What the Shopify Experts marketplace is, and what it is not
Shopify runs a directory where store owners can find independent experts and agencies for jobs like design, development and marketing, SEO among them. People call it the Shopify Experts marketplace. Shopify has changed the name, layout and filters over the years, so check what it looks like on the day you search.
The useful thing to understand is what the directory does and does not do. It is a place to find and contact providers. It shows profiles, services, locations and reviews left by past clients. It is not a guarantee of quality in every case, and it does not run your project for you. You still choose, vet and manage the person.
That makes it a good starting point and a poor finishing point. It narrows the world to people who work with Shopify. It does not tell you whether this person is right for your store.
This page is about using the directory well. For the wider question of who to hire and in what form, start with our guide to how to find the right Shopify SEO expert.
The directory against hiring somewhere else
There are three common places to find SEO help for a Shopify store. Each has a different strength.
Shopify's directory. Everyone listed works on Shopify, and you can filter by service. Profiles carry reviews from real clients, which is more useful than a self-written testimonial. The weakness is that the list is long and profiles are written to sell. Strong and weak providers can look alike at a glance.
General freelance marketplaces. These offer huge choice and low entry prices. Quality varies enormously and many profiles claim SEO as one of fifty skills. Our page on the Shopify SEO freelancer covers the strengths and breaks of that route.
Referrals and your own network. A founder in your category who used someone and got results is the strongest signal available. It is also the hardest to find at will.
A sensible approach combines them. Use the directory to build a shortlist, ask peers if anyone knows the names, and check each candidate against evidence outside the directory.
How to read a directory profile
A profile is a sales page. Read it as one, then look for the facts inside it.
Services listed. A provider who lists design, development, ads, email and SEO all together is a generalist. That can be fine for small jobs. For ongoing SEO, you usually want someone who treats it as the main work, not one item on a long list.
Reviews. Read the text, not the star count. Look for reviews that describe a specific problem and a specific outcome. Reviews that say "great to work with" tell you about manners, not about search. Note how recent they are and whether they mention SEO or something else, like a store build.
Case studies. If a profile links to results, check whether the numbers have a time window and a source. Our page on the Shopify SEO case study shows how to read these critically.
Pricing hints. If the profile shows a starting price, ask what it includes. A low number with a long list of services should make you wonder how much time each gets.
Response behavior. How quickly and specifically they reply to your first message is data. Slow or generic replies tend to predict slow or generic work.
Vetting a listing before you pay
The diagram gives the order. Here is how to do each step.
Shortlist three
Filter by SEO, read the reviews and pick three with the most relevant experience. Prefer someone who has worked on stores like yours in size and type. A provider who has only handled huge brands may be unsuited to a store with fifty products, and the reverse is true too.
Verify outside the directory
Visit their own website. Does it read well? Do they publish useful pages about Shopify SEO themselves? A provider who sells SEO and has no search presence of their own deserves a question. Ask for one or two live stores they have worked on and look at them. You can check how a store's pages are titled and structured with your own eyes, using the same steps as our Shopify SEO checklist.
Run a small test
Offer a defined paid job, such as an audit of one section of the store or a rewrite of five collection pages. See how they communicate, whether they deliver on time and whether the work is something you would publish. This costs little and tells you a great deal.
Then contract
Move to a longer arrangement only after the test. Our page on the Shopify SEO contract lists what to put in writing.
Five questions that separate real SEO help from a listing
Ask these in your first conversation. Keep the answers.
"What will you look at first on my store, and why?" A good answer names specifics, like how collections and products are titled, how pages are indexed and what Search Console shows. A weak answer is a list of tools.
"Which of your clients can I look at, and what did you change?" A good answer names a store and a change. A weak one cites a confidentiality agreement for every client.
"How do you report, and from which source?" You want Google Search Console clicks and impressions by page. Our Shopify SEO report guide shows what a good report contains.
"What would you not do for my store?" Good providers have limits. They will say they do not buy links, or do not promise rankings. A provider who will do anything for the fee is unlikely to be doing it carefully.
"What do you need from me, and how often?" This reveals how much of your time the work takes.
A longer list lives on our page of questions to ask a Shopify SEO expert.
What the directory protects you from, and what it does not
It is worth being clear about what a listing buys you, because some owners assume more than is there.
A listing shows that a provider has chosen to work in the Shopify ecosystem and has a public profile with reviews. A public profile with reviews raises the cost of behaving badly, because a bad review is visible. That is a real, if modest, benefit.
It does not mean Shopify has checked the quality of every provider's SEO work, set their prices or will step in if a project goes badly. Disputes about scope, delivery and payment are between you and the provider, so your contract and your payment terms matter just as much as they would anywhere else.
It also does not mean the provider is the best fit. Many strong providers have thin or outdated profiles, and some with polished profiles are mostly designers who added SEO as a service. Treat the directory as a way to meet candidates, not as an endorsement.
Practical protection is simple. Pay in stages tied to delivered work. Keep ownership of your accounts. Use collaborator access, not your owner login. Those habits work wherever you found the person.
SEO experts against other kinds of Shopify experts
The directory lists many kinds of expert, and the labels blur. Knowing the difference saves you from hiring the wrong one.
Developers build and change the theme and code. They can fix technical SEO problems that live in the theme, like headings or structured data output, but they do not necessarily know what to write or which pages to build.
Designers shape how the store looks and feels. A well-designed store can still be invisible to search if the pages say little.
Marketing and ads specialists buy traffic. That is a different skill from earning it, and the two are measured differently.
SEO specialists focus on being found in search. The best ones know enough development to brief a developer and enough writing to judge content.
If your problem is that the store is slow, a developer is the better first hire. If your problem is that nobody finds you, an SEO specialist or a content-focused service is. Our page on consultant against agency sets out how the main kinds of SEO help compare.
Signs a listing is not what it seems
Most providers in a directory are honest. A few signals suggest a closer look.
Many reviews that read alike. If reviews share the same phrases or all arrived in the same week, ask about them.
No named work. A profile that says "we have grown dozens of stores" and shows none is asking for trust it has not earned.
A guarantee of rankings. Nobody controls Google. This is the most common red flag, here as everywhere. More on this in our Shopify SEO red flags guide.
Pressure to move off the platform. If a provider urges you to pay or communicate outside the directory right away, you lose any record of how the engagement started. A small reason to pause, not an automatic no.
Very low prices for a long list. The work has to come from somewhere. If the price per task is tiny, the time per task is tiny.
You will not catch everything with a checklist. The small paid test is the better safeguard, because it shows how someone behaves with real work in front of them.
Designing the small test project
The paid test is the best protection you have, so it is worth designing well. A good test is small, specific and finished within two weeks.
Choose work that shows the skill you need. If you want ongoing content, ask for three collection page rewrites. If you want diagnosis, ask for an audit of one collection and its products. If you want technical help, ask for a fix list for your slowest ten pages.
Write the brief in one page. Name the pages, say what good looks like, list the deadline and agree the fee in advance. Providers worth hiring will welcome this, because it protects them from scope creep too.
Judge on four things. Did they ask good questions before starting? Did they deliver on time? Would you publish the work as it is? Did they explain what they did and why in plain words?
Pay promptly and fairly. A small test treated badly gives you a worse result in the real engagement, and good providers talk to each other.
After the test, you have something no profile can give you: a sample of their real work on your real store and a feel for how they communicate. If it went well, move to a scoped agreement with the clauses on our Shopify SEO contract page. If not, you have lost a small amount and learned a lot.
Agency, solo expert or something else
The directory mixes one-person practices with larger agencies, and the right choice depends on what you need.
A solo expert gives you one person who knows your store well and usually costs less. The weak point is capacity and continuity. If they are ill, busy or move on, the work stops. Ask who covers when they are away.
A small agency adds a few specialists, such as a writer and a developer alongside the strategist. You get more range. Ask who will actually do your work, because the person who sells is not always the person who delivers.
A larger agency brings process and scale. It may be more than a small store needs, and a smaller account can end up with the most junior staff. Ask about the team assigned to you.
Whichever you pick, ask to speak to the person who will do the work, not only the one who sells it. Our page on the Shopify SEO agency model describes what working with one looks like month to month.
There is also a fourth route that is not a person at all: a done-for-you service that publishes pages with a team and AI. It sits outside the directory model and is covered in the last section here.
How RunOctopus handles hiring
If browsing profiles, vetting people and managing a project sounds like more work than you want, RunOctopus takes a different route. It is a done-for-you service. Its AI, Ollie, researches your business, then writes and publishes pages directly on your own website, with a team planning, writing and reviewing alongside Ollie. It works with Shopify, WordPress, WooCommerce and Wix.
There is no listing to read. You see the plan first: paste your address for a free site read, and Ollie reads your site and shows what it would do. No account, no call. Nothing to install, approve, upload or schedule.
The first week brings 8 long-form articles, 6 pages and a custom interactive tool built for your niche. After that it is 175+ pieces of content a month, written, published and linked, with reporting on where ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Gemini name your business.
The promise is more visibility on Google and in AI answers within 90 days, measured against the 90 days before you joined, or every dollar back. Sterman, a Los Angeles real estate business, went from 44 to 210 Google clicks a month since April, from Google Search Console over 28 days to September 29, 2026.