So you’ve set up your Shopify store, added your products, picked a theme that’s easy on the eyes. Great start, but here’s the thing: if nobody can find you on Google, you might as well be selling products from a cardboard box in your basement. That’s where Shopify SEO comes in.
SEO sounds intimidating; it’s one of those things that seems to involve a lot of technical jargon and mysterious algorithms. But honestly? Shopify makes search engine optimisation surprisingly straightforward. The platform handles a lot of the heavy lifting right out of the box, which means you can focus on what actually matters: getting your products in front of people who want to buy them.
This guide walks you through everything from the basics (yes, Shopify does some clever things automatically) to the advanced tactics that’ll help you stand out in a crowded market. Whether you’re just starting out or you’ve been running your store for a while and want to learn how to improve SEO on Shopify, there’s probably something here you haven’t thought about yet.
Contents
- What Makes Shopify Different?
- Is Shopify Actually Good for SEO?
- Technical SEO: The Stuff Shopify Handles for You
- Keyword Research: Finding What People Actually Search For
- Shopify SEO Tips: On-Page Optimisation for Your Store Pages
- Site Structure: Making Your Store Easy to Navigate
- How to Improve SEO on Shopify: Advanced Features
- Building Links to Your Shopify Store
- Google Analytics and Measuring Results
- Shopify SEO Apps: When to Use Them
- Essential Tips to Improve SEO Shopify
What Makes Shopify Different?
Before we get into the weeds, let’s talk about why Shopify became such a big deal in the first place.
Back in 2006, three guys – Tobias Lütke, Daniel Weinand, and Scott Lake – got fed up with how difficult it was to launch an online store. They wanted to sell snowboards online and couldn’t find a decent platform to do it. So they built their own. That platform became Shopify, and now it powers over six million active online stores worldwide.
The UK alone has over 245,000 live Shopify sites. The COVID pandemic accelerated things massively (store numbers shot up by over 200% between 2020 and 2022), but the platform’s growth speaks for itself.
What does this mean for you? Simple: you’re building on stable ground. Unlike some platforms that have disappeared over the years (RIP Magento Go), Shopify has the user base and market share to stick around. That matters when you’re investing time and money into building something that needs to last.
Is Shopify Actually Good for SEO?
Short answer: yes. Longer answer: mostly yes, with a few quirks you should know about.
When it comes to SEO on Shopify, the platform handles the fundamentals really well. It takes care of technical stuff that would normally require a developer or at least someone who knows their way around code. XML sitemaps? Done automatically. SSL certificates? Included. Mobile optimisation? Built into the themes.
But – and there’s always a but – it’s not perfect. The URL structure has limitations, and some advanced SEO features require workarounds or apps. If you want to get really granular with your optimisation, you might bump up against what Shopify allows you to do.
That said, the benefits far outweigh the limitations for most store owners. Especially if you’re running a small to medium-sized business and don’t have a dedicated tech team, Shopify gives you a solid SEO foundation without making you become an expert overnight. Of course, if you’re serious about dominating your market, working with an ecommerce SEO agency that specialises in Shopify can accelerate your results significantly.
Technical SEO: The Stuff Shopify Handles for You
Let’s start with the good news: there’s a bunch of technical SEO work that Shopify does automatically, which means you can cross it off your worry list.
XML Sitemaps
Your sitemap is basically a roadmap for search engines. It tells Google and other search engines which pages exist on your site and how they’re organised. Shopify generates this automatically at yoursitedomain.com/sitemap.xml.
You don’t need to create it, maintain it, or even think about it unless something goes horribly wrong (which it rarely does). Every time you add a new product or page, the sitemap updates itself. One less thing to worry about.
301 Redirects
Here’s a common scenario: you launch a product, it starts ranking in Google, then you decide to change the URL for whatever reason. Without a redirect, that URL just breaks. You lose the ranking, you lose the traffic, and anyone who bookmarked it or shared it gets a 404 error.
Shopify lets you set up 301 redirects directly in the admin panel. If you absolutely must change a URL, at least you can preserve the SEO value by redirecting the old URL to the new one.
There’s also the whole www vs non-www debate. Some people care deeply about this; most visitors don’t notice. From an SEO perspective, you need to pick one and stick with it, otherwise, you’re creating duplicate content issues because Google might index both versions.
Shopify handles this through your domain settings. Pick your primary domain (www or non-www), and the platform sorts out the rest. Problem solved.
Robots.txt Files
The robots.txt file tells search engines which parts of your site they’re allowed to crawl. You don’t want Google indexing your checkout pages or admin area, as it’s a waste of crawl budget and could create weird search results.
Shopify generates a default robots.txt file that works well for most stores. You can view it at yourdomain.com/robots.txt. For years, you couldn’t edit it, which frustrated SEO professionals who wanted more control, but Shopify changed that in 2021.
Now you can customise your robots.txt file if you need to. The platform warns you not to mess with it unless you know what you’re doing (fair advice), but if you understand code or have someone who does, you’ve got the flexibility to block certain crawlers, add crawl-delay rules, or include additional sitemap URLs.
Just be careful. A badly configured robots.txt file can accidentally block Google from crawling your entire site. That’s not a mistake you want to make.
Mobile-Friendly Design
Most shopping happens on phones these days. In the UK specifically, mobile commerce exceeded £100 billion in 2025, with mobile transactions now accounting for 55% of all UK ecommerce purchases. If your store looks terrible or loads slowly on smartphones, you’re missing out.
Google knows this too. They moved to mobile-first indexing years ago, which means they primarily use the mobile version of your site for ranking purposes. If your mobile experience is bad, your rankings suffer.
Shopify themes are responsive by default. They automatically adjust to fit different screen sizes, so your store looks decent whether someone’s browsing on an iPhone, an Android tablet, or a massive desktop monitor. You don’t need to create separate mobile and desktop versions – it just works.
Site Speed
Google has been factoring site speed into rankings since 2010. Fast sites rank higher than slow ones, all else being equal. Users also hate waiting for pages to load. Every second of delay costs you potential customers.
Shopify optimises for speed in several ways. The platform uses a content delivery network (CDN) to serve your site from servers closer to your visitors. It automatically converts images to WebP format, which is about 30% smaller than JPEG files without losing quality. As Shopify handles hosting, you don’t need to worry about server configuration or capacity.
This doesn’t mean your Shopify store will automatically be lightning-fast. If you upload massive uncompressed images, install dozens of apps, or use a poorly coded theme, you can still slow things down – but the foundation is solid.
SSL Certificates
HTTPS (the little padlock icon in your browser) is table stakes now. It encrypts data between your server and your visitors, which is especially important for ecommerce where people enter credit card information.
Google confirmed years ago that HTTPS is a ranking signal. More importantly, browsers now warn users if a site isn’t secure. Imagine someone about to buy from you, then seeing a big scary warning that your site might steal their information. That sale’s not happening.
Shopify includes an SSL certificate for all stores by default. You don’t pay extra, you don’t need to install anything, and you don’t need to remember to renew it. It just works, and your store automatically uses HTTPS.
Keyword Research: Finding What People Actually Search For
Here’s where we get into strategy rather than just technical setup. You can have the fastest, most technically perfect Shopify store in the world, but if you’re optimising for keywords nobody searches for, you won’t get traffic.
Keyword research is about understanding what words and phrases your potential customers use when they’re looking for products like yours. It’s also about understanding their intent: are they just browsing or ready to buy right now?
The Four Types of Keywords
SEO folks generally break keywords into four categories based on search intent:
- Informational keywords – What people use when they’re looking for information. “How to train a puppy” or “what is SEO” fall into this category. These searches have high volume but don’t always lead directly to sales. They’re useful for building brand awareness and establishing authority, though.
- Navigational keywords – When someone’s looking for a specific brand or website. “Amazon UK” or “Nike running shoes” are navigational. If someone’s searching for your brand name, they already know about you. These are important to monitor but harder to optimise for if you’re trying to reach new customers.
- Transactional keywords – Show buying intent. Words like “buy,” “discount,” “order,” or “price” indicate someone’s ready to purchase. “Buy wireless headphones UK” is a transactional keyword. These are gold for ecommerce.
- Commercial keywords – Sit in the middle. They show someone’s interested and probably close to buying, but they’re still comparing options. “Best laptops under £500” or “top-rated coffee machines” signal commercial intent. The searcher is doing final research before making a decision.
For your Shopify store, you want a mix of transactional and commercial keywords. Informational content can work too if you’ve got a blog, but your product pages should target people who are ready to buy or close to it.
Tools for Keyword Research
Google’s Keyword Planner is free and gives you search volume data, though it’s designed for advertisers so the data’s sometimes grouped into ranges. Tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush offer more detailed analysis but cost money. They’re worth it if you’re serious about SEO, but you can start with free tools and upgrade later.
When you’re researching keywords, don’t just look at search volume. A keyword with 10,000 monthly searches might seem great, but if it’s too competitive or not relevant to what you actually sell, it’s useless. Better to rank well for a keyword with 500 searches that brings you customers than to rank on page five for something nobody clicks on anyway.
Shopify SEO Tips: On-Page Optimisation for Your Store Pages
On-page SEO is what most people think of when they hear “SEO” – optimising individual pages with the right keywords, titles, tags and descriptions. Shopify makes this pretty straightforward.
Page Titles and Meta Descriptions
When you add a product in Shopify, scroll down to the “Search engine listing preview” section at the bottom. This is where you set your page title and meta description, which are two critical elements of Shopify SEO.
The page title shows up in search results as the clickable headline. The meta description is the text snippet underneath it. Both should include your target keyword naturally (don’t stuff it in awkwardly), and both should be compelling enough that people want to click.
Shopify has character limits, though they’re not quite optimal for SEO. The description field allows more characters than Google typically displays (around 160 is the sweet spot). You can use the extra space if you want, just know that anything past 160 characters might get cut off in search results.
Write for humans first, search engines second. A perfectly optimised title that reads like gibberish won’t get clicks, and if people don’t click your result, Google notices and ranks you lower.
Site Structure: Making Your Store Easy to Navigate
Site structure doesn’t get enough attention, probably because it’s less sexy than keyword research or link building. But it matters for both users and search engines and it’s a crucial part of your overall Shopify SEO strategy.
Google crawls websites from the top down. If a page is buried five clicks deep from your homepage, it might not get crawled often (or at all). Orphaned pages that aren’t linked from anywhere on your site are basically invisible to search engines.
The rule of thumb: every important page should be reachable within two to three clicks from your homepage. Your product pages, collection pages, and key landing pages should all be easily accessible.
Shopify’s URL Structure
Shopify uses three main URL structures:
- Products: /products/example-product
- Collections: /collections/collection-name (your categories)
- Pages: /pages/example-page (contact us, about us, etc.)
This consistency is helpful because URLs don’t change unexpectedly, but it also has limitations.
You can’t create subcategories within collections, for example. If you sell tents and want to organise them by capacity (two-man tents, four-man tents, etc.), you’d need separate collections rather than nested categories.
There’s also a quirk with product URLs. By default, when you access a product from a collection, the URL looks like this: /collections/mugs/products/hogwarts-christmas-mug
But the actual canonical URL (the one Shopify tells Google is the “real” version) is: /products/hogwarts-christmas-mug
Shopify uses canonical tags to tell Google which version to index, but it’s not ideal. Google treats canonicals as suggestions, not commands. They can ignore them, which means you might end up with both versions indexed (hello, duplicate content).
There’s a fix involving editing your theme files, but it requires working with liquid code. If you’re comfortable with that, great. If not, hire someone. Breaking your theme isn’t worth the DIY savings.
How to Improve SEO on Shopify: Advanced Features
Once you’ve got the basics covered, there are more advanced tactics that can help you improve SEO Shopify results and give you an edge over competitors.
Noindex and Nofollow Tags
Sometimes you don’t want a page indexed. Thank-you pages, internal search results, certain promotional pages – these shouldn’t show up in Google because they’re not useful to searchers and could create duplicate content issues.
The noindex tag tells search engines not to index a page. Shopify lets you add these tags through theme editing or apps. You can apply them to specific page types (like all pages in the cart) or individual pages.
The nofollow tag works similarly but applies to links. It tells search engines not to follow links on a page or not to pass ranking value through specific links. This is less commonly needed for most Shopify stores, but it’s there if you need it.
Structured Data and Schema Markup
Structured data is code that helps search engines understand what’s on your page. It’s the reason some search results show star ratings, prices, availability, and other rich information.
For ecommerce, product schema is particularly valuable. It tells Google exactly what you’re selling, how much it costs, whether it’s in stock, and what customers think of it. This information can appear directly in search results, making your listing more eye-catching and informative.
Shopify doesn’t include structured data by default, but many modern themes do. Check your theme documentation to see if it’s included. If not, you’ve got two options: add it manually (requires editing theme files) or use an app.
Manual implementation gives you more control and doesn’t slow down your site like some apps can, but it requires understanding JSON-LD code and being comfortable editing liquid files. If that sounds intimidating, apps are the way to go.
Schema Implementation Priority
When implementing schema, focus on these page types:
- Homepage: Organisation and WebSite schema help establish your identity
- Product pages: Product, Offer, and AggregateRating schema (for showing star ratings)
- Collection pages: BreadcrumbList and FAQ schema where relevant
- Blog posts: Article schema and BreadcrumbList
After implementing structured data, test it using Google’s Rich Results Test. This tool shows you whether your markup is correct and what kind of rich results you might be eligible for.
International SEO
If you’re selling to customers in multiple countries, international SEO gets complicated fast. You need to think about currency, language, regional targeting, and how search engines understand which version of your site to show to which users.
Shopify supports international domains if you’re on the Advanced plan or higher. You can create country-specific domains or subdomains (like uk.yourstore.com or de.yourstore.com). Each gets its own sitemap, and search engines can crawl all of them.
The limitation is that Shopify doesn’t support country subfolders (like yourstore.com/uk/). There’s debate in the SEO community about whether subdomains or subfolders are better for international SEO. Google says there’s no difference; many SEO folks disagree. Either way, you’re stuck with subdomains or separate domains on Shopify.
Hreflang tags tell search engines which language and regional version of a page to show users. If you have the same product available in UK English and French, hreflang tags help Google show the right version to the right user.
Shopify doesn’t add hreflang automatically, but you can implement it by editing your theme files. There are also apps that handle this, particularly if you’re translating content and need to manage multiple language versions.
Building Links to Your Shopify Store
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: you can do everything else right and still struggle to rank if you don’t have backlinks. Search engines use links from other sites as votes of confidence. More high-quality links generally mean better rankings.
But getting links is hard. You can’t just buy them (Google penalises that) or spam forums with your URL. You need legitimate links from relevant, authoritative sites.
Here are some strategies that actually work:
- Contact your suppliers and manufacturers. If you’re an authorised retailer for established brands, they often have pages listing where customers can buy their products. Get yourself added to those lists. It’s an easy, relevant link.
- Create content worth linking to. Buying guides, how-to articles, industry insights – if you create genuinely useful content, other sites might link to it naturally. This takes time and effort, but it works. If you need help with content strategy and digital PR campaigns that naturally attract links, it’s worth considering professional support.
- Find and fix broken links. Use tools to find broken links on sites in your industry, especially links to products or content similar to yours. Then reach out and suggest they link to your equivalent page instead. You’re helping them fix a problem while getting a link.
- Look for unlinked mentions. Your brand might be mentioned on blogs, forums, or news sites without a link. Tools like mention.com can help you find these. Reach out politely and ask if they’d be willing to add a link.
- Connect with influencers and industry experts. Interviews, guest posts, or collaborative content can result in links. This works best if you have something valuable to offer them too, such as exclusive information, products to review, or access to your audience/social accounts.
Link building takes patience. One good link from a relevant, authoritative site is worth more than dozens of low-quality directory links. Focus on quality over quantity.
Tracking How to Improve SEO on Shopify
You can’t improve what you don’t measure. Setting up Google Analytics (GA4, specifically, as Universal Analytics stopped collecting data in mid-2023) lets you see what’s working and what isn’t.
Shopify has built-in analytics, but they’re basic. Google Analytics gives you much more detailed information about where your traffic comes from, what people do on your site, and which pages convert best.
Once it’s set up, pay attention to organic traffic trends. Are you getting more visitors from search engines over time? Which keywords are driving traffic? Which pages get the most organic views? This data tells you whether your efforts to improve SEO on Shopify are working.
Want to take your analytics further? Consider implementing conversion rate optimisation (CVO) strategies to turn that traffic into actual sales. Sometimes the problem isn’t getting visitors, it’s converting them once they arrive. Understanding which pages perform well and which don’t helps you prioritise your optimisation efforts.
Shopify SEO Apps: When to Use Them
The Shopify app store has dozens of SEO apps promising to solve every problem. Some are genuinely useful; others are overpriced snake oil.
Apps can help with structured data, image optimisation, broken link monitoring, SEO audits, and more. However, every app you install adds code to your site, which can slow it down. Site speed affects rankings, so you might be trading one benefit for another drawback.
Before installing an app, ask yourself:
- Can I do this manually? (Sometimes it’s worth learning rather than paying monthly.)
- Does my theme already include this feature?
- Will this genuinely help my rankings, or does it just sound impressive?
If you’re not technical and need features your theme doesn’t include, apps make sense. Just be selective. Don’t install five different SEO apps that all do similar things.
Common Shopify SEO Mistakes to Avoid
Even with Shopify handling a lot of technical SEO, there are still ways to shoot yourself in the foot.
Ignoring alt text for images
Every product image should have descriptive alt text. This helps visually impaired users and gives search engines context about what the image shows. Don’t just write “product image”, describe what’s actually in the photo.
Duplicate content between products
If you sell similar products, it’s tempting to copy and paste descriptions. Don’t. Google can tell, and it hurts your rankings. Write unique descriptions for each product, or at least substantially different ones.
Thin product descriptions
Two sentences isn’t enough. Give search engines and potential customers enough information to understand what you’re selling and why they should care.
Forgetting about blog content
Product pages target transactional keywords, but a blog lets you target informational and commercial keywords too. Writing regular blog posts about ecommerce topics helps build authority and gives people reasons to link to your site. Many successful Shopify SEO strategies include regular content marketing.
Not optimising images
Huge, uncompressed images slow down your site. Shopify converts them to WebP, which helps, but start with reasonably sized images. You don’t need a 5000×5000 pixel product photo on a webpage.
Shopify SEO isn’t magic, and it isn’t a one-time task. It’s an ongoing process of research, optimisation, content creation, and link building. The good news is that Shopify handles enough of the technical foundation that you can focus on strategy rather than wrestling with code.
Your Shopify store has the tools for effective SEO. Now you just need to use them. If you need expert guidance along the way, don’t hesitate to reach out to eComOne for professional Shopify SEO support. Sometimes the fastest path to success is learning from people who’ve already optimised hundreds of Shopify stores.
About the Author
Andrew Birkitt
Director
Andrew Birkitt is a seasoned SEO and technical digital marketing specialist with over a decade of hands-on experience driving organic growth and technical optimisation for eCommerce and digital brands. As a Director at eComOne, Andrew is widely recognised for his expertise in technical SEO, data feeds, Merchant Center optimisation and problem-solving across complex search challenges. […]
