Shopify SEO
Shopify is hard to break and hard to bend, and Shopify SEO is mostly about the second half of that. The platform handles the basics you would have to build yourself elsewhere, then hands you a fixed URL structure, duplicate product URLs across collections, and a theme carrying eleven apps you installed in year one and never removed. The work is knowing which of those limits actually costs you rankings and which ones are fine.
A £1,000 deposit, then 11 monthly payments, or £5,500 for the year. That buys up to five target keywords, a named consultant, and a monthly roadmap you can read in ten minutes.
See all three packagesWhere this fits in your campaign
Shopify search is unusually national. The queries this site already appears for run across Edinburgh, Glasgow, Newcastle, Liverpool, Cardiff, Belfast, Portsmouth, Brighton, Nottingham and Leeds, and the buyers behind them do not care where their agency sits. That is why this is one page rather than a page per city.
Collections carry the money, products do not
Nobody searches your product names. They search the collection: "womens waterproof walking boots". On a default Shopify theme a collection page is a title and a grid, which is a page with nothing to rank on.
Every app you keep is rent on your load time
Apps inject scripts into every page, and uninstalling one usually leaves its code behind in the theme. Auditing what is actually still in the source is the fastest speed win available on most Shopify stores.
The four limits Shopify actually imposes
Plenty gets written about Shopify holding SEO back. Most of it is overstated. These are the constraints that are real, and what each one is worth doing something about.
- 01
Fixed URL structure
You cannot remove /collections/ or /products/ from your URLs. This genuinely does not matter, and anybody quoting you to fix it is selling a rebuild for no gain. Google has not cared about keyword-stuffed paths for a decade.
- 02
Duplicate product URLs across collections
The same product is reachable at /products/x and /collections/y/products/x. Shopify canonicalises this correctly by default, but plenty of themes and apps break it, and internal links usually point at the collection-scoped version. Worth checking properly, because when it is wrong it is genuinely damaging.
- 03
Faceted filtering that spawns URLs
Shopify’s native filters are better behaved than most WooCommerce filter plugins, but third-party filter apps often are not. Tag-based filtering in particular can produce thousands of thin crawlable pages. This one is worth real attention.
- 04
Limited server-side control
No .htaccess, no server-level redirects, no control over response headers beyond what Shopify exposes. Redirects go through the admin, which is fine at a few hundred and painful at ten thousand. It matters mainly during a migration.
Collection pages, and why yours has nothing on it
This is where most Shopify stores lose, and it is almost always the same shape. The collection page has a title, maybe one sentence, and a product grid. Meanwhile the competitor ranking above you has a proper introduction, buying guidance, and links to three guides that answer the questions a buyer has before they choose.
Search volume sits on collections because that is how people shop. They search a category and then narrow. A product page catches somebody who already decided, which is a much smaller and much later audience.
Doing this well on Shopify means writing collection copy that goes above the grid rather than buried underneath it, where it is read by people as well as crawlers. It means a collection per thing people actually search for, rather than a collection structure that mirrors how your warehouse is organised. And it means the collection description is written once, properly, rather than generated from a template with the collection name dropped in, which reads exactly like what it is.
Apps are the speed problem
The typical store we take on is running eleven to fifteen apps. Reviews, upsell, popups, currency, wishlist, live chat, loyalty, back-in-stock, a countdown timer from a sale in 2024. Each one injects JavaScript into every page whether that page uses it or not.
The part people do not expect: uninstalling an app frequently leaves its code in your theme. Shopify removes the app’s access, not the snippet somebody pasted into theme.liquid eighteen months ago. We regularly find stores loading scripts from four apps they no longer pay for.
So the first pass is an audit of what is genuinely in the rendered source, not what the admin says is installed. Then it is a straightforward commercial question per app: what does this earn against what it costs in load time. A review app that lifts conversion is worth its weight. A countdown timer from a finished promotion is not.
Collection pages are usually the slowest and the most commercially important pages on a Shopify store at the same time, which is a bad combination to leave alone.
Content on Shopify, which most stores skip
Shopify makes selling easy and content awkward, so most stores do not bother, and it shows in who ranks for the questions that come before the purchase.
The collection page catches someone who knows what they want. The guide catches them a fortnight earlier: "how to choose walking boots", "what size paddleboard do I need", "which compression class for a long flight". There is far less competition for those, the person arrives already trusting you, and they are the pages AI assistants pull from when answering the same question.
The discipline is linking them properly. A guide that ranks and has no route into the relevant collection is a page that sells nothing. Every guide should name the products or collections it is talking about and link to them in the body, not just in a footer widget.
Shopify’s blog is limited but adequate. The common failure is not the tool, it is publishing four posts in the first month and nothing for two years.
Migrating to or from Shopify without losing the rankings
Replatforming is where stores lose the most, and it is entirely preventable. Badly handled migrations cost more rankings than penalties do, and recovery takes months.
The redirect map gets written before the build starts, not after launch. Every URL search engines already know about, every product, every collection, every blog post, every legacy URL that still gets crawled, mapped to its destination. On a move to Shopify that means accepting the /collections/ and /products/ structure and redirecting into it, which is fine.
The parts routinely missed: paginated collection URLs, filter URLs that had picked up links, image URLs if they were earning image search traffic, and the old blog. Also product data. Ask exactly who is entering the products, because if the answer turns out to be you, the launch date is yours too.
We do this as part of technical SEO, and if the store is moving the other way, WooCommerce SEO covers what you are moving into.
Where we work, and why there is no Shopify SEO Leeds page
This site already appears for Shopify searches in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Newcastle, Liverpool, Cardiff, Belfast, Portsmouth, Brighton, Nottingham and Leeds, several of them in the top ten. We work with stores in all of them and we are based in Sheffield.
The previous version of this site had 25 separate Shopify SEO city pages. Between them they produced one click, because they were one template with the city swapped and nobody wants to read that. They have been consolidated into this page, which is the version that was earning the positions anyway.
If your store is in Yorkshire and you want somebody you can sit across a table from, that is Sheffield, Leeds and the county. If you are anywhere else, it makes no practical difference and we will not pretend otherwise.
What this costs
Most Shopify stores start on the E-Commerce package at £1,497 a month plus VAT: twenty target keywords, ten URLs, five or more new pages a month. Stores need more ranking pages than service businesses do, which is why that tier exists.
If you have thirty products and three collections, you do not need it, and we will say so rather than sell it to you. Local at £497 a month plus a one-off app and speed clean-up is often the sensible first year.
The audit is free and it tells you which of the two you are. Ask for it and you get the actual findings, not a PDF with your logo on the front.
Four steps, then round again
SEO never finishes. The work runs on a loop, and you see the report every time round, good month or bad.
- Step 1Keyword research
We start with the terms that show buying intent, not the ones with the biggest numbers. Alongside those, lower-competition terms that rank sooner and bring early results.
- Step 2Competitor analysis
Then we look at who outranks you and why. Once we know what they are doing, we know what it takes to beat it.
- Step 3Implementation
The team does the work: on-page fixes, new content, links and local signals. Every item is listed in your monthly report, not buried in a dashboard.
- Step 4Reporting & revision
Each month you see what was done and what it moved. When something is not working, we change it rather than wait for it to come good.
Three packages. Prices included.
Pick the one that matches where your customers are. Pay for the year, or a deposit and eleven monthly payments. Either way, the number on this page is the number on the invoice.
- Up to 5 keywords per campaign
- Up to 5 URLs included
- GMB post every 14 days
- 1+ new landing page or article
- Targeted locations, blog posts, on-page SEO report
- Initial audit & corrections, citations audit
- Monthly roadmap & action report
- Up to 10 keywords per campaign
- Up to 10 URLs included
- GMB post every 7 days
- 2+ new landing pages or articles
- Targeted locations, blog posts, on-page SEO report
- Initial audit & corrections, citations audit
- Monthly roadmap & action report
- Up to 20 keywords per campaign
- Up to 10 URLs included
- GMB post every 4 days
- 5+ new landing pages or articles
- Targeted locations, blog posts, on-page SEO report
- Initial audit & corrections, citations audit
- Monthly roadmap & action report
Every package includes keyword analysis, heading tags and meta description optimisation, image alt tag analysis, duplicate content checks, sitemap creation, mobile responsiveness reporting, citations, load time testing and search engine reports. All prices are subject to change. Budgeting for the website too? Here iswhat a website should actually cost.
Need something fixed this week?
Unexpected deadline, site down, or let down by another agency? Call and we will tell you straight away whether we can help.
Straight answers to the usual questions
Is Shopify good for SEO?
Yes, for most stores. It handles canonicals, sitemaps, mobile rendering and HTTPS properly out of the box, which are things you would have to get right yourself on other platforms. Its limits are structural rather than fatal: fixed URL patterns, less control over filtering, and no server-level redirects. None of those is what is stopping a typical store ranking. Empty collection pages and a theme carrying twelve apps usually are.
Do I need to remove /collections/ from my Shopify URLs?
No, and you cannot anyway. Google stopped caring about keywords in the URL path a long time ago, and this is the single most oversold Shopify SEO problem. Anyone quoting you to fix it, particularly if the fix involves a headless rebuild, is selling you a project rather than a result. Spend the money on collection content instead.
How many Shopify apps is too many?
It is not the count, it is what each one loads and what it earns. We audit what is genuinely in the rendered source rather than what the admin lists, because uninstalled apps commonly leave code behind in the theme. We routinely find stores loading scripts from apps they stopped paying for. Then it is a commercial call per app: keep the ones that lift conversion by more than they cost in load time.
Will moving from WooCommerce to Shopify hurt my rankings?
Only if the redirect map is written after the build rather than before it. Done properly, every product, collection, blog post and legacy URL maps to its destination before a template is touched, and you keep what you had. Done badly, it is the most expensive mistake available to an online store, and recovery takes months. The two things people forget are paginated collection URLs and the old blog.
Do you work with Shopify stores outside Yorkshire?
Yes, and most of the Shopify enquiries we get are national. We already appear for Shopify searches in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Newcastle, Liverpool, Cardiff and Belfast among others. The work happens over calls and shared reporting, so where you are makes no practical difference. If you want to meet in person, that is easier in Sheffield and Leeds, and we will say so honestly rather than claim an office we do not have.
Can you write our collection and product copy?
Yes, and it is usually where the money goes on a Shopify campaign. Collection introductions matter most, then the fifty products that actually carry the revenue, because manufacturer descriptions are identical across every retailer selling the same item. We do not rewrite ten thousand products, and anyone offering to is charging you for volume rather than results.
Ready when you are
Tell us what you are trying to rank for and we will look at the site and the search results before we reply. You get a straight answer, including if SEO is not the right spend for you yet.