Our Shopify SEO checklist outlines the most important steps store owners can take to improve organic rankings, increase traffic, and drive more sales from search engines and AI tools. Shopify is a great platform and we’ve been marketing shopify stores for years. However, most stores are built for UX and ecommerce, but neglect Search Engine Optimization. SEO has significant potential as it drives free traffic and purchases from all search engines including AI tools. This is exacerbated as Shopify stores can now sell products on ChatGPT, which requires SEO fundamentals.
With that, we’re going to jump into our Shopify SEO Checklist which includes: measurement, on-page SEO, backlinking, agentic storefronts and product feed optimization.
SEO Measurement
Without proper SEO measurement, you won’t know what’s working nor the impact of your efforts. The good news is there are a lot of free tools we can leverage and most are very easy to setup.
Google Search Console
Google search console is a free reporting tool that gives insight into how your store is ranking on Google. It gives reporting by pages, keywords, and soon AI search performance. Further it gives a wealth of diagnostics such as core web vitals and insights into which pages Google is indexing. This is critical to identify any technical issues with the website that’s preventing pages from serving on Google.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is another free reporting tool from Google. This gives insight into all of your website traffic, organic, paid, etc. Shopify has direct integrations with Google Analytics to make for easier implementation and to identify which channels are driving meaningful sales.
To keep your measurement simple, we recommend starting with these two free platforms. Over time, you can also set up other measurement platforms such as Bing Webmaster Tools, which will give insight into your site’s performance on Bing, including AI visibility on Bing AI and Copilot. Further, you can subscribe to a platform like SEMRush, but we prefer tools that report directly from the source to start.
On-Page SEO
On page SEO for Shopify stores covers all content that’s on your website. From technical SEO to product pages and blog content. This is an area where you want to optimize your website to give Google and the AI tools clear signals of the products you offer, and who they’re intended for.
Prioritize a Target Keyword on Each Page
Each page should target a specific keyword, which should be prioritized in several elements of content, including the header, title, meta description and include the targeted keyword within the first sentence of the page. For example, in this fictional hiking brand, let’s say the target keyword for a page is lightweight hiking backpack. For this we would want to target the keyword as outlined below. This is pretty much all you need for keyword targeting on the page, the rest of the content can be supporting content. If you continue to use the same keyword throughout the entire page, it will start to be viewed as spammy or trying to game the algorithm.
Example target keyword “lightweight hiking backpacks”
URL
domain/lightweight-hiking-backpacks/
Title Tag
Lightweight Hiking Backpacks | Comfortable Packs for Day Hikes & Travel
H1
Lightweight Hiking Backpacks
Intro
At SummitTrail Gear, we specialize in lightweight hiking backpacks designed to reduce….
Image Alt Text
Shopify stores are very visual and are often loaded with images of product and lifestyle shots. For every image, we need to add image alt text to inform Google what each is, so it has context.
Product Page Content
Make sure your product pages are full of helpful information to sell the product, but also give Google and the AI tools context of what the product is, who it’s for, key selling points, etc. Examples of this can include FAQs, testimonials, product feature checklists, etc.
Schema Markup
Schema is coded markup on a webpage that helps search engines understand the content of a page. It also provides search engines with a greater understanding of where to place the page within search results based on user search intent. For ecommerce stores there is a variety of schema that can be helpful such as product, review and organization schema. In the age of AI search, this is becoming much more popular as AI tools prefer organized data to understand the internet and which pages to cite.
Backlinks
To rank on Google and AI tools, it’s critical to have other websites reference your store and link to you. This is along the lines of digital PR. Google and AI tools prioritize known entities, as cited by other websites. Think in your own AI search experience, when you prompt a search, you can see it searching a variety of sources to share a recommendation.
There are a few ways to earn backlinks:
- Reach out to trusted business partners, there could be an area where they can link to your website. For example, this could be a local retailer who carries your products, they can link to your website to learn more.
- Directories, the internet is full of directories for all industries. This could be local business directories (i.e. Chamber of Commerce), or nationwide directories for your industry.
- Guest blog posts are another effective way to earn backlinks and increase brand visibility. Many industry blogs and publications accept contributions from outside experts and businesses. By providing valuable content to these websites, you can often earn a backlink to your store while also introducing your brand to a new audience. In addition to supporting SEO, guest blogging can help establish credibility and drive referral traffic to your website.
To see how many backlinks and authoritative your site is, check out Moz’s free domain authority tool. If your authority score is under 20, there is significant opportunity to earn backlinks to drive more traffic and higher rankings.
Agentic Storefronts
As shared within our agentic storefront blog post, E-commerce businesses using Shopify for their storefronts can now take advantage of a new sales channel to get their products to show up in AI conversations. This new type of sales channel is called Agentic Storefronts.
Agentic Storefronts enable AI shopping experiences to:
- Discover your Shopify products in AI platforms like ChatGPT, CoPilot, Gemini, Google AI Mode and Perplexity
- Recommend them to shoppers in AI conversations
- Allow customers to complete checkout directly inside AI Platforms
Within Shopify you can enable the storefront within select channels, like ChatGPT.
Product Feed Optimization
Within Google Merchant Center, it’s important that you have an optimized product feed. Product feed optimization is the process of optimizing all product attributes to match to search intent and making sure they’re correctly categorized. This includes product titles, descriptions, images, highlights, categories, etc.
By doing so, store owners can experience free organic listings on Google Shopping.
We wrote a detailed blog on product feed optimization which can significantly increase the opportunity for organic traffic.
Need help optimizing your Shopify store?
Contact Rise Marketing Group, we’ll gladly access your current SEO visibility and share a suggested plan to drive more traffic for your store.
