Meet Parth Suba

[00:00:00] Parth Suba: having content below the product grid on the collections pages 

[00:00:04] Parth Suba: it's, is very, very helpful because 

[00:00:05] Parth Suba: those 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. 

Welcome t o the Simple and Smart SEO Show

[00:00:14] Crystal: Welcome 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.

[00:00:28] Crystal: Grab a coffee. Or your favorite tea. And let's dive into Smarter SEO for your business.

[00:00:33] Crystal: hey, 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.

[00:00:51] Crystal: Which 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, [00:01:00] welcome to The Simple and Smart SEO Show Podcast.

[00:01:02] Crystal: I'm so glad you're here. If you could give people the one-line version, who is Parth Suba? 

[00:01:09] Parth Suba: Sure. First of all, thanks for having me Crystal. Appreciate it. And it was lovely bumping into you at, at SEO week.

[00:01:17] Parth Suba: And 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.

[00:01:31] Parth Suba: I 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.

[00:01:41] Parth Suba: And 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.

[00:01:49] Parth Suba: But yeah, professionally I am an AI search consultant. I help e-commerce and SaaS brands drive revenue pipelines through organic search strategies. [00:02:00] And that's where I help these brands. And yeah, I'm here to 

[00:02:04] Parth Suba: kind of share 

[00:02:05] Parth Suba: my thoughts around Shopify and e-commerce SEO. 

[00:02:09] Parth Suba: Once again, thanks Crystal for having me.

[00:02:10] Crystal: Awesome. Thank you so much, Parth.

[00:02:13] Crystal: That's so neat that you play chess. I've never been a chess player. My son started playing chess when he was six.

[00:02:20] Crystal: I 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. 

[00:02:30] Parth Suba: Thank you

[00:02:31] Crystal: Thanks for sharing that! So with SEO, you've said that e-commerce SEO is such an underrated category. what does that mean? 

Product Feeds and AI Search

[00:02:39] Parth Suba: So over a period of time e-commerce SEO has evolved more than those blue links.

[00:02:45] Parth Suba: More 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.

[00:02:55] Parth Suba: What are the offers? What is the price range? And a couple of other additional features [00:03:00] on the SERP.

[00:03:02] Parth Suba: Now, 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.

[00:03:12] Parth Suba: So earlier, the performance marketer had leverage of optimizing the product feeds on Google Merchant Center. And running the shopping ads campaigns.

[00:03:21] Parth Suba: But nowadays as SEOs, we can kind of go ahead and capture those organic listings.

[00:03:27] Parth Suba: Which 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.

[00:03:48] Parth Suba: So 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 [00:04:00] ChatGPT 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.

[00:04:09] Crystal: Interesting 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.

[00:04:26] Crystal: And 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.

[00:04:45] Crystal: When I realized that like my data wasn't aligning correctly, I thought, "Oh my gosh, like I totally missed this."

[00:04:51] Crystal: And 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.

[00:04:59] Crystal: I just [00:05:00] shared that on social media about like my own errors that I'd found.

[00:05:04] Crystal: And not only that, but not having an internal taxonomy that that allowed me to make sure that the Google taxonomy 

Shopify SEO Setup Basics

[00:05:13] Crystal: aligned.

[00:05:13] Crystal: And 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. 

[00:05:24] Parth Suba: I 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.

[00:05:39] Parth Suba: We are just limited to the inventory and then the categories that we think from when we start our business.

[00:05:46] Parth Suba: So probably we have fifteen, twenty, twenty-five categories that we have as collection pages on our uh, Shopify store. 

Category Expansion Strategy

[00:05:52] Parth Suba: Once 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 [00:06:00] searching for these very niche products.

[00:06:03] Parth Suba: And 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.

[00:06:22] Parth Suba: I 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.

[00:06:41] Parth Suba: But 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 [00:07:00] category opportunities 

[00:07:01] Parth Suba: that could help increase the overall search demand kind of go out and capture that search demand.

[00:07:06] Parth Suba: So that was very kind of quirky way of finding, but it was super helpful to increase their revenue by sixty percent.

[00:07:13] Crystal: Do you happen to remember the category that they had that then branched off into new additional categories?

[00:07:20] Parth Suba: Sure. 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.

[00:07:38] Parth Suba: Because 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.

[00:07:55] Parth Suba: And those queries had a good amount of impressions on Search [00:08:00] Console.

[00:08:00] Parth Suba: They 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.

[00:08:21] Crystal: And did you create those based on smart collections or did you create them manually? 

[00:08:26] Parth Suba: those were created with Smart Collections. Yeah.

[00:08:28] Crystal: Awesome. That's something that I just learned about too.

[00:08:30] Crystal: Because when I first set up my Shopify store, I didn't know that you could do the smart collections.

[00:08:34] Crystal: For those of you don't know, when you set up manual collections, you have to actually add to those collections.

[00:08:40] Crystal: But if you set up smart collections, you can tag or use metafields, which is my preference.

[00:08:45] Crystal: Then, anything that matches that metafield it's like, say, high protein cereals.

[00:08:50] Crystal: Anything that's marked with high protein will then magically appear in the new high protein category, which is cool and so fast.

[00:08:59] Crystal: And I love [00:09:00] the fact that guys recognized that and then were able to build a new smart collection that way. so smart. 

[00:09:05] Parth Suba: Yep. 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.

[00:09:23] Parth Suba: So 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 

[00:09:36] Parth Suba: internal search store. So that information also helps. So we can go ahead and set it up using Google Analytics four.

[00:09:43] Parth Suba: And we can find more details into it.

[00:09:44] Crystal: Yeah. 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 [00:10:00] that's just completely wrong?

Common SEO Mispriorities

[00:10:01] Parth Suba: I 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.

[00:10:21] Parth Suba: Otherwise, 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.

[00:10:43] Parth Suba: Rather 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 [00:11:00] schema. And, and people also ask questions.

[00:11:02] Parth Suba: You 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...

[00:11:11] Parth Suba: it'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.

[00:11:22] Crystal: Okay, 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.

[00:11:33] Crystal: It 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?

[00:11:51] Parth Suba: okay. 

AI Ready Product Content

[00:11:51] Parth Suba: we as e-commerce store owners. We should be aware about our-- obviously we know the ICPs and then the target customers and, and what [00:12:00] are 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.

[00:12:14] Parth Suba: Where 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.

[00:12:35] Parth Suba: And once you have those pain points you can plug it into your ICP doc that you have created before you generate content.

[00:12:42] Parth Suba: That's one thing. And apart from that, you have feedbacks.

[00:12:46] Parth Suba: You get feedback after your product is delivered to your customers. So collect all those feedbacks and, and again, try to find those pain points.

[00:12:54] Parth Suba: And be as descriptive as possible on your product description [00:13:00] pages. 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.

[00:13:15] Parth Suba: And 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?

[00:13:36] Parth Suba: And 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 

[00:13:46] Parth Suba: probably new tires to purchase.

[00:13:48] Parth Suba: So if you, if you are selling tires online, 

[00:13:51] Parth Suba: You should have that journey in your content that if, if someone wants to get new tires, 

[00:13:56] Parth Suba: It should be recommended in, in that content funnel. [00:14:00] So 

[00:14:00] Parth Suba: that 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.

[00:14:09] Crystal: I 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.

[00:14:30] Crystal: But sometimes people will just buy the wooden numbers or letters from me, by themselves.

[00:14:34] Crystal: Because 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 [00:15:00] that'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.

[00:15:08] Crystal: They 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.

[00:15:16] Parth Suba: Yeah, 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.

[00:15:24] 

Shopify Audit Fixes

[00:15:24] Parth Suba: One 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.

[00:15:40] Parth Suba: That 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.

[00:15:55] Parth Suba: Because 

[00:15:56] Parth Suba: having unique product pages, you can go ahead and tag it into multiple [00:16:00] categories, multiple collections pages. But having a fixated product URL under a collections page

[00:16:05] Parth Suba: You cannot tag it under multiple different collections pages.

[00:16:08] Parth Suba: So that's, that's one of the common things that I observe.

[00:16:11] Crystal: Just real quick, a follow-up on that. Is that something that's theme level that you have to go in and adjust? 

[00:16:18] Parth Suba: Yes. 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.

[00:16:27] Crystal: Okay. I think I'm... One of my friends, Freddie Chatt, I'm not sure if you know him. He's over

[00:16:32] Parth Suba: yeah.

[00:16:33] Parth Suba: Yeah.

[00:16:33] Parth Suba: yeah,

[00:16:34] Parth Suba: Freddie, Freddie is an awesome guy. Yeah, I keep on referring to his blogs and content online.

[00:16:38] Parth Suba: Yep. Apart from that it's the content part and based on the query that, that you want to rank for.

[00:16:45] Parth Suba: So for example if you're selling black tie versus white tie or something like that, like wedding suit website.

[00:16:51] Parth Suba: You 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.

[00:16:57] Parth Suba: There's always a video. So go ahead [00:17:00] and, 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.

[00:17:25] Parth Suba: So 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.

[00:17:50] Parth Suba: So making sure that 

[00:17:52] Parth Suba: Google or any search bot can kind of access the page, 

Schema and Bot Access

[00:17:56] Parth Suba: read the schema, and get to know what is the exact [00:18:00] kind 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. 

[00:18:10] Crystal: Okay, 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?

[00:18:26] Parth Suba: Oh, that's a good one. I think,

[00:18:27] Parth Suba: I think so eighty percent of the schemas are, are available on, on Shopify store.

[00:18:33] Parth Suba: I 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.

[00:18:51] Parth Suba: So yeah, we are sorted there. In, in majority of the cases, we don't need any custom schema.

[00:18:56] Parth Suba: Currently it's, it's the same set of schemas that were available for [00:19:00] search 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.

[00:19:18] ​