Are you struggling to drive organic traffic to your Shopify store? Many brands face this challenge as they don’t have a solid Shopify SEO strategy in place for their business.
Without a strong SEO foundation, no matter how good and useful your products are, they will stay hidden from potential customers. Investing in SEO helps your store get discovered by the right audience at the right time. It improves your visibility on search engines and brings in those customers who are actively looking for your products.
In short, when done right, Shopify SEO can help you boost your store’s sales and organic traffic.
But how do you optimize your store for SEO? That’s where this blog will help.
Through this blog, we will go through the strategies to optimize Shopify stores for the best results. Along with those strategies, we will also learn what features Shopify offers for SEO, common mistakes to avoid when optimizing your store, and much more.
So, are you ready? Let’s get started.
Table of Contents
What is Shopify SEO?
‘Shopify SEO’ refers to the practice of optimizing your Shopify e-commerce website to improve its ranking in search engine results and attract more traffic. It encompasses different strategies such as:
- Creating high-quality, keyword-rich content such as blogs, FAQ properties, etc.
- Building a strong backlink profile.
- Optimizing your store for speed.
- Creating SEO-friendly, simple URL structures.
Combined, these strategies make it easier for search engines such as Google and Bing to understand your store better, crawl your pages, and improve their visibility for relevant searches.
Does Shopify Offer Any Built-In SEO Features?
Yes, Shopify offers several important built-in SEO features. These features include, but aren’t limited to:
- Automatic XML sitemap generation
- Automatic robots.txt file generation
- Customizable Meta Tags
- All stores get SSL certificates, which help improve security
- Auto-generated canonical tags
- Mobile-responsive themes
- Image optimization (via different techniques such as compressing images, adding ALT text to them, etc.)
- Schema Markup support
- Fast loading times
- 301 redirects
- Integrated blogging platform
- Integration with Analytics tools such as Google Analytics
Top 15 Strategies For Optimizing Your Shopify Store For SEO
Let’s now quickly deep dive into some SEO strategies for optimizing your Shopify store.
For convenience, we will be dividing these tips into three main categories:
- On-Page SEO
- Off-Page SEO
- Technical SEO
On-Page SEO Optimization Tips
First, we will go through some on-page SEO optimization tips.
Add Relevant Keywords to Your Store Content
You should add high-intent, high-volume, low-difficulty keywords to all possible pages across your Shopify store. These keywords help search engines match your store content with the right search queries.
Start by researching those terms that shoppers are very likely to use if they search for products similar to yours. You can conduct keyword research via tools like Ahrefs and Semrush, or even Google’s rich content features, such as “People also ask,” etc., amongst other sources. Choose those keywords that best describe your products and also cater to shoppers across the entire marketing funnel.
Once you find such keywords and compile them into a list, you must add them to:
- Page titles
- Meta Descriptions
- Image alt text
- Page Content
However, while you add keywords to these pages or content, ensure that you use them in a natural way. Strictly avoid forcing them into every line. Search engines only reward those pages that appear to be helpful and genuine.
When your keywords start to match search intent and appear in the right places, your Shopify store becomes easier to find through organic search. As a result, you are more likely to attract qualified shoppers.
Optimize Page Titles and Meta Descriptions
Your page title and meta descriptions are often the first things that shoppers notice in search results. They are like a mini advertisement for your page. When you write them carefully, you improve the chances of getting more clicks and making your pages more relevant.
Here are some guidelines to follow when optimizing page titles and meta descriptions for SEO:
Page titles:
- The title tag should be easy to understand.
- Ensure that your page titles are of 60 characters or fewer.
- Add the primary keyword at the beginning of the title.
- Also, include your brand name or some other key information or benefit if space allows. For example, for an organic soap page, the title can be something like “Organic Lavender Soap | John’s Soaps.”
Meta descriptions:
- Keep your meta descriptions of 160 characters or less.
- Include relevant keywords in them, as that will help new customers find your pages.
- Use natural phrases that are in a flow, simple to understand, and make your meta description more useful for both search engines and shoppers.
Improve URL Structures
Maintaining clear URLs is important. It helps shoppers and search engines understand your pages faster and better.
Shopify allows you to edit URL handles for products, collections, and pages. Using that flexibility, you can ensure that your URLs are both simple and descriptive, while also being SEO-friendly.
Here are some tips to follow when creating or optimizing URLs for SEO:
- Match the URL handle to the primary keyword of the page. For example, if the page targets “Red floral shirts,” then use that keyword in the handle. Also, ensure that the words are in lowercase and separate them with spaces.
- Avoid long URLs with any random alphabet or numbers. These not only create redundancy but also look unprofessional.
- In all cases, maintain a consistent structure for all URLs across your store. So, for example, you can focus collections on product types and product pages on specific variants.
- If a page already has an existing URL, make edits to it with care and only if required. While you can create Shopify redirects in case of any errors, too many adjustments can confuse search engines.
Add High-Quality, Helpful Content To Each Page
Search engines (such as Google) reward pages that are helpful, reliable, people-first, and include original information.
With this in mind, ensure that you treat every page on your Shopify store as an opportunity to educate your site visitors and help them find what they are looking for.
For product pages, aim to add at least 250 words of keyword-rich, meaningful content. Describe what the product is, how it benefits the user, and why it’s a better choice compared to alternatives. Cover key details such as features, materials, use cases, and benefits. Use simple language and short paragraphs so the content is easy to scan.
For blog posts, include a minimum of 500 words, which aligns with Shopify’s own recommendations for high-quality, value-driven content. Focus on well-researched, original topics related to your products, such as usage tips, comparisons, and buying guides. Make your articles informative, persuasive, and authoritative to improve search visibility.
| Pro tip: Regularly update your content. Refreshing pages with new details, statistics, FAQs, etc., sends positive signals to the search engine that your page is active, reliable, and focused on providing the latest information. This helps to rank better. |
Keep All Pages Accessible Through Internal Links
It is important to properly interlink pages across your entire store, as this allows search engines to easily access and crawl all elements and content on your website. Without proper interlinking, important content can be difficult to reach and may remain hidden. When this happens, the effort invested in creating those pages is wasted, and your overall SEO performance suffers.
Some evergreen interlinking strategies you can follow include:
- Link all the important pages from your site’s menu, collections, blogs, etc. This will ensure that such pages are connected to each other and easy to discover.
- Whenever you create a new page, ensure that it receives links from other existing pages on your site.
- Regularly review old pages and update their links to ensure smooth navigation across your Shopify website.
| Pro tip: Always maintain a hierarchy during interlinking. And the best structure to follow is to treat your website’s home page as the main pillar. From this pillar, add links to all other secondary pillars. Further, link those secondary pillars to tertiary pillars. Example: http://www.shirtstore.com > Collections > Summer Collections This structure will help ensure that users and search engine bots can navigate through your store in a clear and logical path. |
Off-Page SEO Optimization Techniques
Now we will go through some SEO tips related to off-page optimization.
Build High-Quality Backlinks From Relevant Sites
When other websites link to your store, search engines perceive your content to be more trustworthy and reliable. This results in better rankings and SEO performance of your store.
Thus, focus on building a strong backlink profile for your Shopify store.
Start by identifying the type of websites your ideal customers spend time on. These can include niche blogs, review sites, online magazines, etc. Check what type of content they publish and how they mention other brands.
Then, you must reach out to those websites to feature you. For that, you can pitch the review of their products, interview their team members, or even post guest blogs. But while pitching, strictly ensure that you think about offering real value to the audience of that website. When editors see benefit, they are more comfortable and likely to link to your store.
This way, you can easily earn high-quality backlinks that can boost your store’s authority and visibility across search results.
Influencer & PR Outreach
You can also build relationships with bloggers, influencers, editors, and others in your niche to strengthen your Shopify store’s off-page SEO. These partnerships often help you earn strong media coverage and valuable editorial links from high DR, trustworthy sites.
Some effective strategies for influencer and PR outreach that can work well for your Shopify store include:
- Sending product samples to bloggers in exchange for detailed coverage and reviews on their blogs.
- Collaborating with influencers on social media (who might also blog about your products) to get access to their audience.
- Pitching your brand or product stories to journalists who cover the same niche as your business.
Over time, these features and mentions of your brand and products can help drive steady organic traffic to your store. Additionally, these backlinks can also help establish authority in search engines.
Forum and Q&A Participation
Even participating in discussion forums and social media communities is an effective off-page SEO strategy to build trust and visibility in your niche.
You can join communities such as the Shopify Community, Reddit, Quora, etc., where your target audience might be discussing topics related to your business. Under every relevant topic or question, you can first provide a helpful response that answers the user’s question. And then, you can plug in your product or any other relevant page from your Shopify store as a supportive resource. This strategy often helps earn clicks, leads to steady traffic (especially if the topic of the thread is a burning issue) to your store, and even drives sales.
On top of that, active participation in such communities also positions your brand as an expert in the niche. Search engines reward this by ranking your content higher, which can support your Shopify store’s growth and off-page SEO efforts.
Social Media Engagement
Social media plays an indirect but significant role in the success of your SEO efforts. Even though likes, comments, shares, etc., do not impact your rankings on any particular search engine, they help you attract more visitors. When users engage with your posts on any platform, your brand is presented to new audiences. This exposure increases brand awareness and sends shoppers to your store.
As more users discover your Shopify store, products, and content, they may start discussing it on discussion forums, communities, or even their own websites. Their natural mentions can lead to high-quality, genuine backlinks to your store, which (as we already know) supports SEO.
Moreover, social media activity can also increase branded searches as users are likely to remember your brand name (after engaging with your social media content) and search for it. This, in turn, acts as a strong trust signal for search engines, which again improves your Shopify store’s SEO performance.
In short, social media helps to boost your brand visibility, drive traffic to your store, and share your content. These actions don’t provide instantaneous SEO benefits, but are helpful for gaining organic growth over time.
Monitor Brand Mentions
Sometimes, other websites may mention your brand or products without linking to your store. These unlinked mentions offer a valuable opportunity to secure a backlink, as these businesses or sites have already shown interest in your business.
All you need to do is, whenever you find such a relevant mention, reach out to the site owner and politely request that they add a link to the most suitable page on your Shopify store. Since they have already mentioned your brand, they will likely add the link.
This simple practice is one of the most effective strategies for earning high-quality backlinks for your store and boosting off-page SEO for your store.
| Pro tip: To track brand mentions, you can use brand monitoring and social listening tools like BrandMentions, Brand24, etc. |
Technical SEO Optimization Tips
With on-page and off-page SEO in place, let’s now go through some technical SEO tips for Shopify.
Create A Logical Site Structure With Clean Navigation
A clear and logical structure of your store is important to ensure that both shoppers and search engines can navigate through it with ease. This reduces friction in exploring products, collections, etc., and increases engagement, which search engines reward with better crawling and higher rankings.
To create a straightforward and SEO-friendly layout for your store, here are some tips that you can follow:
- Follow a simple, hierarchical site structure where the homepage sits at the top, collections fall beneath it, and product pages sit at the bottom. This mirrors how shoppers browse in physical stores and helps users quickly understand where they are. Avoid creating overly deep hierarchies that require multiple clicks to reach a product.
- Organize collections that align with popular search behavior. For example, if you have an apparel store, you can divide items by ‘Men’ and ‘Women’ categories, and then by product type.
| Pro tip: Within each collection, ensure that you add filtering and sorting options that are intuitive. |
- Ensure that your main menu highlights important categories and pages. Also, use simple and descriptive labels that easily explain what each section contains.
- Support navigation with internal links, breadcrumbs, and footer links. Combined, these provide search engines with multiple ways to discover all the pages. Moreover, these are also helpful in case of future content expansions.
Submit Your Sitemap on Google Search Console
All merchants should submit their sitemap to Google Search Console (GSC) to ensure that Google’s bots crawl and index their entire store properly.
Shopify automatically generates sitemaps for every store. Merchants only need to locate the file (which they can do by visiting this link: https://www.example.com/sitemap.xml) and submit it to GSC.
Once Google crawls it, you can use the GSC dashboard to check for all types of issues, such as 404 not found, robots.txt not reachable, etc. And using that report, you can promptly address all issues and prevent your store’s SEO performance from going down.
Fix Broken 404 Links
Fix all the broken 404 links across your Shopify store. These links may point to products that you no longer sell or even external sites that are now inactive. Such 404 links can frustrate shoppers by leading them to dead ends and also waste your crawl budget, which can affect the indexing and visibility of pages on your site.
With the help of third-party redirect apps such as ‘404/301 URL Redirects by Nabu’, auto-detect such 404 pages well in advance. Moreover, using the app or even Shopify’s native functionality, create 301 redirects to active web pages that signal a permanent move to search engines. This will help you preserve SEO performance and also ensure that shoppers and search engine crawlers never land on broken pages.
Improve Your Store’s Loading Speed
Page loading speed is also an important factor to consider when optimizing your store for SEO. Slow sites can increase bounce rates and send negative signals to search engines like Google, which can result in poor rankings.
To ensure that your Shopify store and its content are fast-loading, ensure that:
- Image file sizes are small. Images are a significant part of a web page’s data, and they impact its loading speed. Small image files help with speedy loading and smooth browsing.
| Pro tip: You can use third-party Shopify image optimization apps. They can help you compress images without compromising their quality and enhance SEO performance. |
- Review carefully which apps and scripts you are using for your store. If there are apps that add extra code and slow down page loading times, remove them.
- Go with a lightweight, fast-loading Shopify theme such as Dawn, Blum, etc. Moreover, avoid using unnecessary animations or auto-playing media that can delay the first load of content.
- Use free tools like Google’s PageSpeed Insights to monitor your store pages regularly and ensure that they are fast across both desktop and mobile devices.
Prioritize Mobile-Friendliness
You should also ensure that all pages of your Shopify store are mobile-responsive. This is not just because more than 50% of Shopify traffic comes from mobile devices, but also because if your pages don’t load quickly or aren’t optimized for mobile devices, search engines like Google are not likely to rank them higher.
Here are some tips that you can follow to improve the mobile experience (and simultaneously SEO performance) of your store:
- Use browser caching to ensure that all resources that are frequently accessed are stored on a user’s device.
- Implement Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) to create fast-loading, mobile-friendly versions of your website pages.
- Use reliable server resources to ensure that the server response time isn’t high/
| Note: As per the intended length of this article, we have shared only 15 best practices for SEO optimizing your store. However, this list isn’t exhaustive. There are many other tips, such as optimizing your images, guest blogging, etc. For those, you can refer to Shopify’s help center. |
How To Track SEO Performance For Your Shopify Store?
We reviewed all the essential SEO strategies for optimizing your Shopify store. But as you would agree, just applying SEO best practices for your store will not be helpful. You will also have to track whether your applied efforts are paying off.
Here are some simple and useful ways to track your Shopify store’s SEO performance:
- Google Search Console: GSC can be very helpful in tracking the performance of your store pages. It provides access to various metrics (for pages, keywords, etc.), including CTR, Impressions, and Average Position. With these insights, you can understand how well your content is ranking in Google.
Additionally, you can also utilize GSC to check the overall health of your website and if Google has flagged any technical errors.
- Google Analytics: Google Analytics enables you to check the behavior of users on your site and specific pages in detail. Using it, you can track how many organic sessions your Shopify website gets, and which pages are bringing in the maximum engagement. Moreover, GA4 also allows you to track sales from your website, which can be beneficial to understand which parts of your SEO strategy are working and where you need to improve.
- SEO Tools: You can also use SEO tools within or outside the Shopify ecosystem to track the SEO performance of your store. Tools like Ahrefs enable you to track the global position of keywords and pages your store (or any page) is ranking for. They also allow you to check your website’s backlink profile, Domain authority, etc., all of which make it easier to understand how strong your SEO foundation is.
| Note: The list of methods/tools shared above for tracking SEO performance for your Shopify store isn’t exhaustive. We have only shared the most common, feasible, and effective methods. For custom needs, you can research the internet further. |
Why is Shopify SEO Important?
We covered some benefits of optimizing your Shopify store for SEO above. However, let’s go through the benefits in detail and understand why Shopify SEO truly matters.
Builds Stronger Visibility and Higher Rankings
Shopify SEO helps you improve the visibility of your store by helping it appear higher in search results for relevant keywords. With 53% of all website traffic coming from organic search, better visibility will help you reach more users without running ads.
Drives Cost-Effective and Long-Term Growth
SEO is a great source for driving long-term, sustainable organic traffic to your store. Unlike paid ads, which stop delivering results (visibility, clicks, etc.) the moment you pause them, SEO keeps working in the background. Once your pages rank well and you continue to optimize them over time (which doesn’t require much effort), they will continue to bring users to your site without any additional costs.
Increased Credibility and Customer Trust
Higher rankings are not only beneficial for driving traffic to your store but also for establishing trust and enhancing your brand’s reputation. According to a study by G2, top-ranking pages on Google get an average CTR of about 27.6% and are 10 times more likely to receive a click than the 10th position. This highlights that users trust websites that appear at the top of search results.
Thus, if your store and its content appear in the top positions in search engine results, users will perceive it as reliable, authoritative, and relevant. As a result, they will also click on your store links, explore products, and be more likely to make purchases.
Improve Shopper Experience
When you optimize your store for SEO, you improve its speed, navigation, responsiveness, and many other aspects. Combined, these elements enable shoppers to navigate through your store and explore products seamlessly, which reduces bounce rates and leads to better sales.
Competitive Edge
Standing out in a crowded e-commerce market can get difficult. But that’s where SEO comes in. According to some statistics, the top three search results receive more than 68% of all clicks. If you successfully secure one of those spots with SEO, your Shopify store can easily attract more customers before your competitors even get noticed.
In short, with SEO, you can dominate your niche and win market share.
Shopify SEO Apps
Let’s also go through some apps that can help you with search engine optimization for your store.
404/301 URL Redirects by Nabu
404/301 URL Redirects by Nabu is a ‘Built for Shopify’ certified redirect app. It enables Shopify merchants to set up 301 redirects for 404 pages across their store, ensuring that shoppers and search engines always reach the correct, active web pages. These redirects help merchants preserve the SEO rankings of old URLs, prevent traffic loss, and maintain a seamless browsing experience when any page is updated or removed.
It offers several key features that include:
- Auto-detecting 404 pages
- Setting up bulk Shopify redirects (via CSV imports and Wildcard Redirects)
- Accessing analytics related to 404 and 301 pages
- Creating Shopify redirects to external URLs
Pricing: The app is currently free. No hidden charges.
Reviews: 5 stars from 12 reviews
Tiny SEO Speed Image Optimizer
The Tiny SEO app helps Shopify merchants with quick and seamless SEO image and page speed optimization. It offers different features such as:
- The ability to enable lazy loading
- Resizing, compressing, and optimizing images
- Adding HTML sitemaps and LLMs.txt
- Generate AI product titles and descriptions
Pricing: The app is free to install, and its paid plans start from $14/month.
Reviews: 5 stars from 1,890 reviews
SEOAnt: AI SEO & AI Blog Post
The SEOAnt app allows Shopify merchants to boost the visibility of their store by automating essential SEO tasks such as scanning on-page issues, adding JSON-LD structured data, etc.
Some of its key features include:
- SEO Checker, which allows you to fix different types of SEO errors across your store with smart, one-click suggestions.
- Generate blogs with AI
- Bulk edit meta tags, alt text, etc.
Pricing: The app starts for free, and its paid plans begin from $29.99/month. There is also a 7-day free trial.
Reviews: 4.8 stars from 1,267 reviews
Bonus: Shopify SEO Audit Template
We’ve also created a comprehensive SEO audit template to help you assess which areas of your Shopify store need attention to improve search rankings. It walks you through all the key SEO factors to review, ensuring your store stays optimized and performs well in search results over time.
Download The Template Link Here
Conclusion and Key Takeaways
Shopify SEO is essential for improving your store’s visibility, attracting qualified shoppers, and driving long-term organic growth. With the right strategies, your store can rank higher and deliver a smoother shopping experience.
The key takeaways from this blog include:
- Adding relevant, high-intent keywords to your pages helps search engines understand your content and connect it with the right shoppers.
- Strong metadata improves click-through rates and makes your pages more appealing in search results.
- Clear URLs and helpful content improve page relevance and support better rankings.
- Internal linking strengthens navigation and helps search engines crawl every important page.
- High-quality backlinks (backlinks from trusted, high-DR websites) boost your store’s authority and improve visibility across competitive searches.
- A frictionless and straightforward site structure and fast page loading speed enhance user experience and support higher rankings.
- Fixing technical issues and maintaining mobile friendliness helps your store perform better in search.
Good luck.
FAQs
- How long does it take for Shopify SEO changes to reflect in Google results?
SEO updates don’t take effect immediately. Google typically needs a few days to crawl and index your changes, and it can take several weeks before you start seeing noticeable ranking improvements. For larger or more complex SEO updates, it may take a few months for the full impact to become clear.
- Can password-protected Shopify stores get indexed by Google?
No. If your store is locked with a password, search engines cannot crawl or index it. Remove the password only when your store is ready to go live.
- Should I delete out-of-stock product pages?
If a product is permanently discontinued, you can remove the page, but make sure to set up a redirect to a relevant, active page to avoid 404 errors and preserve any SEO value. However, if the product is temporarily out of stock, keep the page live. This helps maintain the page’s ranking history, prevents traffic loss, and allows customers to sign up for restock notifications if you offer them.
- Does switching Shopify themes affect SEO?
It can. Changing themes may alter your site structure, headings, or load speed. Always test your new theme for speed, mobile design, and missing SEO elements before publishing it.
- How can I optimize my Shopify products for AI platforms?
You can improve AI visibility by writing clear titles, adding detailed descriptions, and organizing your products with accurate tags, types, and collections. In addition to that, keep your store policies updated, and customize your FAQs through the Shopify Knowledge Base app so that AI platforms and LLMs can interpret your products correctly and surface them more often.
