SEO on the Shopify platform
Shopify is a platform built with SEO and discovery in mind. It follows clear naming patterns and includes features to help optimize your site for search engines.
SEO metadata (product, collection, page)
To help your store rank higher in search results, research keywords your customers might use to find your products and add those keywords to your content. Keywords can be included in your page body content and store’s metadata.
A good meta title and meta description encourage customers to click through to your store from search results. Use natural, easy to read phrases rather than a list of keywords. The content of your tags should be unique, descriptive, and useful.
Refer to our Help Center for information on how to update your SEO metadata:
XML sitemaps
All Shopify stores automatically generate a sitemap.xml file that contains links to all your products, product images, pages, collections, and blog posts. This is used by search engines to understand and index your site so that your store's pages appear in search results. The sitemap is automatically updated when you add new pages and images to your store.
Your sitemap file is located at the root directory of your Shopify store’s primary domain name. For example: johns-apparel.com/sitemap.xml.
Note: Google will not index all the pages of your site. It only indexes as many as it needs to understand your site and provide accurate results.
Robots.txt for page index and follow
Search engines constantly crawl the internet in search of new data. When your site is being crawled, the robots.txt file blocks content that might reduce the effectiveness of your SEO strategy. This file is located at the root directory of your Shopify store’s primary domain. For example: johns-apparel.com/robots.txt.
Shopify provides a default file that works for most merchants. If you need to customize your robots.txt file, check out our developer documentation.
If you need to hide additional pages, add noindex code in the <head> section of your store’s theme.liquid file. Find out more about hiding pages from search.
Localization management
When selling in multiple languages, either on a single multilingual/multi-currency storefront, or several stores each dedicated to one language or currency, use hreflang tags to clarify to search engines the relationship between web pages in alternate languages.
The hreflang attribute is an HTML attribute placed on a <link> element, which tells search engines that you have multiple versions of a web page for different languages or regions. By specifying hreflang for these multiple versions, search engines will be steered towards the most appropriate version of your page, potentially increasing your site’s visibility in search results for users of a particular region.
When using Shopify’s native multilingual storefronts and/or multiple country-specific domains, hreflang tags are automatically set up for every domain.
If you’re not using Shopify’s native internationalization functionalities, then include hreflang tags in the <head> element of your theme. This should be done when using a separate storefront for each language, or a single store with a multilingual theme.
301 redirects
Odds are, your current platform has a different URL structure than Shopify in at least some way. For example, on your current site your products may live at a URL like:
yourstore.com/dresses/red-dress
On Shopify, that same product will live at a location like:
yourstore.com/collections/dresses/red-dress
It’s important that you let search engines know that your site structure has changed with 301 redirects.
Ensure that your most popular pages (see Benchmark your existing metrics) are included. There may be cases where existing URLs aren't picked up by your sitemap, for example, any URLs that use query parameters (/dresses/red-dress?size=small). These are worth redirecting where possible, especially if they have distinct content.
Once you have your list compiled and mapped to the new URL in a CSV file, you can import the list to Shopify. Upload 301 redirects for your store domain before you connect it to the new store, to ensure that all existing site URLs are pointed to a new URL on the new store.
Search-optimized 404 page
If you have broken URLs that have not been addressed by a 301 redirect, your customer will land on a 404 page. Typically these pages will display a “404 - Page Not Found” error, which will lead your customer to leave your site. It’s important that you monitor and address your 404 errors, but when all else fails, optimize your 404 page to benefit your SEO strategy. Customizing your 404 page may encourage those who land on it to keep engaging with your site—thanks to useful content and links.
An optimized 404 page could include:
- A friendlier, more useful message to replace 404 - Page Not Found, in line with your brand’s voice and tone
- Your store’s main navigation
- A search bar
- An email opt-in
- Business and contact information
You can modify the 404.liquid template in your theme files to create an engaging 404 page for your store.
Need support?
In the event that you have any urgent issues or need to speak with someone immediately, we encourage you to reach out to our amazing 24/7 support team.