Shopify SEO services, done by rebuilding your store in our own system

Do you work on a Shopify store where it is?

No. Our SEO runs on sites we build and run, so a Shopify store we take on is rebuilt in our own system first, and the monthly work happens there. We don’t edit Shopify themes, set up apps or write Liquid templates for a store that stays on Shopify. Keeping the store in code we look after means each change the SEO calls for, from a page template to a redirect, is one we can make ourselves.

That makes this page for a particular store: established, selling well enough to have rankings worth protecting, and willing to move so that the people who run its site also run its search work. If you’d rather stay on Shopify, someone who works inside it every day will serve you better, and we’ll say so on the 15-minute call.

Is Shopify good for SEO?

For the technical basics, yes. Shopify’s help pages describe what every store gets:

• A sitemap from the start: each store generates a sitemap.xml file at its root, linking its products, each product’s primary image, its pages, collections and blog posts, ready to submit to Google Search Console.
• A default robots.txt: it keeps admin, cart, checkout and account pages away from crawlers, along with filtered collection pages, which Shopify says duplicate content already on the collection page, and sorted ones.
• Titles and meta descriptions you set: a meta description can be written for pages, products, collections and blog posts, and Shopify suggests a title of 60 characters or fewer.
• Redirects for broken addresses: a redirect can be added from an address that no longer works, and a list of existing redirects can be imported.

Google’s ecommerce guidance says a store on a platform can most likely skip its advice on URL design, because the platform has probably handled it. So on a Shopify store, the plumbing is mostly in place already. The gap is in what no platform writes for you: which collections exist, what each page says, and which other sites link to it.

There are limits. Shopify lets a store edit its robots.txt through a template, but calls that an unsupported customization and warns that a mistake there can cost a store all of its traffic.

How does SEO work on Shopify?

As it does anywhere, with Shopify handling some of the plumbing. Search engines find pages by following links and by reading the sitemap. Google says it generally works out a site’s structure from the links between its pages rather than from its URLs, and that a page with more links to it from inside the site looks more important. On a Shopify store, that structure is the main menu, the collection pages, and the links between products and the collections they sit in.

Each page then competes on what it says. Shopify names four places for the words a page should match: its title, its meta description, its image alt text and the body of the page. The title is one of the sources Google uses for the headline of a result. The meta description does less: Google says the snippet under a result is drawn from the page’s own content, and only occasionally from the meta description.

Search Console shows whether it’s working. Shopify suggests submitting the store’s sitemap there, and the Performance report lists the searches the store appeared for and the clicks each one brought.

How do I improve SEO on Shopify?

Start with the pages that sell, then work outward:

1. Plan collections around searches: a collection for each range shoppers search for by name, with a description that covers the broader search.
2. Give every page its own title: Google’s starter guide says a good title is unique to the page, clear and concise, and accurately describes it. Shopify suggests 60 characters or fewer.
3. Write descriptions in the shoppers’ words: what the product is, what it’s for, and the details buyers compare, rather than a supplier’s catalog text.
4. Describe each image: alt text that says what the photo shows and how it relates to the product, which Google uses to understand the image.
5. Link every product: from its collection, and from related products. Googlebot, Google says, generally doesn’t submit searches into a site’s search box, so products found only that way can be missed.
6. Redirect what you remove: Shopify only lets you redirect from an address that no longer works, so a discontinued product should point to its replacement or its collection.

What doesn’t help is repeating a phrase in every field. Google says keyword stuffing is against its spam policies, and that Google Search doesn’t use the keywords meta tag at all.

What is the best SEO app for Shopify?

There isn’t one that does the work for you. Shopify already generates the sitemap, sets the robots.txt and gives every page fields for its title and meta description, so an app that only fills in those fields adds little. Where Shopify itself points to apps is volume: for creating a large number of redirects, its help pages suggest a third-party app.

An app can flag missing alt text or broken links. It can’t decide which collections a store needs, write product pages shoppers want to read, or persuade another site to link to yours. Those are where rankings come from.

We don’t recommend apps for stores that stay on Shopify, because we don’t work inside it. Once a store has moved into our system, the SEO settings those apps manage are part of the site’s own code.

Do Shopify tags help SEO?

Not on their own. Shopify’s help page on tags says search engines don’t use them, and advises against using tags to try to improve a store’s search results. A product can carry up to 250 of them.

What tags do is organize. Shopify uses them as conditions for automated collections and as filters in a theme, and that gives them an indirect part in search: a collection built from a tag is a real page, with its own title, description and address, and that page can rank. A filtered view of a collection is different, because Shopify’s default robots.txt keeps it from being crawled.

When we plan a store’s move, a tag that shoppers search for by name is a candidate for a page of its own.

Is WordPress or Shopify better for SEO?

Neither ranks a site by itself. Each covers the basics in its own way:

Google’s ecommerce guidance doesn’t name a platform as better for search, and the work that ranks a page is the same on both: a title of its own, words that match the search, structured data that matches the page, and links from inside and outside the site. WordPress lets a site owner choose the pattern of its addresses in the permalink settings, and its own documentation warns that themes and customizing can break some of its search-friendly features.

We have no stake in the answer: a site we take on from either one is rebuilt in our own system. Our page on WordPress SEO covers that move from the WordPress side.

What has to move when a Shopify store moves?

More than the products. Google’s guide to site moves, updated August 20, 2026, and the store-move guides together cover these parts:

• Addresses: each product, collection, page and post address either stays the same or gets a permanent redirect to its new page. We map each old address to its new one before launch.
• Images and files: Google says to move the images and downloads a site hosts, since they may already get traffic from search or links.
• Products, customers and orders: store-move price pages and guides describe the job as bringing these across, and price it by catalog size.
• The sitemap: Google suggests submitting the new sitemap in Search Console, which it calls your friend during a move.
• Measurement: analytics and Search Console are connected on the day of the switch, so traffic to the old and new addresses can be watched.

Google also advises changing one thing at a time. A move into our system changes the platform, so the store keeps its domain, and its addresses stay the same wherever they can. Your proposal lists what moves for your store, and what runs its catalog, checkout and payments once it has moved.

What does moving a Shopify store cost?

The market’s figures for moving a store, from store-migration price pages and guides read October 2026:

• Established local business: a store with fewer than about 500 products, $2,000 to $10,000 (Codeable, Presta and Optimum7).
• Multi-location or regional: about 500 to 5,000 products, $10,000 to $40,000 (Optimum7, DigitalSuits, BSS Commerce and Ringly).
• National: 10,000 or more products, often B2B or linked to an ERP, $80,000 to $200,000 (BSS Commerce, DigitalSuits and Optimum7).

Our store migration is a one-time fee, priced as its own line in the proposal that follows the call. The monthly plan’s market ranges are in the table above, and SEO pricing explains what moves them.

Will moving the store hurt its rankings?

It can move them for a while, and the plan is built to protect them. Google tells site owners to expect rankings to fluctuate while it recrawls a moved site. For a medium-sized site, it says, Google can take a few weeks or more to start showing the new URLs in place of the old ones, and longer for a large one. It also says permanent redirects don’t cost a page its PageRank, and that rankings settle down over time.

What we control is the map: each address kept, or redirected straight to its closest match without a chain of redirects, the new sitemap submitted, and Search Console watched through the move. What we don’t control is how fast Google recrawls, which it says depends on the number of URLs and the server’s speed. We do not guarantee search rankings, traffic, or uninterrupted uptime.

Timing helps. Google suggests moving during a dip in traffic, and for a store with a busy season, that means a stretch well away from it.

When should a store stay on Shopify?

When moving would cost more than the store stands to gain. Four cases where it would:

• It ranks and sells well already: if the gap is a few titles and descriptions, someone who works inside Shopify can close it without a move.
• It runs on its apps: a store built around subscriptions, a marketplace connection or a set of apps relies on features the rebuilt store would have to replace, and the proposal would have to price that.
• It’s a national catalog: with 10,000 or more products, the move is a large project of its own, worth weighing before any SEO plan.
• There’s little to protect yet: a new store with no search traffic needs a good store more than a migration plan, and our ecommerce web design page covers building one in our system.

Our ecommerce SEO page covers the search work for stores in general. If your Shopify store is established and you want its SEO run by the people who run its site, book a 15-minute call and we’ll tell you whether the move makes sense.