Shopify SEO services

A store on Shopify has part of its search setup written for it. Shopify makes the sitemap, the robots.txt file, the canonical tags and the certificate, and its themes print product data. The rest is yours: what each page says about itself, which pages are hidden, where old addresses lead, and what the theme and its apps have changed along the way.

This is search work for a Shopify store, sold as work. It is the same audit and the same monthly hours that we sell for any site. We look at what a search engine meets when it comes to your store, write down what is in its way, fix what can be fixed, and test each fix again. On Shopify one thing is added: some of what an audit finds is Shopify's to decide, and the report says so.

If the store is missing from Google altogether, start with a Shopify store that is not showing up on Google. It has the checks in order, and most take a minute.

What Shopify does by itself

Shopify's help center lists what a store gets with nobody setting it up. You should not be sold any of it.

• A sitemap. Every store generates a sitemap.xml file at the root of each of its domains, with links to its products, pages, collections and blog posts. It is updated when you add one.
• A robots.txt file. Every store has a default one, at the root of its primary domain.
• Canonical tags. Shopify's SEO overview says they are added to pages automatically "to prevent duplicate content from appearing in search results".
• A certificate. Shopify provides a TLS certificate for every domain added to a store, and sends a visitor who asks for the http address to the https one.
• A title on every page. Themes generate title tags that include your store's name. Where you have typed no title of your own, the theme uses the store's name and the title of the content.
• Product data. Shopify's help says its own current themes and the themes in its Theme Store include structured data for products by default, with details such as price and availability.
• One address for the store. A store has one primary domain, and Shopify's help says a visitor who enters another of its domains is redirected to it.
• The servers. Hosting, a content delivery network, compression and browser caching come with the store.

What is worth checking is whether these still say what they should. Most of them are printed by the theme, and a theme can be edited. Shopify's own help says that when a page has no title tag, it is "likely the result of custom code or an app".

What we look at

• Whether the store is open to a search engine. A store starts in private mode, behind its password page, where Shopify says all of its pages "are hidden from visitors and search engines". Shopify's help also says search engines do not index a store that is still on a trial.
• What has been hidden. Shopify has three ways to keep a page out of search: a product's "Unlisted" status, a metafield named seo.hidden, and a noindex tag written into the theme's code. Shopify's help says third-party apps can use the second. We list what is hidden and ask which of it you meant.
• The robots.txt file. Whether the store serves Shopify's default or a robots.txt.liquid template in the theme, and what the template changed. Shopify's help notes that a template can still carry rules its default file no longer has.
• The domain. Which domain is primary, whether the others redirect to it, and whether the property in Search Console is for that address.
• Addresses. Old addresses that lead nowhere, and redirects that were never made after a product was removed or a handle was changed. Also the second address a product gets when a theme links to it through a collection. Shopify's developer documentation says the two addresses "have the same content", and Google's advice is to link to the address you want listed.
• What your pages say about themselves. Titles, descriptions, the main heading and alt text on products, collections, pages and blog posts: which are missing, which are doubled, and which are still the theme's default.
• Product data. What a product page prints for a search engine, set beside what Google requires for a merchant listing: a name, an image, and an offer with a price and a currency.
• What the theme and the apps add. Shopify names the theme, the apps you have installed and other third-party code as the biggest factors in how fast a store loads.
• What the reports say. The page indexing and sitemap reports in Search Console, and Bing Webmaster Tools where it is set up.

Three of these you can check yourself, for free. The product data check reads one product page and shows the product data it carries for search engines, beside what Google requires for a merchant listing and what it only recommends: name, image, price, stock, brand and identifiers. The page indexing check says whether one address can be listed, and the sitemap checker reads what your sitemap holds.

What we change

Every fix is made in Shopify's own admin or in the theme's code, in the way Shopify's help describes.

• Titles and descriptions. Each product, collection, page and blog post has a search engine listing you can edit. The home page's title and description are under Online Store, then Preferences.
• Handles, with their redirects. The handle is the part of an address you can edit. Shopify's help warns against doing it often: "don't edit it too often or the product might not display in search engine results". We change one only where there is a reason, and the old address is redirected.
• Redirects. For products that are gone and addresses that changed, within the limits listed below.
• Alt text. On product images, and on the featured image of a collection or a blog post.
• What is hidden. A status, a metafield or a line in the theme, put back to what you intend.
• The theme. Where the fault is in the theme's code, such as a title that is not printed on one kind of page, a stray noindex or product data that is missing, we do the theme work.
• The robots.txt template, only where a rule has to change. Shopify calls an edit there "an unsupported customization" that its support team cannot help with, and warns that incorrect use "can result in loss of all traffic". We keep a copy of what the file said before.

We do not change a price, stock or anything in checkout as part of search work.

What Shopify does not let you change

Each line is from Shopify's help center or its developer documentation, read in October 2026.

• The first part of a product's or a collection's address. Shopify's help calls /products and /collections "fixed Shopify paths". The field it gives you, the URL handle, changes "part of the web address".
• What a redirect can start from. "You can redirect only from broken URLs." If the old address still loads a page, the redirect does not work. Addresses that begin with /apps, /application, /cart, /carts, /orders, /services or /shop cannot be redirected, nor can the fixed paths, nor an address made by filtering a collection by tag.
• How many redirects. A store can hold 100,000 of them, or 20,000,000 on the Plus plan.
• How robots.txt is changed. Shopify's help gives one way: a robots.txt.liquid template added to the theme, which replaces the file Shopify generates. It tells you to remove any other workaround first.
• The certificate. "You can't use third-party SSL certificates with your Shopify store."
• The server. Shopify's help says there is no FTP access to a store's pages, which are written out by the theme's templates. It files advice about server setup, HTTP headers and caching policies under recommendations that "aren't relevant to Shopify stores".
• What stands in front of the store. Shopify handles bots at its own network, and says it "doesn't recommend a proxy configuration in front of Shopify, and can't provide support for this either".
• An image's file name, once it is uploaded. "You can't change file names in Shopify." A better name means uploading the image again.
• The DNS of the myshopify.com name. Shopify's help says its settings cannot be changed. Records of your own need a custom domain.

When an audit finds something on this list, the report says so in these words: a finding you cannot act on from inside Shopify. It gives the line of Shopify's help it rests on, and what can be done beside it where something can. We sell no fix for it.

Some things depend on your plan, such as the number of redirects above and whether you can add users. Where a finding does, the report says which plan.

What you get

From an audit:

• A written report. Each finding says what we saw, where, and why it matters, and names the page of Google's, Bing's or Shopify's documentation it rests on. Google's advice to anyone buying this work is to ask whether the recommendations cite its official documentation as evidence. Ours do.
• The fixes, done. What Shopify lets a store change is put right as part of the job, up to the hours the price includes.
• Each fix tested again. After a change we ask for the page the way a crawler would and record what it answers now.
• A list of what is left. Anything that needs more time or a decision from you, and anything that is Shopify's to decide, marked as that.

From a plan:

• The hours, spent on the list. In the order agreed, usually from an audit. A large catalog, or addresses that have built up over years, is more than one job covers.
• A report every month. What was done, what was tested, and what Google's and Bing's own reports show, each figure with the day it was read.
• An honest end. When the list has nothing left on it that is worth your money, we say so. Plans are month to month.

The prices and the hours each includes are on this page.

How it works

What we need

• Read access to Search Console. Google's advice to a site owner about an audit is to "only grant read access to Search Console". You add us as a user and stay the owner. One thing stays yours: Google says only an owner can submit a sitemap in the Sitemaps report. We tell you what to enter.
• A place in the store, and never its password. We come in through a collaborator account, which Shopify's help says is for Shopify Partners. We hold a Partner account: you give us the 4-digit collaborator request code from Settings, then Users, then Security, we send a request, and you accept it and choose what we may open. If you would rather, you can invite a user by email and give it a role instead. Shopify's advice on permissions is short: "Give only the permissions that you feel comfortable giving."
• It works on every plan. Shopify says a store on the Basic or Starter plan cannot add users, and that collaborator accounts do not count toward a store's user limit. So a collaborator request is the way in on those plans too.
• Remove us when the work is done. Under Settings, then Users, you select our name and remove it. Shopify also ends a collaborator's access by itself when the account has not logged in for 90 days.
• If Search Console was never set up, we walk you through it in your own Google account. Shopify's help gives the steps: a URL-prefix property for your domain, and Google's verification tag pasted into the theme. Bing Webmaster Tools can then import the site from Search Console.

We never ask for the password to your Shopify account or your Google account. Please do not send one.

What it does not cover

• A ranking, a position or a figure for traffic. Google's own page on hiring this kind of help says: "No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google."
• Links. Buying links to improve a ranking is in Google's spam policies under link spam. One of its examples is "Sending someone a product in exchange for them writing about it and including a link", unless the link is marked nofollow or sponsored. Shopify's own SEO overview suggests offering free products for reviews and working with bloggers who can "link back to your store". Where the two differ we go by Google's policy.
• Reviews written or rewarded. We do not write them, buy them or reward anyone for one. The FTC's rule on reviews, in force since October 21, 2024, bans fake reviews and paying for reviews that say a particular thing.
• Articles by volume. Google's spam policies name making many pages that add no value for a reader, whatever tool makes them.
• Listings in bulk. Google's spam policies list "Low-quality directory or bookmark site links" among their examples of link spam, and no search engine documents that being listed in dozens of directories does anything for a store.
• Ads. This is work on what a search engine finds without being paid.
• Apps built for you. We work in Shopify's admin and in the theme's code. We do not build Shopify apps.
• Upkeep. Shopify runs its own hosting, content delivery network and certificate. There is nothing there for us to look after, and we do not sell a plan for it.

WordPress SEO services gives the sources for the first five in full. The same audit and the same hours are sold for a site on any platform: see SEO services. For a store on WooCommerce, see WooCommerce SEO.