Search for help with this and you’ll mostly find lists of apps. Sixteen best SEO apps, twenty tips, a checklist. Very little of it is wrong, exactly. It’s just that installing another app has never been what’s holding a Shopify store back.
Most of my work is for online stores and most of those run on Shopify, including headless builds. This page is about what actually costs stores their visibility, and what I’d look at first on yours.
Shopify is good at the basics and no help at all with the hard part
The platform handles sitemaps, clean URLs and canonical tags without you doing anything. That’s genuinely useful and it’s why the technical checklists you’ll find are mostly short.
What it can’t do is make your collection pages worth ranking. A grid of products with one line of introduction gives Google no reason to prefer you over a competitor selling the same stock, and collection pages are where the commercial searches land. That gap is the single most common thing I find, and it isn’t a technical problem at all.
Your product pages have a related problem. If you sell other people’s products, the manufacturer’s description is on every other stockist’s site too, which leaves you competing on a page you didn’t write. What wins there is the detail a shopper actually needs: sizing, compatibility, what it’s used with, who it suits, what people get wrong.
The technical issues that are real
Not many, but they cost more than people expect.
Products are reachable at both /products/ and /collections/[collection]/products/ addresses. Shopify canonicals this correctly by default, but themes and apps break it, and internal links frequently point at the non-canonical version.
Filters, tags and variants generate URLs that can be crawled and shouldn’t be. Apps add scripts, and enough of them will slow the store to the point that it becomes the problem.
None of that is exotic, and none of it gets fixed by an app that promises to fix it. It gets fixed by looking.
Where headless changes the picture
If you’re on a headless build, everything above still applies and the rendering becomes a live question too. What gets served to a crawler, what depends on JavaScript, and whether the two match is worth checking directly rather than assuming the framework handles it.
I’ve worked on headless Shopify migrations, and the Kwiat migration case study covers one in detail. If you’re considering moving, the Shopify migrations page is the service side, and it’s a different job from this one.
AI answers are already taking the pre-purchase questions
The questions people used to ask Google before buying are increasingly answered by an AI Overview or an assistant, which means the visit you used to get may not happen.
The work that helps is the same work that helps a shopper: clear answers near the top of the page, specific product information, and content that says something the manufacturer’s copy doesn’t. Google states that no special files or markup are needed for its AI features, so anyone selling you a separate AI package for a Shopify store should be asked what they’re actually changing. There’s more under AI search visibility.
What I’d look at first
The sequence depends on what’s already broken. If products aren’t indexed or the store is slow enough to lose people, that comes first.
After that, roughly:
- Which collections make you money, because that’s where the work goes.
- Those collection pages, rewritten to help somebody choose instead of listing what’s in stock.
- The product pages for your best sellers, given real detail instead of the manufacturer’s paragraph.
- The technical checks, canonicals, internal links, crawlable filters and app load.
- Paid and organic together, so you stop paying for clicks on searches you already own.
That isn’t a fixed package. A store with a strong brand and weak category visibility needs the opposite order to one with neither.
Who this suits
Specialist stores competing with marketplaces and national retailers, where the realistic ground is specific products, comparisons and the questions people ask before buying.
Stores on headless Shopify, where rendering and crawlability need checking, not assuming.
Stores running Google Ads and SEO separately, which usually means paying for clicks on terms you already rank for while other searches go uncovered.
If you’re growing comfortably on paid and don’t want organic, more visibility may not be your priority, and I’d say so.
What does it cost to work together?
It depends on the size of the catalogue, the state of the store and how much of the work you want doing as opposed to advising on. I’d look at the store, your Search Console, and who’s actually taking your category searches. Then I’d tell you what I’d do first and what it costs.
Most of it is remote. I’m near Liverpool if a conversation in person helps.
Questions people ask
Do I need SEO apps?
Rarely more than one, and never as a strategy. Most of what the app lists solve is either handled by Shopify already or is a symptom of something the app can’t reach, like a collection page that gives nobody a reason to buy from you.
Is Shopify good or bad for SEO?
Good at the defaults, limited where it matters most. The technical basics are handled, and the hard part, being more useful than the other stores selling the same products, is entirely down to you.
What about duplicate product URLs?
Shopify points the canonical at the main product URL by default, so it’s usually fine. What isn’t fine is when a theme or app overrides it, or when your own internal links point at the collection-scoped version. Worth checking rather than assuming.
Should I move to headless?
Only for reasons that aren’t SEO. Headless can be done well or badly for search, and a migration is a risk either way. If it’s already decided, that’s a different conversation and one I’d want to have before the build, not after.
Do you work with stores outside the UK?
Yes, including US stores. Multi-market selling has its own problem, usually two versions of a store competing with each other, which is covered on the international SEO page.
Start with an assessment
Tell me what you sell and which categories matter most. I’ll look at the store, your Search Console and who’s taking those searches now, then tell you where I’d start. You can request a free assessment or get in touch. The wider picture is on the ecommerce page.