The Shopify SEO checklist: what Shopify handles and what it leaves to you.

1. How to run this checklist.

Run the groups in order, because each one depends on the one above it. There is no point writing 200 meta descriptions on a store that is still in private mode, and no point shaving a second off load time on product pages the catalog never links to. Every check names the screen in the Shopify admin, or the file in the theme, where the change is made. Shopify has the controls you need. They are spread across Online Store, Products, Content, Settings and the theme code, which is why people conclude they are missing.

Three boundaries, because these pages get confused with each other. This is the Shopify-specific pass. The platform-agnostic version, covering keyword selection, on-page structure, links and measurement as one program, is our complete SEO checklist. The diagnostic version, for a store whose traffic used to work and stopped, is the line-by-line technical SEO audit. And if you run a second site on another builder, the same shape exists as our Wix SEO setup checklist.

Set expectations before you start. Almost nothing in the first four groups is a ranking lever. They are disqualifiers: a written meta description will not move a product up a position, and a product the catalog only links to through a duplicate URL can lose the positions it should have had. Clearing the list makes your pages eligible. If you want a machine-generated read on your own store before you begin, our free site audit crawls the domain and groups its findings roughly the way this page is grouped.

2. Is Shopify good for SEO?

Yes, for almost every store, and the reason is how much it does before you touch anything. Shopify's own SEO overview lists the defaults: canonical tags are generated automatically to keep duplicate content out of search results, the sitemap.xml and robots.txt files are generated and kept up to date, themes write title tags that include your store name, and SSL is on by default. Add an editable title, description and URL handle on every product, collection, page and post, a redirect manager that holds 100,000 redirects, and hreflang through Markets, and the technical surface most stores ever need is already there.

What it gets wrong, or leaves to you, is a shorter list and a more specific one. The URL prefixes are fixed. Every product is served again inside each collection it belongs to, and many themes link to those copies. Themes and apps add weight with every feature. Collection pages ship as bare product grids. Image alt text starts empty. And the blog, which arrives pre-installed and named News, sits unused on most stores. Every one of those is fixable from the admin or the theme, and every one is covered in the groups below.

So the useful answer to whether Shopify is good for SEO is that the platform is rarely the constraint. A store with 60 products, 6 collections and no posts has published pages for a few dozen queries, and no platform ranks for queries it has nothing about. That splits the work into two jobs. The technical layer is where most Shopify SEO apps live: alt text, redirects, broken links, markup. The content layer, the posts that answer what the catalog cannot, is what our Shopify SEO tools are built for.

3. Store foundation: domain, access and the sitemap.

Five checks on whether search engines can reach the store at all. They take under half an hour on most stores and they are the ones that, when wrong, make every other group irrelevant. Two are about addresses you own, two are about telling Google what exists, and one is about the most valuable page on the domain.

1. 01

   The store is out of private mode.

   Shopify is plain about what private mode does: every page of the online store is hidden from visitors and from search engines. Stores launch behind it, go live on a busy weekend, and the setting is the last thing anybody checks when traffic never arrives.

   WHERE Online Store, Preferences, the Store access section.

2. 02

   One primary domain, with every other domain redirecting to it.

   Shopify recommends that any domain you are not using for international targeting redirects to the primary one. Two live hostnames serving the same catalog split every link and every ranking signal between them.

   WHERE Settings, Domains.

3. 03

   Search Console is verified on the primary domain and the sitemap is submitted.

   Shopify generates the sitemap, it does not submit it. Verify the exact hostname the store serves on, then submit yourstore.com/sitemap.xml once. Without this you have no indexing, query or Core Web Vitals data, and most of the list below becomes guesswork.

   WHERE Google Search Console, the Sitemaps report.

4. 04

   The sitemap count matches the products, collections and posts you would defend.

   The root sitemap links to separate files for products, collections, blogs and pages, and Shopify leaves drafts and unpublished items out. Open each child file and count. A store with 80 products and 900 product URLs in its sitemap has a test catalog, a supplier import or a pile of variants published as products.

   WHERE Load yourstore.com/sitemap.xml and each file it links to.

5. 05

   The homepage title and meta description are written, not left as the store name.

   The homepage is usually the strongest page on the domain and the one most often left with a title that is just the brand. Say what you sell in the first 60 characters, then write a description that gives a reason to click.

   WHERE Online Store, Preferences, the Social sharing image and SEO section.

Check 04 is the one that surprises people, so do it first. Shopify keeps the sitemap current on its own, adding a product the moment it is published and dropping it when it is deleted, which makes the file an honest inventory of what the platform thinks your store is. A gap of a few URLs against your own count is normal. A gap of hundreds is usually a supplier import that published every variant as its own product, and that is a catalog clean-up before it is an SEO task.

The homepage title in check 05 deserves real thought rather than a slogan. It is the page most likely to rank for your brand plus your category, so lead with the category. If you want a first draft to edit, our free SEO title generator takes a URL and returns options, which you then rewrite until they sound like the store rather than like a tool.

4. Product and collection pages.

Six checks, and this is the group with the most hours in it, because it scales with the catalog. It is also where Shopify's defaults are quietly unhelpful. A product created from a supplier feed arrives with the supplier's title, the supplier's description, a handle generated from the title, no meta description and no alt text, and none of it is wrong enough to look broken.

1. 06

   Every product title tag leads with the product, and the store name is not typed in twice.

   The page title field takes up to 70 characters and Shopify suggests keeping to 60 so it is not cut off. Themes automatically add your store name to title tags, so typing it into the field as well spends a third of the space on a word that is already there.

   WHERE Products, the product, the Search engine listing section, Edit.

2. 07

   Every product has a written meta description.

   Leave the field blank and the snippet is built from the opening of the product description, which is usually a material spec or a shipping note. Shopify recommends around 160 characters. Write the reason somebody should pick this product over the nine next to it.

   WHERE Products, the product, the Search engine listing section, Edit.

3. 08

   The URL handle is short, readable and decided before the product gets traffic.

   The /products/, /collections/, /pages/ and /blogs/ prefixes are fixed on Shopify and cannot be removed, so the handle is the only part of the URL you control. If you change it later, tick the Create a URL redirect box before saving, or the old address starts returning a 404.

   WHERE Search engine listing section, the URL handle field.

4. 09

   Product descriptions are your words, not the supplier copy.

   Manufacturer descriptions are pasted, word for word, into every store that carries the product. Your page is then one of fifty identical pages competing for the same query, and it is rarely the one with the most authority.

   WHERE Products, the product, the Description field.

5. 10

   Every product image that carries meaning has alt text.

   Shopify does not write it for you on upload, so on most stores the field is empty across hundreds of images. Describe what the image shows in the words a shopper would use, including the colour or variant pictured, and skip images that are purely decorative.

   WHERE Products, the product, click the image, Edit alt text.

6. 11

   Every collection you want ranked has a written description above or below the grid.

   A collection page with a heading, a filter bar and 24 product tiles is close to empty as far as a search engine is concerned: a list of product names and prices. Two or three short paragraphs on who the collection is for, and how to choose within it, turn a grid into a page that can rank for the category term.

   WHERE Products, Collections, the collection, the description field.

Do not try to finish this group in one sitting on a large catalog. Sort products by sales or by Search Console impressions, do the top 20 properly, then every collection, then work down the long tail in batches. A written description on a collection that already gets impressions will do more this month than alt text on a product nobody visits. For the snippets themselves, our free meta description generator gives you a starting draft per URL, and the slug generator turns a long product name into a handle worth keeping.

Check 11 is the one most stores skip and the one that pays most on category terms. Shoppers search for the collection, not the SKU: “linen bedding”, not the name of one duvet cover. A collection page with a few paragraphs on how to choose, which product suits whom and how the range differs, is the page that can rank for that term. Doing this across a big catalog is work stores usually hand to an agency, and our ecommerce SEO page covers what it looks like run as software instead.

5. Duplicate URLs and the technical files.

Seven checks, and the headline is that Shopify gets most of this right by default. The canonical tags, the sitemap and the robots.txt file are all generated for you, and the default robots.txt already blocks the cart, checkout, internal search, sorted collection URLs and tag-combination pages. The work in this group is mostly confirming the defaults are still in place, plus one theme-level problem that the defaults do not solve.

1. 12

   Collection grids link to /products/ URLs, not to /collections/.../products/ copies.

   Shopify serves every product at its own URL and again inside every collection it belongs to. The canonical tag on the nested copy points back at /products/, but many themes build the grid links with the within: collection filter, so the catalog links to the copies and the canonical page gets almost none. This is the single most Shopify-specific item on the list.

   WHERE Online Store, Themes, the theme menu, Edit code, then search for within: collection.

2. 13

   Canonical tags are left on the Shopify default.

   Shopify adds canonical tags automatically and they are almost always right. View the source of one product page and one nested copy, confirm both name the /products/ URL, and be suspicious of any app that wants to rewrite them.

   WHERE View the page source and search for rel="canonical".

3. 14

   robots.txt has been read, and edited only through robots.txt.liquid if at all.

   The default file already blocks the cart, checkout, account pages, internal search, sorted collection URLs, tag-combination URLs and theme previews. Shopify recommends editing it through the Liquid template rather than replacing it, so its own updates keep flowing, and suggests getting help before you do.

   WHERE Read yourstore.com/robots.txt. To edit: Edit code, Add a new template, robots.

4. 15

   Pages that should not rank are hidden the documented way.

   For a product, the Unlisted status hides it from search engines, the sitemap and storefront search while keeping it reachable by direct link. For pages and blog posts, Shopify documents a seo.hidden metafield set to 1. Both beat a theme hack that nobody will remember in a year.

   WHERE Product status, or Settings, Metafields and metaobjects, a seo.hidden definition.

5. 16

   Every deleted product and changed URL has a redirect behind it.

   You can hold up to 100,000 redirects on a standard plan and import them by CSV. A manual redirect only fires when the old URL returns a 404, so delete or unpublish first, then point the old address at the closest live product or collection.

   WHERE Content, Menus, View URL redirects.

6. 17

   Product structured data validates on a real product page.

   Most current themes output product markup with price and availability. Check yours with a rich results test on one live product, rather than assuming, and do not stack a second app that writes the same markup again.

   WHERE Any live product URL, run through a structured data validator.

7. 18

   If you sell internationally, every market version returns hreflang.

   Shopify Markets generates hreflang tags for each domain, subdomain or subfolder once the markets and languages are set up. Open a page in each market, view the source and search for hreflang, because a translation that never got published produces nothing.

   WHERE The Markets settings, then the page source of each market.

Check 12 is the theme-level problem, and it is worth understanding before you edit anything. A product in three collections exists at four URLs. The canonical tag on the three nested copies names the /products/ URL, which tells Google which one to index. But a canonical is a hint, and internal links are evidence. When every collection grid links to a nested copy, the page you asked Google to rank is the one your own catalog never points at. Duplicate the theme first, search the code for within: collection, and test that breadcrumbs still render after the change. If you would rather see the shape of your internal links before editing, our internal link mapper shows what points at what.

Structured data closes the group because it is the most over-invested item on it. Valid product markup makes a page eligible for richer results such as price and availability, it is not a ranking input, and two apps writing the same markup is a common way to make it invalid. Ship one clean set and move on. The part of markup that matters for answer engines is covered in our guide to schema markup for AI search.

6. Theme speed and app bloat.

Five checks, and the only group with published numbers, so use them. Shopify's web performance report reads Core Web Vitals from real visits over the past 30 days at the 75th percentile, with 2.5 seconds as the good line for largest contentful paint, 200 milliseconds for interaction to next paint and 0.1 for layout shift. The percentile is the part people drop: a quarter of your visitors can have a worse experience than the line and you still pass.

1. 19

   Largest contentful paint is under 2.5 seconds on real visits.

   Shopify reports Core Web Vitals from real user data over the past 30 days at the 75th percentile, with 2,500 milliseconds as the good line for LCP, 200 milliseconds for interaction to next paint and 0.1 for layout shift. Read the mobile numbers first: that is where stores fail.

   WHERE Analytics, Reports, the web performance report, or the summary on the Themes page.

2. 20

   Every installed app is counted and can be justified out loud.

   Shopify says it directly: each feature you add to the online store, apps included, can affect web performance. List them, name what each one earns, and remove the ones that fail the question. A review widget, a chat bubble, a popup and a currency switcher are four scripts on every page.

   WHERE Settings, Apps.

3. 21

   Uninstalled apps left no code behind in the theme.

   Shopify warns that some apps add code to your theme that uninstalling does not remove. Apps built on theme app extensions are taken out of the theme with the app. Older ones edited theme files directly, so their snippets stay and keep loading. Duplicate the theme, then search theme.liquid and the snippets folder for the app name.

   WHERE Online Store, Themes, the theme menu, Edit code.

4. 22

   The first screen is one image, not a five-slide carousel or an autoplay video.

   The hero is nearly always the element LCP measures. A slideshow loads several full-width images to show one, and a background video is the heaviest file on the page sitting exactly where the measurement is taken.

   WHERE Online Store, Themes, Customize, the first section on the homepage.

5. 23

   Images are uploaded close to the size they display at.

   A 5,000-pixel product photo shot for print is still a 5,000-pixel upload. Export at roughly twice the largest display size, compress, then upload. On a catalog store this is an afternoon of work that improves every product and collection page at once.

   WHERE Products and Content, Files: re-upload the heaviest originals.

On Shopify you do not control the hosting or the platform code, so the levers you have are the ones in these five checks: the apps you install, the code they leave behind, what sits in the first screen and how heavy the images are. Apps are the one that grows by itself, because installing one takes a minute and removing one never feels urgent. If you are deciding which ones deserve a slot, our roundup of the best Shopify blog apps compares the content side of the App Store on what each one actually does.

Then stop. Speed is a tiebreaker between pages that are otherwise comparable, not a lever that lifts a thin page, and it absorbs attention out of proportion because it produces the most satisfying numbers. If the report shows good on mobile, write the numbers down and move to the blog.

7. The blog most Shopify stores skip.

Five checks, and this is the group that decides whether the previous four ever matter. Your product and collection pages can rank for the queries that name what you sell. Everything else people type before they buy, the how-to-choose question, the comparison, the care guide, has nowhere to land unless you publish something for it. Every Shopify store already has the place for that: a blog called News that came with the store and, on most stores, still holds the launch announcement.

1. 24

   The default News blog is in use, or replaced by a blog with a purpose.

   Every Shopify store ships with a blog called News, at /blogs/news, and on most stores it holds two posts from launch week. That blog is where every query your products and collections cannot answer has to live: the how-to, the comparison, the which-size question.

   WHERE Content, Blog posts, Manage blogs.

2. 25

   Posts go out on a cadence somebody owns.

   One post a quarter is a launch, not a channel. Search traffic from a blog compounds with the number of useful pages on it, so the cadence matters more than any single post, and a cadence with no named owner stops in the second month.

   WHERE A calendar, with a name next to every slot.

3. 26

   Every post targets a query somebody actually types, checked before writing.

   A post about something the team finds interesting and a post about a question with real search volume look identical in the editor and produce completely different results. The difference is made before the first sentence is written.

   WHERE Search Console query data, plus keyword data you trust.

4. 27

   Every post has its own search engine listing and featured image alt text.

   Blog posts carry the same title, description and handle fields as products. A post published with them blank ships with a snippet nobody chose, and the featured image alt text sits behind its own edit button on the post.

   WHERE Content, Blog posts, the post, Search engine listing, then the featured image.

5. 28

   Posts link to the products and collections they are about, with varied anchors.

   A blog that links nowhere is traffic with no destination. Two or three in-body links per post into the collection or product the post is adjacent to is the whole mechanic, and a line back from the collection description to the best post closes the loop.

   WHERE The post editor, the link tool.

The arithmetic is blunt. A store with 60 products has published pages for a few dozen queries, and those are the queries every competitor with the same products is also chasing. A post a day for a year adds 365 more chances to be the answer, and each one can link shoppers back into the collection it sits next to. That is a volume argument, not a writing-quality one, and the method for making each post rank once it exists is in our guide to making individual blog posts rank.

Check 25 is where it falls apart, and not because anybody decides to stop. Writing a researched post takes hours, the store has orders to ship, and the second month is when the calendar goes quiet. That is a staffing problem rather than a platform one, and it is the only item on this checklist that never finishes.

A worked example: one Shopify store, start to finish.

Take a fictional outdoor cookware store, Halden Supply. Two years on Shopify, 180 products in 14 collections, a theme bought from the Theme Store, and the News blog with three posts from launch week. Around 400 organic visits a month, flat for a year. Here is what running the 28 checks in order returns and how long each group takes. The store is invented. The distribution of findings is what a catalog store built from a supplier feed usually looks like.

About a day to diagnose and a few days to implement on the top tier, and almost every finding was a default nobody chose: a supplier feed, a theme setting, an app installed for a sale two years ago. Note what was not wrong. The canonicals, the sitemap and robots.txt, the parts of Shopify that get criticised, were already correct because Shopify generates them and nobody had overridden them.

The part worth copying is the ending. The first four groups are a finite job, done once. The blog is not finite, and it is the only group that compounds, which is why the honest version of this checklist ends with a question about who writes the next 200 posts. That question is what we built an AI SEO agent to answer.

Common mistakes on a Shopify store.

1. Installing an SEO app before reading the store. An app is a fast way to feel like the work started. It cannot write your collection copy or replace supplier descriptions, and it adds script to every page. Run the checklist first, then install one app for a job you found.
2. Trusting the canonical tag to fix duplicate product URLs. The canonical tells Google which copy you prefer. Your theme's links tell it which copy you actually use. When they disagree, fix the links so the catalog points at the /products/ URL.
3. Keeping the supplier descriptions. The same paragraph on fifty stores is fifty duplicate pages, and yours is rarely the strongest. Rewrite the products that sell first, in your own words, with the detail only you know.
4. Changing a handle without the redirect box. Untick it, or forget it on a bulk edit, and the old URL returns a 404 along with every link it had earned. Change handles rarely, and add the redirect every time you do.
5. Leaving collections as a heading and a grid. Collections are the pages that can rank for category terms, and a grid gives a search engine nothing to rank. A few paragraphs on how to choose within the range is the cheapest content win on most stores.
6. Publishing three posts and calling it a blog. Three posts is a launch. Search traffic from a blog comes from cadence, which means the real question at the end of this checklist is who writes the next hundred posts, not which setting is left.