does provide some other things which all sound great.

0:59 All sounds great, uh, assuming it all works. So let’s, let’s check out what it has to offer, and then let’s go check out the reviews, right?

1:10 Because this is certainly a play with its clients. Uh, whether it’s responsible for 100% of the issues or a small percentage TBD.

1:20 But minimally, the lesson here is when you start to customize the code, inject items into the header, you get into some issues.

1:32 and unless someone’s watching your SEO day in, day out, you may want a, you may inadvertently put an issue into your environment and not see it for a very long time until you hire someone like me.

1:46 So let’s take a look, right? So this, this app does a lot of great things, supposedly, again, I have not used it, but the client has.

1:56 And so let’s take a look here. Regarding the SEO tools, image compression, image resizing, and all text file naming, preloading, lazy loading, broken links, redirects, 404s, breadcrumbs, it does so much here.

2:10 You can get a free version, $34.95 for the pro, $99 a month for enterprise, whatever suits your, your situation.

2:22 But I was most interested in in the ratings, right? So I clicked over to the ratings and it has 7,600 five-star ratings.

2:34 That’s, it’s great. I also know that you can buy ratings. You can buy good ratings and no one’s buying one-star ratings.

2:40 If anyone’s going to buy ratings, you’re going to buy four or five stars, right? Or else why would you buy ratings?

2:44 Now, I don’t know if that’s happening here, but that can happen. But regardless, I want to see the one-star ratings.

2:48 Because I’m trying to understand, are there complications with this app for this client? That’s, that’s what I’m trying to uncover here. And, uhm, to see if that’s even a thing.

3:02 Do other people have that, that same experience? Are they having that same experience? So I want to read these comments.

3:09 Here we go. The reviews. and So, I would like to, I would rate this app as a minus. I would put one star otherwise, uhm, I had to put one star otherwise the review can’t be submitted, right?

3:22 So, not looking great, but not really a whole lot of detail. Now we’re starting to get into some detail. Liquid error, I couldn’t find this asset on every page for hours, right?

3:32 So we’re starting to see some signs of some technical issues associated with the app, or at least, uhm, this person thinks that’s what’s happening.

3:43 I used the app when it was free and it helped me with redirection image optimization, which is super handy when it comes to SEO.

3:50 But then at the end of the month, it started charging and my rankings started to go down. Was it the app or was it something else that made their rankings go down?

3:59 I don’t know, but it started to catch my attention now. Let’s see what else we have here. Oh, here we go.

4:09 We installed the SEO version to test its capabilities. The app ended, added code to our site that tanked our SEO, our, our Google ranking.

4:20 We worked hard to get our sites ranking, right? Yeah, I mean, it takes, it takes, it’s not, not effort to get your site ranking.

4:25 You don’t want something to tank it. Uhm, and this person thinks that this app, not, not Barry Vanilla, thinks that this app had something to do with that.

4:36 Again, I can’t confirm or deny that, but here’s what I do know. Again, you, you start putting apps, uh, on your website, and this is Shopify, but it’s also true for WordPress.

4:47 Some of them don’t play nice with each other. Some of them don’t play nice because they’re not maintained. There’s multiple reasons.

4:53 So while 7.6 thousand users said this is a five-star rating, check out the one-stars. See what issues people are reporting there, because you may have to troubleshoot your website and figure out what’s going on based on the apps that you’re putting, or the plugins, if it’s WordPress, putting on your

5:17 site, and taking a look at the one-star reviews can give you a hint on that. So, in summary, take a look at, uhm, the reviews, see if there’s any issues there before you add the app or the plugin to your website.

5:33 work with an SEO to make sure that the changes you’re making that the app is actually are doing what they say they’re doing.

5:41 I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen apps that say, this is an SEO friendly app, and they’re not.

5:47 This one is specifically designed for SEO, but there are other apps that quote-unquote are good for SEO. Well, that, there’s no definition for that.

5:59 No, there, no one’s monitoring that. There’s no guideline for governance around that. So, uh, be careful what you add to your website.

6:05 And when you make changes with that app, see if your title tags go missing, see if your canonical tags go missing.

6:13 That’s what happened with this one client that I’m talking about. And we’ve fixed some of those issues, but some of them are really hard to detangle.

6:20 And we’re going bit by bit through the source code. We’re going bit by bit through the apps to see what’s the, which ones actually are working the way they should be and which ones are not.

6:30 Hope this was helpful.