Table of Contents app: Jump Links

A Shopify blog is a powerful way for your small business to compete against all the big daddy giants out there. Your Shopify blog can announce your presence on the scene, create brand awareness, and drive organic, unpaid traffic your way.

Picture this scenario….You write out a wonderful blog post for Shopify. You cover many salient points to help online retailers and consumers.

You put forth in a logical, clear and concise manner, all information about the many comprehensive service packages, you can provide to all B2B and B2C potentials.

You take a critical look at it and decide it is your most compelling post, loaded with tons of information, data driven, and boy…have you done justice to the subject! Only problem is that the post is really long at 6500+ words.

Searchers seeking relevant information may not be inclined, or have the time, to read your entire blog post. Usually when someone clicks on a long blog post, a quick scan is done before they decide if they want to stay and read on. All this happens within a 15 second window.

This is when aclickable table of contents for your Shopify blog will help your reader. The added advantage is that a clickable table of contents will make your Shopify blog SEO friendly and will make your blog rank higher on Google.

Here are the benefits of adding a clickable table of contents on your longer Shopify blog posts:

Organize The Content

It gives a structured look to your post. It organizes your subheads and makes it look very detailed. This pleases Google. Google then shows jumps to the links in the meta description box of the search results page. This will immensely boost the chances of searchers clinking on the link to your post

Ease Of Navigation

Users tend to swiftly search for important information rather than reading each word written. A table of contents will make your long form content easier to digest. Users can find relevant information at a glance as the table of content provides a precise summary of important points covered in the blog post.

Better For The Algorithm

A Shopify blog with a clickable table of contents can also be referred to as content links, jump links, or anchor links. These are a bullet list at the top of your page linking different sections. It is recommended that you write these content links with relevant keywords (including long tail keywords in the subheadings) to promote deeper site crawls and bring in better rankings. Google algorithms work better with lists than with paragraphs. This will rank your content higher as Google will better understand the key points in your post.

Search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing will better understand what your post is all about. A major reason Wikipedia uses a table of contents on every single entry. To aid in user and machine understanding and rankings.

Improved User Experience

When a user types in a query on google, it means he is looking for a solution to his problem. When they click on a result, they hope to find the information they need immediately. With a table of contents available, the reader will know if the answer to his question is contained in the article.

He can then directly click on the section containing the information he is looking for. Users need not spend time scanning or scrolling through the entire blog. Since visitors have easily found what they are looking for and engaged with the right information they are likely to stay on your page and not go back to the search results looking for other pages to engage with.

This translates into enhanced user engagement, higher CTR, longer dwell time, returning users and even some link sharing. All this will boost Google’s user engagement algorithms in your favor, though Google algorithms constantly change and are moody at best.

Improve Bounce Rate

Your Shopify blog experiences a lower bounce rate. Anything that improves UX and reduces bounce rate sends a positive signal to Google, rewarding you with better ranking.

Featured Snippet

A clickable table of contents can even help you get featured snippets at the top of the SERPs.

Increase Backlinks

Easy navigation and seamless usability increases chances of other blogs linking to your post, thereby increasing your authority.

Shopify blog table of contents improves the structural integrity of your post and website. Needless to say, this improves SEO.

All of the above is possible only if your content rocks and delivers value. Average content will not satisfy readers who will swiftly move on to the next search result.