Guide Search visibility
Ecommerce SEO checklist: what a shop needs before and after launch
By Studio Swing
For Google to find and show your products, each product needs one clear address, a page of its own with real information, a link to it from a category page, a title that says what it is, and structured data that states its price and availability. Then the shop has to be open to Google at launch, with no password, no block and a sitemap submitted. Most of the work is done on the pages and in the structure before launch. A shop on Shopify gets some of it automatically, and has a few quirks worth knowing about, covered in their own section below.
On this page
A cookware shop with nine pages in Google
This guide is the shop version of what SEO does for a business. It makes no promise about rankings, and no one can honestly guarantee a first place in search.
Say you launched a shop selling cast-iron cookware, with 120 products. Three weeks later you search for your shop's name and find your home page, your contact page and a handful of products. The rest are missing.
There are several possible causes, and the checklist below is a way to rule them out in order: the site was still behind a launch password for a few days, so Google could not read it; the category pages show products through a "load more" button that never creates links Google can follow; many product pages share the same title; two addresses lead to the same product and Google is choosing between them. None of them needs clever SEO. Each is a plain defect that someone could have checked before launch.
Before launch
1. Let Google in
Google's guide to launching an ecommerce site says that "requiring a password to access pages on the site will block Google from accessing your site." Shopify stores can be held behind a password page while you build, so removing it is a launch step. Check that no page is marked noindex by mistake, and that the shop's robots rules do not block product or category pages.
2. Link every product from a category page, with real links
Google recommends adding links from menus to category pages, from category pages to sub-category pages, and from those to all product pages, using <a href> links. A button that loads products with a script, or a search box that is the only way to find a product, leaves Google with nothing to follow. If you cannot link to everything, a sitemap or a Merchant Center feed can include pages a crawler would not otherwise find. Our guide to category pages covers how those pages should work for shoppers, and how long lists should be split across addresses.
3. One address per product
Google advises minimizing the number of alternative URLs that return the same content, and using a self-referencing canonical tag on indexable pages. It describes redirects and the canonical tag as strong signals about the preferred address, and a sitemap as a weaker one. If you do not choose, Google picks one for you. So decide: one address per product, listed in the sitemap, linked consistently inside the shop.
4. A title and description for every page
Google's guidance is to write a descriptive, concise title for each page, and to avoid repeating the same text across pages. For a shop, a title like "Cast iron skillet, 26 cm, pre-seasoned" tells both shoppers and Google more than "Product" or just the store name. Google may rewrite titles it judges to be poor, so a clear one is your best protection. Write them by hand for your best sellers and categories, and set a pattern for the rest.
5. Real product pages
A page with a name, a photo and a price is thin. Add what shoppers decide on: dimensions, materials, what is included, care, delivery and returns. Write your own descriptions, not the manufacturer's text that every other shop uses. Our guide to what makes a product page useful goes through the content.
6. Product structured data
Google says structured data helps it understand a product page and show richer results, such as price, availability, review ratings and shipping information. It also says these enhancements are shown at Google's discretion, so they are never guaranteed. Providing both structured data and a Merchant Center feed maximizes eligibility, according to Google. If your platform adds product markup for you, check that it matches what is visible on the page.
Only mark up reviews that are real, left by real customers on your own products.
7. Variants and filters
Each variant of a product (a size or color) can be identified by its own address, or can live on one page. Google's guidance for ecommerce URLs says that if you use optional query parameters to identify variants, the address with the parameter omitted should be the canonical one, and that parameters should be in a ?key=value form. Filter and sort pages can create thousands of near duplicate addresses. Decide with whoever builds the shop which ones should be crawled, and which should not.
8. Redirects from old addresses
If you are replacing a shop, every old product and category address needs a redirect to its new equivalent, or the shop starts with no history. That work is covered in redesigning a website without losing search traffic and, for a platform move, in moving to Shopify without losing SEO.
9. Speed on phones
Apps, large images and extra scripts slow a shop, and slow pages frustrate shoppers whatever Google does. Our guide to why a website is slow explains how to find the cause.
Shopify specifics
Shopify's help center lists what it does for you. It generates canonical tags automatically, generates sitemap.xml and robots.txt files, includes your store name in the title tags its themes generate, adds structured data for products in its themes, and activates an SSL certificate by default. You still have to edit titles, meta descriptions and URL handles, add alt text to images, write content that matches what people search for, and monitor results in Google Search Console.
URL structure and the duplicate collection path
Shopify's developer documentation gives an example of how one product can have two addresses: /products/draught-of-immortality and /collections/sale-potions/products/draught-of-immortality. It states that, "because a standard product page and a product page in the context of a collection have the same content on separate URLs", you should consider the SEO implications. Shopify says its canonical tags are generated automatically to prevent duplicate content, so this is usually managed, but it is worth checking in your own store.
How to check, without code:
Open a product from a collection page. Look at the address bar. If it contains /collections/ and then /products/, your theme links to the collection version.
View the page source and search for rel="canonical". The address next to it should be the plain /products/ version.
Ask whoever built your theme to link products by their plain address where that is possible, so the version Google should choose is also the one you link to.
Product handles, the last part of the address, can be edited. If you change one on a live product, create a redirect from the old address, or the old one will lead to an error page. Shopify's redirect tool lives under Content, then Menus, then URL redirects. It supports bulk upload from a CSV file, and caps stores at 100,000 redirects unless they are on the Plus plan. It cannot redirect addresses beginning with some reserved prefixes, such as /cart, and cannot redirect the /products, /collections or /collections/all pages themselves.
Filtered and sorted collection pages
Shopify's default robots.txt blocks filtered collections (addresses containing a plus sign) and sorted collections (addresses containing sort_by), along with the cart, checkout and account pages. That keeps near duplicates out of the index. You can edit the file through a robots.txt.liquid template, but Shopify warns that this is an unsupported customization and that "incorrect use of the feature can result in loss of all traffic". Leave it alone unless you have a specific reason and someone who knows what they are doing.
The apps question
Do you need an SEO app? The basics Shopify lists (titles, descriptions, handles, alt text, redirects, sitemap) are available without one. An app can help with bulk edits on a large catalog, but each app adds a monthly cost and may add scripts to every page. Shopify's help center warns that "too many apps loading assets on your storefront can slow performance" and that uninstalling an app does not automatically remove its code from your theme. If you add one, record what it does, what it costs, and who removes it later. Our guide to what a Shopify store costs covers the app line in the budget.
The password page and the sitemap
Shopify's store setup checklist includes setting a private mode password and visitor message while you build. Make removing it part of the launch. The sitemap lives at your-domain/sitemap.xml, and Shopify says it updates automatically when you add products, collections, pages and posts.
After launch
Verify your site in Google Search Console and submit sitemap.xml. Shopify notes that Google does not guarantee how long it takes to process it.
Check the Page indexing report after a week or two. Pages listed as not indexed are not always a fault, but a whole category missing is.
Search for a few products by their full name, and open the result. Check that the address is the one you intended.
Consider Google Merchant Center. Google says you must sign up for it to appear in experiences such as the Shopping tab.
Do not disable add to cart to hold sales back before launch. Google warns that it may use add-to-cart to verify price details. For a temporary pause after launch, Google's guidance suggests disabling the cart rather than removing pages.
Look at the pages that bring visitors and compare them with the products that matter to you. Our guide to Google Analytics and Search Console explains both tools.
Out of stock and discontinued products
Google advises keeping the page and marking the product as out of stock, instead of removing it from search, so shoppers still understand what happened. Where the structured data states availability, it should change to match. For a product that will never return, link to the closest alternative. If you delete a product page, redirect it to a relevant category or replacement, as, in our view, a 404 page throws away the history the old address earned.
What this checklist will not do
It will not make a new shop outrank large retailers on broad phrases. Those pages are crowded, and for many small shops the realistic gain may be in specific product searches and in category phrases that match what you actually sell. It will not fix thin products or poor photographs. And Google decides what it shows, so any step above can be right and still produce nothing for weeks. Our guide on how long SEO takes sets out what is reasonable to expect.
A checklist you can use without us
Checklist
- No password page or noindex block is left on the live shop.
- Every product is linked from a category page with a normal link.
- Each product has one preferred address, and the sitemap lists it.
- I checked a product opened from a collection for its canonical address.
- Titles and descriptions are written for categories and best sellers, and the pattern for the rest is unique per page.
- Product pages carry real details, written by us.
- Price and availability are in structured data and match the page.
- Old addresses are redirected, and the redirect list is saved.
- Any app installed for SEO has a stated job, a cost and a removal plan.
- The site is verified in Search Console, the sitemap submitted, and a date set to check indexing.
- Out of stock and discontinued products have a rule.
Where to go next
Our ecommerce website service and Shopify service explain how we plan structure and product pages before design starts. For the launch itself, see the website launch checklist. For the next layer of the shop, ecommerce category pages covers what shoppers need on the pages that lead to products.
When you want to talk about your own shop, you can discuss your project. More guides are in the Learn library.
Sources
Google Search Central, SEO best practices for ecommerce sites: https:/
Google Search Central, How to launch an ecommerce website: https:/
Google Search Central, Help Google understand your ecommerce site structure: https:/
Google Search Central, Designing a URL structure for ecommerce sites: https:/
Google Search Central, What is canonicalization (consolidate duplicate URLs): https:/
Google Search Central, Influencing your title links: https:/
Google Search Central, Product structured data: https:/
Google Search Central, Share your product data with Google: https:/
Google Search Central, Pause or disable a website (out of stock and unavailable products): https:/
Shopify Help Center, SEO overview (what Shopify does automatically and what merchants do): https:/
Shopify Help Center, Finding and submitting your sitemap: https:/
Shopify Help Center, URL redirects: https:/
Shopify Help Center, Editing robots.txt.liquid: https:/
Shopify Help Center, Improving web performance (apps): https:/
Shopify Help Center, Store setup checklist (private mode password, sitemap submission): https:/
Shopify developer documentation, Liquid filter within (collection-scoped product URLs): https:/