Building a sleek and stunning Shopify store is no mean feat.
It’s the first step in forging an online presence, and it’s going to be pivotal in the success of your e-commerce business.
But how useful is a kick-ass website that nobody can find?
As my nan would say, about as useful as a chocolate teapot.
That’s where SEO comes in.
Here we delve into the depths of Shopify SEO so you can optimise your store to get more traction on search engines.
What Makes Shopify a Good Choice for SEO?
When people first hear terms like XML sitemaps, robots.txt, metadata, canonical URLs and SEO settings, it can quickly start to feel… a bit too much.
One of the advantages of Shopify is that many of these important SEO features are already built in. You do not need to install a separate SEO plugin just to get the basics in place.
That does not mean Shopify does everything perfectly, or that you can ignore SEO completely. However, it does give you a strong starting point. Your store can automatically generate sitemaps, give you control over page titles and meta descriptions, and manage key technical files like robots.txt.
Let’s look at a few of these built-in SEO features and why they matter.
Shopify SEO Tutorial Contents
- Shopify’s XML Sitemap
- Metadata Fields
- robots.txt
- Structure Your Site
- Choose a Shopify Theme
- Conduct Keyword Research
- Product Variants
- Create Compelling Product Descriptions
- Set Your Domain
- Optimise Images
- Perform Data Markup
- Continually Monitor
Shopify’s XML Sitemap
A sitemap helps search engines discover the important pages on your website. In Shopify, this is created automatically, which means you do not need to build it manually or install a separate plugin.
You can usually access it by visiting:
https://yourwebsite.com/sitemap.xml
Just replace yourwebsite.com with your own domain name.
Although Shopify’s sitemap setup is not perfect, it gives your store an important SEO foundation from the start.
Why this is good
- You can submit the sitemap to Google Search Console.
- Shopify segments larger stores into separate sitemap files, which helps search engines process the site more easily.
- The sitemap structure is automatic, so new products, pages and collections can be added without manual work.
- Shopify’s sitemap setup is evolving, including newer sitemap files such as
sitemap_agentic_discovery.xml.
What is not so good
- The collections sitemap could be more detailed, especially for larger stores.
- You do not get as much sitemap control as you would with some WordPress SEO plugins.
Metadata Fields
You do not need a special SEO plugin in Shopify to edit your page titles and meta descriptions. Shopify already gives you fields for these inside products, collections, pages and blog posts.
This is important because metadata helps control how your pages appear in search results. Your page title can influence rankings and clicks, while your meta description can help persuade someone to visit your page instead of a competitor’s.
Shopify can automatically populate these fields, but relying on that is not recommended. It may simply pull text from your product title, page content or description. That is rarely the best version from an SEO or sales point of view.
This is where you can improve your search result. Write your own page titles and meta descriptions so they are clear, relevant and more appealing to potential customers.
Important note: Even though Shopify gives you these fields automatically, you still need to use them properly. The default version is usually not the strongest version.
For example, instead of letting Shopify create a basic title, you can write something more targeted:
Basic:Sage Green Linen Cushion Cover | Willow & Stone Home
Stronger:Sage Green Linen Cushion Cover for Sofas & Beds
The stronger version includes the product type, colour and use case, which makes it more useful for both search engines and shoppers.
Title tag and meta description optimisation can help with your search engine ranking, and also improve your click-through rate.
robots.txt
Shopify also creates a robots.txt file for your store. This file gives search engines instructions about which parts of your website they can and cannot crawl.
For most Shopify stores, you do not need to edit this file. Shopify handles the standard version for you, and that is enough in most cases.
You can view it by visiting:
https://yourwebsite.com/robots.txt
Again, replace yourwebsite.com with your actual domain.
When would you edit robots.txt?
You may only need to edit it in specific situations, such as:
- You want to block search engines from crawling certain filtered or internal URLs.
- You have a custom SEO setup and need more control over crawl behaviour.
- A developer or SEO specialist has identified crawl waste or indexing issues.
For most store owners, this is something Shopify handles in the background.
Where Shopify Still Needs Manual SEO Work
1. Structure Your Site
Before choosing a theme or creating product pages, plan how your Shopify store will be organised. A clear structure helps customers find products and allows search engines to crawl and understand the website. For most stores, a simple hierarchy works best:
Homepage → Collections → Subcollections → Products
Good Website Structure Example
Michael’s Cycles groups its products beneath clear categories such as mountain bikes, road bikes and electric bikes. Important service and company pages are also easy to find, while blog content supports the main commercial sections. This creates a logical journey for customers and search engines.
Bad Website Structure Example
Neil’s Wheels mixes individual products, categories and blog articles within the main navigation. Its repair service appears beneath “All Bikes”, while secondary pages such as shipping information occupy valuable header space. This makes the store harder to navigate and weakens the relationship between its pages.
Real Life Examples
One of the most visible places where you can see a good website structure (not just in your wireframes) is the mega menu.
See how we used a mega menu, advanced product filters and subscription products in our Angling.Pro Shopify project.
And one of the most unexpected places you will see it is in the breadcrumbs.
Website structure should also guide visitors towards the next useful page. For example, a blog article about cycling to work could link to commuter-bike collections or relevant products. These contextual internal links help customers continue their journey while showing search engines how informational and commercial pages are connected.
2. Choose a Shopify Theme
Now that we have our site structure in place, we can now start to think about what our store is going to look like. First, though, it is important to remain grounded.
A common mistake we see when companies get excited about e-commerce website development is the tendency to overdesign.
And this greatly complicates their SEO.
Shopify provides pre-built functionality and stylish easy-to-use theme designs. What’s more, some of the newer premium templates (such as Hyper) have been developed with user experience and SEO in mind, and typically have great site speed and performance.
With this in mind, let me ask you this. Why on earth would you want to go and completely design a Shopify theme from scratch by customising every part of your site? You wouldn’t – unless that is, you’re part of a bigger organisation with very specific design and functionality needs and a team of professional Shopify website designers and developers.
In the case of Michael’s Cycles, a standard Shopify theme will do just fine.
3. Conduct Keyword Research
Keyword research involves finding the most popular words or phrases that your target audience is likely to search to find products like yours. You can use Google Keyword Planner for help with this, or conduct your own keyword research by inputting search terms into Google and looking at ‘Related Searches’.
Once you’ve determined which keywords you want to focus on for each page you can ensure they’re included in product descriptions, title tags, and meta descriptions in a natural way. Avoid stuffing your content with keywords as search engines can recognise and penalise your site for this.
4. Product Variants
You’re likely to sell products that come in slightly different versions. For example, the same pair of snakeskin boots might be available in black and tan.
Shopify normally allows you to create these as variants within a single product. Each selected variant can have a URL containing a parameter such as:
exampleshop.com/products/snakeskin-boots?variant=6638600
exampleshop.com/products/snakeskin-boots?variant=8238641
These variant URLs are normal and are not automatically an SEO problem. Shopify uses canonical tags to help search engines understand the preferred product URL, while Google can also process different product variants displayed on one page.
For most stores, keeping colours, sizes and other minor variations within one product page is the best option. It keeps product information, reviews and authority together while avoiding duplicate or thin pages.
However, creating separate product pages may be worthwhile when individual variants have their own search demand and can be supported by unique titles, descriptions, images and other useful information.
In that situation, the URLs could look like this:
exampleshop.com/products/black-snakeskin-boots
exampleshop.com/products/tan-snakeskin-boots
Do not create separate product pages simply to place additional keywords in the URLs. Each page should serve a distinct customer need and provide genuinely different value.
5. Create Compelling Product Descriptions
Product descriptions should inform customers while also including relevant keywords naturally. Unique and clear product descriptions work best for both user experience and SEO since they not only appeal to customers but also help search engines understand the context of your products.
But what exactly makes a good product description in the era of AI, where with a simple prompt we can generate hundreds, if not thousands, of words of content for each of our products and collection pages?
Well, believe it or not, nothing has changed.
Just as before, your customers want to learn useful facts about the product before buying. Even impulse shoppers who do not read too much still notice the text.
Your job is to provide them with useful information that helps them decide whether this product is right for them.
And if you are asking yourself about the quality of the content, just think: if your copy persuaded them to buy, would they come back again later because they were happy with the value proposition?
If yes, you did it right.
What happens if you still fail at this and focus on word count rather than usefulness?
It might work for a short time, but not for long. Search engines use automated systems and a range of quality signals to assess whether content is genuinely useful, original and written for people rather than simply created to fill a page.
6. Set Your Domain
Your Shopify store will be accessible via several different URLs. For example, users could reach your store using any of the following:
- exampleshop.com
- https://www.exampleshop.com
- https://exampleshop.com
- www.exampleshop.com
- exampleshop.myshopify.com
To avoid diluting link equity, which can affect SERP rankings, you should set your preferred domain. This is known as ‘domain canonicalisation’. You can do this by logging into your Shopify account and navigating to ‘Domain Settings’. From here, you can select your preferred domain by clicking ‘Set as primary’.
7. Optimise Images
Image optimisation is an important, and often forgotten, part of SEO.
To optimise your images for Shopify, be sure to use clear, appealing images that show your products in their best light. Images should be high resolution for improved user experience, but ideally, these should be compressed to help with page loading speed.
Remember to use alt text on all of your images, as this helps to put them in context for search engines, and can also be useful for users who cannot see the images.
Not so long ago, Shopify introduced AI to help you populate your image alt text.
Unpopular opinion: we don’t recommend relying on it.
Why? Because the meaning of an image depends on context. More specifically, your alt text should describe exactly what you are selling.
Let’s look at one example. For this small case study, we sourced a stock photo from Shutterstock.
Even a simple image with no background elements seems to be a challenge for Shopify.
In the screenshot below, Shopify suggested the alt text: “Woman wearing a pink dress against a gray background.”
But we are not selling grey backgrounds. So this is not what we want to communicate to search engines, AI tools, or people using assistive technology such as screen readers.
A better example would be: “Blush pink maternity occasion dress for pregnant women by Bloom & Belle”
This describes the actual product, the colour, the purpose, and the brand.
Note: we will continue to monitor Shopify’s AI alt text feature, as we maintain Shopify websites daily. If this feature improves, we will update this article and revise this section accordingly.
8. Perform Data Markup
Structured data, or schema markup, helps search engines understand your content and can make eligible pages appear with enhanced features such as prices, ratings and availability. It does not directly improve rankings, but it can make your search results more informative and encourage more clicks.
It can also enable rich snippets in search results, which typically improves click-through rates, giving you more opportunity to convert visitors into paying customers. Most themes in Shopify already support Schema, so you just need to make sure you are thoroughly filling out all of your product information, such as price, inventory, etc.
The rich snippets can be seen in these search results beneath the meta description.
Rich snippets can include such information as price, star rating, reviews, availability, and delivery information.
9. Continually Monitor
A crucial part of Shopify SEO is continually monitoring the way users are responding to your site.
You can use GA4 for web analytics and to track your website’s performance, making adjustments when needed.
The best thing about GA4 is not that it simply tells you how many visitors you had and where they came from. You can dig much deeper and find really important information.
One report I would recommend looking at is the purchase journey.
As you can see in this illustration below, there are several steps from a visitor landing on your website to placing an order.
Sometimes, it is not just about getting more visitors to your website. It is simply about optimising the journey.
Put yourself in your customers’ shoes and test it. Are there any issues?
Here are some practical but often overlooked tips you can implement to improve the purchase journey. Some of these affect SEO directly, such as breadcrumbs and clearer internal navigation, while others mainly improve user experience and conversion rates by making it easier for visitors to find products, understand the journey and complete a purchase:
- Make the search bar prominent. Our personal preference is centre-aligned and always visible on all pages, except single product pages on mobile, rather than hidden behind a magnifying glass.
- Make sure your breadcrumbs stand out as a vital part of navigation, not just a decorative element.
- Avoid uppercase text. You do not want to look like you are shouting at your customers, and uppercase text can also be more difficult to read.
- The colour of primary CTA buttons should contrast with the website’s main colour palette, or use colours that are not overused across the website.
- A similar rule applies to the cart icon, which usually sits on the right-hand side of your Shopify website header. Make sure it is prominent by using contrasting colours or colours that are not overused on your website.
- Consider introducing a free delivery threshold. Amazon Prime has made this a standard expectation, and we can argue that many of your customers are probably used to it.
Shopify and Page Speed: Helpful, But Not (Fully) Automatic
Shopify does help with the foundation (as it’s well coded and their servers are exceptionally good), but the final result still depends on how the store is built.
Things that can affect Shopify page speed include:
- The quality of the Shopify theme
- Image size and compression
- Number of installed apps
- Large homepage banners or videos
- Too many product sections, sliders or animations
- Tracking scripts and third-party tools
- The complexity of product and collection pages
Note: Testing your homepage once with PageSpeed Insights is not enough. You should continually monitor your website’s Core Web Vitals in Google Search Console to make sure your site performs well across all pages, not just a single page.
Final Words
Setting up your Shopify platform and optimising it for search engines can be the difference between a failed attempt and an enviable success story. Use this guide to help you build the foundation blocks for your Shopify store, upon which you can continue to grow and expand.
Have any questions about Shopify SEO or need some support to get your Shopify store off the ground? Get in touch with us today.
