Shopify SEO: what the platform does for you, and what is left to do

What Shopify already does for your SEO

Every Shopify store automatically generates a sitemap.xml file that contains links to all your products, their main image, your pages, collections and blog posts. It sits at the root of the domain (your-store.com/sitemap.xml): all that is left is to submit it in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.

Shopify also creates a default robots.txt file that suits most stores. It can be customised through the theme’s robots.txt.liquid template; Shopify then recommends keeping a copy of the current file and using the Liquid objects provided rather than rewriting everything by hand.

• Done by Shopify: the sitemap and a default robots.txt.
• Up to you: titles and descriptions, product and collection copy, alt text, redirects, catalogue structure, theme and app speed.

Titles and descriptions: the search listing preview of every page

Every product, collection, page and blog post has a “Search engine listing” block at the bottom of its editing screen. That is where you set the page title, the meta description and the URL. Shopify recommends a title of 60 characters or fewer (70 at most) and a meta description of around 160 characters.

Do not let Shopify reuse the product name as it is: the internal name (“Tee Basic V2”) is not a search. Write the title a buyer would type, then a meta description that gives the use and one concrete benefit.

1. 1
   Collections first: they are the pages that target searches with volume. One title per collection built on the main search, a meta description and an introduction above the products.
2. 2
   Best sellers next: rewrite the title, description and copy of the products that already have impressions in Google Search Console.
3. 3
   Images: one alt text per image (Products, image, Edit alt text) that describes what the photo shows.
4. 4
   Home page: a title and a meta description that say what you sell and what sets you apart, not just the store name.

Redirects: every URL that changes must point somewhere

This is the costliest mistake on Shopify: changing a product’s URL or deleting a product without a redirect. The links and history of the old page are lost, and the visitor lands on an error. Shopify lets you create a URL redirect from Content, Menus, View URL redirects, and import them in bulk with a CSV file. A standard store can create up to 100,000.

For a deleted product, Shopify suggests redirecting the old URL to a similar product. A product set to draft or removed from every sales channel returns a 404 error, which can also be redirected.

• Product replaced by a similar model: redirect to the new model.
• Discontinued product with no equivalent: redirect to the collection, or a 404 if nothing truly matches.
• Renamed collection: redirect the old URL to the new one.
• Migration to Shopify: a CSV file mapping every old URL to its new one, imported before the switch.

Shopify points out that 301 redirects are cached by browsers and search engines: a deleted redirect can keep working for a while. On Google’s side, a permanent redirect is a strong signal that the target should replace the old URL in the results.

Hide useless pages from search engines

A Shopify store piles up pages that are worthless to Google: internal search result pages, test products, thank-you pages, old promotional collections. Shopify offers two ways to hide them.

The first: add a conditional noindex meta robots tag in the theme (theme.liquid) for the pages concerned. The second: create an integer metafield definition seo.hidden on products, pages or blog posts, and set it to 1 to remove the item from the sitemaps and from search engines. Shopify notes that a product hidden this way can still appear in the store’s collections and recommendations.

Organise the catalogue for Google

Shopify gives you a lot of freedom in how you organise collections, and that is where many stores lose their way: overlapping collections, tags turned into pages, variants sold as separate products. The rule is the same as everywhere: one search intent, one page.

1. 1
   List the collections and their main search. Two collections for the same search: merge one into the other, with a redirect.
2. 2
   Check that every product can be reached through a real link from at least one collection, without relying on internal search alone.
3. 3
   Group colour and size variants in a single product with a selector, unless a variant matches a distinct search.
4. 4
   Write an introduction for every important collection, and a buying guide below the product grid.

Speed: the theme and the apps

A Shopify store rarely slows down because of the platform and almost always because of what is added to it: apps that each load their own script, carousels, home page videos, images that are too heavy. Google considers an LCP good under 2.5 s, an INP under 200 ms and a CLS under 0.1.

Review your apps once a quarter: uninstall the ones you no longer use and check that their code has really gone from the theme. Compress images before uploading them, and choose a light theme over one that does everything.

Beyond Google: Shopping, Bing, AI

A Shopify store connects to Google Merchant Center through an app: your products become eligible for free listings in Shopping, Images and Lens. Also submit your sitemap in Bing Webmaster Tools, and check that your robots.txt lets through the crawlers of the AI assistants you want to see recommending your store.