Shopify powers more than 1 million businesses worldwide, from small to large. Creating a visually pleasing eCommerce store is not enough to drive organic search traffic and sales. Potential customers need to find your store easily to increase sales. This is where better search engine optimization (SEO) comes in.
In this post, we will cover an important Shopify SEO checklist, improving your store’s rank in SERPs and drive more organic traffic to your site. Let’s learn how to improve SEO on shopify now.
Shopify SEO Checklist: 3 Things to Prepare to Get Started!
Before diving into the checklist, let’s cover the foundations that any solid SEO strategy needs.
Define Your Target Audience
Like any other marketing strategy, your Shopify SEO checklist should start with a strong understanding of your target audience.
A thorough understanding of your target audience ensures you’re driving high-quality traffic to your Shopify site (as opposed to lots of traffic that don’t convert.)
It also helps you understand the search behavior of your potential customers so you can reverse-engineer your website SEO strategy to reach them.
So, before you get started, define your buyer personas. Write down the following traits your ideal customers share:
- Age
- Location
- Interests and hobbies
- Pain points
- Shopping behavior
- Purchase motivation
Let’s see the customer persona below:
Customer persona example
Keyword Research
Keyword research underpins almost every SEO activity you do on your Shopify site.
This is because text is one of the most important things for search engines to determine the context of your ecommerce website.
If you match your website content with the search queries someone will use to find it; you’ll increase the odds of appearing in those search results.
Start by determining which terms your target customer searches for when using keyword research tools such as Semrush, Ahrefs, or Moz.
Pay attention to these three factors:
- Relevancy. Targeting “shoes” doesn’t have much commercial value if you don’t sell them on your Shopify website. Make sure any target keyword is relevant to the products you sell.
- Search volume. This metric shows how many people search for that specific term each month. While keywords with a high search volume can drive thousands of searches to your Shopify store each month, it’s likely much more challenging to rank for them. Existing websites with tons of authority are probably claiming the top spots.
- Keyword difficulty. This figure illustrates how difficult it would be to rank for each keyword. If you’re a new Shopify store or just starting to optimize your website, you’ll see quicker results by prioritizing terms that are still relevant to your store but with a low keyword difficulty.
Once you’ve shortlisted potential keywords, it’s time to use them.
Categorize all keywords into one of three buckets, depending on the user’s intent to search for them. This informs how you’ll target them on your Shopify site:
- Informational. Informational keywords indicate a searcher is looking to learn something—for example, “benefits of walking.” These make for excellent blog posts where you can educate potential shoppers when they’re most impressionable.
- Commercial. Commercial keywords indicate a searcher is looking to buy something but isn’t quite ready to convert. An example would be “compare walking pads.” Target these terms on Shopify collection pages, which give hesitant shoppers greater choice.
- Transactional. Transactional keywords indicate the searcher wants to buy something, such as “buy a walking pad.” Divert these users towards your product pages by including transactional phrases across title tags, product descriptions, and anchor text in internal links.
Below is the example of commercial keyword “free coffee”:
Prepare SEO Toolkits
Shopify has several built-in SEO features for website owners, including editing meta titles and descriptions, creating a sitemap, and writing alt tags for product images. (More on this later.)
However, there are some elements of an e-commerce SEO strategy that Shopify isn’t best equipped to handle. Therefore, the Shopify App Store is home to some of the best SEO tools, integrating directly with your ecommerce platform.
Install Google Analytics
The first thing to do on your Shopify store is install Google Analytics. Google Analytics is a popular tool for SEOs, allowing you to measure core KPIs like traffic volume and revenue from organic sources.
It also gives you a huge amount of data to see information on traffic sources, user devices, engagement metrics, and much more. You can see the theme of Google Analytics report below:
Once you have formed a Google Analytics account, you can connect it to Shopify by accessing Online Store > going to Preferences > clicking Google Analytics and adding your Google Analytics account ID.
Set Up Google Search Console
Like Google Analytics, Search Console is another basic tool most SEOs use daily. It provides access to valuable SEO data, such as queries used to find your site, crawl and indexation issues, Core Web Vitals performance, and more.
Go to Search Console’s website and create an account. If you already have a Google Analytics set up, you should be able to use Google Analytics as a verification method to access your Search Console data.
If you’re in Google Search Console, you should submit the sitemap.xml. Doing this will give Google direct access to your site’s sitemap.xml file to find key content more easily.
To submit your sitemap.xml in Google Search Console, click Index > Sitemaps > Add a new sitemap. You can add your sitemap.xml URL path, which should always be “sitemap.xml,” to Shopify sites.
Shopify Technical SEO Checklist
Let’s check the 7 criteria below before launching your website via Shopify:
1. Perform A Crawl Of Your Site
If you want to improve your Shopify store’s technical performance, performing a crawl is one of the first steps. A crawl mimics how Google and other search engines explore your site and can highlight any significant issues. At Go Fish Digital, we use Screaming Frog to conduct site crawls.
When doing these crawls, you primarily look into the following:
- Large amounts of 4xx & 3xx status codes
- Unoptimized title tags on key pages
- Non-indexable URLs.
- Canonical tag issues.
Fixing these things can enhance Google’s efficiency when crawling and indexing your website. Based on your site crawl, you can prioritize these technical SEO items later on the Shopify checklist.
2. Check Your Robots.txt File
Make sure to check your Shopify robots.txt file. It’s located at “domain.com/robots.txt.” This file tells Google what it can and cannot crawl. By default, it blocks your checkout, cart, and internal search.
Shopify’s default rules are good for most stores, but you may need to add extra rules if your store has more customization. For example, if your store has faceted navigation or uses various internal search URLs, then the default.
3. Crawl The Sitemap.xml File
The sitemap.xml tells Google and other search engines what the crucial pages of your site are. Like the robots.txt file, Shopify creates this out of the great box! Shopify will generate a sitemap.xml index file with child sitemaps for:
- Marketing pages (sitemap_pages_1.xml)
- Collection pages (sitemap_collections_1.xml)
- Product pages (sitemap_products_1.xml)
- Blog posts (sitemap_blogs_1.xml)
Screaming Frog is an SEO tool that can be used to check a sitemap.xml file. If you switch the crawler to “List” mode, you can start a crawl of the sitemap.xml by selecting Upload > Download XML Sitemap.
This action will help you find pages returning 404/3xx status codes or low-quality pages. Shopify’s sitemap.xml is usually good; you don’t need to adjust it. However, sometimes, you might find low-quality pages in the sitemap.xml.
This situation could happen if a page is published in the Shopify admin but not attached to the site.
4. Ensure Category Pages Link To Canonical Products
Shopify has a common technical issue with duplicate content. This happens because collection pages often link to identical product pages. You can identify these duplicate pages by checking if they have ‘/collections/’ and ‘/products/’ in the URL.
However, these duplicate pages are not harmful as they contain canonical tags, directing you to the actual ranking page.
You can see every product link on all category pages is duplicated. However, you can fix this by monitoring the product grid item. liquid file
- Choose Online Store in the left sidebar > Themes
- Click Actions > Adjust code
- Select “Snippets” folder > choose “product-grid-item. liquid”
- Monitor the code below:
FROM: <a href=”{{ product.url | within: current_collection }}” class=”product-grid-item”>
TO: <a href=”{{ product.url }}” class=”product-grid-item”>
5. Review Your Structured Data Implementation
If you have a Shopify store, ensuring your site’s structured data is in good shape is important for your online presence. Structured data can provide more information to search engines, such as Google, about the content on your website.
By using structured data, search engines can better understand the content on your pages without having to “interpret” them.
To ensure your structured data is set up correctly, you should check how it looks on each page type within your Shopify store. You can do so by using the Schema Markup Validator.
You can see our ideal structured data mapping by page type:
- Home: Organization
- Collection: CollectionPage / OfferCatalog
- Product: Product
- Blog: Article
It’s best to have one element of each type of markup on your different page types. Correctly fill out important properties, like the “aggregate rating” on the “Product” schema. Check out our Shopify structured data guide for more information. Consider your audience and keep your sentences short and direct, using familiar words and an active voice.
6. Check For Indexation Issues From JavaScript
Your Shopify store’s content may depend on JavaScript to display properly for users and Google. If you have parts of your website that rely on client-side JavaScript, checking if Google is indexing your content correctly is important for your ranking. Otherwise, your content might not be indexed properly, and your website could suffer.
Here is how you check whether your website is indexed or not:
If this JavaScript is served client-side Google, we might not get a complete picture of the page’s content. By doing the following checks, you can get a better idea of how completely Google can index the content:
- Installing the Developer extension for Chrome, turn off JavaScript, and note which site components rely on it to load
- Do a “site:” to seek individual pages and look for sample text
- Check the indexed content via Google’s Mobile Friendly Testing Tool.
7. Review The Index Coverage Report
Another great review report for Shopify store owners is Search Console’s Index Coverage report. This report offers details on how Google is crawling and indexing your website. Google may not index some URLs without notifying you.
Below is the example of index coverage report:
Every time Google crawls a URL, it gives a status such as “Blocked by robots.txt,” “Submitted and indexed,” and “Crawled – currently not indexed,” which can be confusing.
We highly recommend reviewing this report to ensure Google crawls and indexes your content properly. You should check 4 criteria below:
- Is Google crawling low-quality URLs?
- Are there URLs that should be indexed that aren’t?
- Is Google ignoring our site’s canonical tags
- Are you blocking key content through the robots.txt
This can help give you more insights into possible indexation problems your Shopify store might have. The larger your website, the more crucial this step is.
Shopify On-page SEO Checklist
On-page SEO is the process of optimizing individual pages across your Shopify store. From internal links to content marketing, here are 7 checkboxes you should tick.
1. Write Meta Tags For Each Page
Meta titles and meta descriptions exist in search engine results and greatly influence your organic click-through rate (CTR). You can edit them by heading to the “Search engine listing” section of your product listing dashboard.
Below is the meta description of ROI Digitally:
When optimizing your Shopify meta tags, the goal is to prove to search engines your page is relevant while enticing searchers to click through.
2. Add Descriptive Alt Text
Search engines can’t see images in the same way humans can.
Writing descriptive alt text for each image on your Shopify store gives search engines context to accurately index your images and understand their relevance to your page content.
You can see how descriptive alt text appear in website:
When writing optimized alt text for images on your Shopify site:
- Aim for accuracy and conciseness
- Use natural language
- Include the page’s keywords, but don’t overuse them
These concepts also apply to image file names. Before uploading images to your Shopify store, rename the file from “IMG-395” to something more descriptive (such as “green-stationery-kit”).
3. Produce Unique Product Descriptions.
Shopify product descriptions influence sales by providing potential customers with key information about your products.
From an SEO perspective, they significantly enhance your store’s visibility and rankings in SERPs. By strategically inserting relevant keywords into your product descriptions, you tell search engines what your products are about.
Tick this off your Shopify SEO checklist with Shogun AI Text. The generative AI software will write product descriptions for you based on a single prompt:
4. Create A Shopify blog
A Shopify blog is a significant tool for communicating with potential customers and improving your SEO performance.
Blog posts help you target specific keywords, answer customer questions, and showcase your expertise with quality content—all of which can improve your website’s authority and search engine visibility.
5. Add Schema Markup
You can add Schema markup on your Shopify store’s HTML to offer search engines additional context about your page content.
Use this Schema Markup Generator to enable rich snippets and enhanced search results that provide more information to users directly on the SERP.
For Shopify stores, this might include:
- Product prices—including promotions
- Customer ratings
- Availability
- Fulfillment options (e.g., buy online, pickup in-store)
- Returns policy
6. Build Internal Links
Internal links guide shoppers around your website.
They also help search engines navigate your Shopify store and use anchor text—the copy you’re linking over—to get more context on the page you’re linking to.
As part of your SEO for shopify, find internal linking opportunities on your Shopify store. Quick wins include:
- Linking to product pages in the “You may also like” section of existing product pages
- Linking to category pages in your Shopify blog posts
- Linking to your homepage from the About page on your Shopify store
7. Ensure URLs Have A Clean Structure
While Shopify has some disadvantages in how your URLs are structured, you need to ensure your URLs are well-optimized:
- Short and concise
- Contains main keywords
- High readability score
Below are some examples of what the URLs of “Mens Dress Pants” look like:
- Medium :/collections/the-best-men-s-dress-pants-23/
- Good:/collections/best-men-s-dress-pants/
- Great:/collections/men-s-dress-pants/
We much prefer shorter and easy-to-read URLs while still using your main keywords. Fortunately, how Shopify prompts you to create collection pages generally results in more optimized URLs on the platform.
Shopify Off-page SEO Checklist
Off-page SEO refers to the optimizations you do elsewhere. From directory sites to social media, tick these off your checklist for total store optimization.
1. Collect Customer Reviews
Customer reviews supercharge online conversions. They can also improve your Shopify store’s SEO performance when used correctly.
Reviews add user-generated content to your product pages, which can naturally incorporate relevant keywords and phrases that potential customers might search for.
In other words, it’s a way to target secondary keywords on your product pages outside the main description.
Use Shopify apps like Judge. me, Loox, or Yotpo to configure automated emails, asking new customers to leave a review after their purchase.
That way, you have a constant pipeline of glowing reviews, improving your Shopify conversion rate and SEO performance.
2. Build High-Quality Backlinks
Search engines want to ensure the sites they direct users to are helpful, trustworthy, and valuable.
Backlinks—external links from another website pointing to your Shopify store—go a long way in building this credibility. Search engines see it as another site vouching for you.
The more vouchers you get, the more credible your Shopify store appears.
Link-building techniques to start with include:
- Responding to journalist requests on sites like HARO or Help a B2B Writer
- Sending free samples to bloggers to write a review on their website
- Repairing broken links pointing to your store
- Writing guest posts or sponsored content for publications in your niche
- Creating linkable assets such as how-to guides or quizzes
Bear in mind that not any backlink is a good backlink. Affiliating your site with low-quality or spam websites can give Google the same impression of your Shopify store.
3. Optimize Your Social Media Accounts.
Social media doesn’t directly correlate with SEO performance, but optimizing your online profiles can inflate other important SEO metrics.
For example:
- Posting on social media builds backlinks to your Shopify store
- Promoting Shopify blog posts can increase the number of people interacting with your store
- Social media profiles can appear in branded search results
Comb through your social media strategy and ensure you maximize the SEO potential you can derive from it.
This means optimizing your bio to include keywords, regularly promoting your blog content, and driving website traffic to your Shopify store.
Below is how you can add social media account on Shopity:
Local Shopify SEO checklist
If you’re a merchant that operates brick-and-mortar stores alongside your Shopify site, you’ll need this local Shopify SEO checklist.
1. Create A Google My Business Listing
Suppose you have a brick-and-mortar store alongside your Shopify ecommerce website or perhaps serve customers from a physical location (like a warehouse). In that case, you’ll need a Google My Business listing.
A Google My Business listing allows you to reach the 87% of people who use Google to evaluate local businesses. When people search for businesses in your area, your listing can appear prominently on Google Maps and the local search pack.
The best part? Customers can write reviews on your Google My Business listing.
Not only will local shoppers be armed with glowing reviews that make visiting your store a no-brainer, but Google can take positive reviews as a signal that your online store is worth promoting.
2. Join Online Directories
Online directories exist to help people within a specific location find local businesses.
When your store is listed on reputable directories, it signals to search engines that your Shopify store is legitimate and relevant to local searches.
Many directories also provide backlinks to a merchant’s website, helping you build your backlink profile while attracting local searchers.
Start with global directories like Yelp or Yell. Then, request to join directories in each location your Shopify store operates.
3. Create Local Landing Pages
Local landing pages are URLs on your Shopify store, providing information to local shoppers. This can include your store’s:
- Opening hours
- Address
- Telephone number
The SEO benefit of local landing pages is that you’ll have unique URLs to target location-specific keywords, such as “shoe store in Tampa” or “pottery studio near Los Angeles.”
Remember: the more often you incorporate keywords into your store’s website copy, the greater your chance of ranking for related searches.
Take a look at this example on Grace Loves Lace’s Shopify store for inspiration:
4. Ensure Consistency In NAP Listings.
NAP—for name, address, and phone number—is an important SEO consideration for Shopify for local businesses optimizing their e-commerce store.
The final goal of a search engine is to provide users with high-quality results.
Businesses with consistent NAP data prove their credibility, helping Google cement their Shopify store as meeting the criteria for a trustworthy listing.
Work through existing directory listings and ensure your business’ NAP information is accurate.
You’d be surprised at how many listings often fall through the cracks when you’re changing business addresses or phone numbers. Let’s see steps to have consistent NAP below:
Shopify SEO analytics checklist
Tracking your SEO for Shopify performance tells you how effective your SEO strategy is.
With so many metrics available inside your Shopify or Google Search Console dashboard, it can be challenging to figure out which KPIs are worth tracking—and which are vanity metrics that give no insight into your SEO performance.
The following metrics will help you analyze success as you work through this Shopify SEO checklist:
- Organic traffic: The total number of people who enter your website after seeing it listed in an organic search result. An increase in organic traffic isn’t only a sign that your search visibility is increasing but that people who encourage your listing find it relevant enough to click through.
- Keyword rankings are the positions of specific keywords in search results. The ideal spot is position one.
- Traffic value: This figure is Ahrefs’ estimate of how much you’d have to spend on paid advertisements to get the same amount of organic traffic. It’s calculated by multiplying a keyword’s monthly paid traffic by its CPC value.
- Organic conversions: Create a segment inside Google Analytics to display data only from people who visit your website through organic search. Look at the conversion rate of this segment to understand the quality of search traffic (though bear in mind that a poorly optimized page may leak conversions even if traffic is high-quality).
- Assisted organic conversions. Unlike shoppers from other marketing channels, not all search visitors will convert into paying customers during their first visit. Google Analytics assisted conversions report shows how organic factors into the typical customer journey.
Conclusion
That’s it! Now you got a Shopify SEO checklist that will get your store ranking higher on SERPs.
Those rankings you dream of can happen sooner than you expect! Just follow this step and keep updated on search engine updates and algorithm adjustments, you will know how to improve SEO on shopify
However, SEO for Shopify can be costly in terms of financial and human resources. Moreover, your team also needs to have expertise in Google’s always-changing algorithm.No worries. With our seasoned specialists in SEO, ROI Digitally can confidently enhance the visibility of your website on search engines via our white-hat strategies. Get the scalability you need for your business today.
