The menu of Shopify SEO services
Shopify SEO services come in five groups: technical, on-page, content, links and reporting. Every proposal you receive is some mix of these five, usually with fancy names. Once you can sort a proposal into the five, you can see what you are buying.
Technical covers the foundations. Whether Google can reach and understand your pages, whether redirects work, whether the theme loads fast, whether duplicate pages are handled. On-page covers what is written on each page. Titles, descriptions, headings and the opening copy of collections and products. Content covers new pages built to answer questions your buyers ask, such as articles, guides and tools. Links covers references from other sites to yours. Reporting covers measurement and explanation.
The groups differ in cost, speed and risk. Technical and on-page work is fast and usually safe. Content takes longer and compounds. Links are slow, hard to do well and easy to do badly. Reporting is necessary, but is not itself a service that changes your store.
If you are choosing between types of provider, our breakdown of the types of Shopify SEO provider explains which kind of business usually offers which of these.
Technical services
Technical work is the part that prevents damage. Shopify does a good job by default, so the work is less about building and more about checking and cleaning.
Typical tasks include confirming that your sitemap lists the right pages, checking that your robots.txt file is not blocking anything important, fixing redirect chains after pages are renamed or removed, and handling the duplicate content that arises when products appear under several collection URLs. Shopify points those duplicates back to the main product URL with canonical tags, but filtered and tagged collection pages can still create clutter.
Speed is another large piece. Themes and apps add scripts, and each one can slow the page. A good technical service reviews what is installed and removes what is not earning its place. Our page on Shopify apps slowing down your store goes through how to spot it.
Structured data is the last common task. This is the code that tells search engines the price, availability and rating of a product. Most good themes include it, and a check confirms it is correct.
What technical services do not do is bring traffic by themselves. They remove obstacles. For a store with real obstacles, that is valuable. For a store without, it is a short job, not a monthly retainer.
On-page services
On-page work is the highest value for the least effort on most stores. It is the writing and structure of the pages that already exist.
For collection pages, it means copy that explains what the range is and helps a buyer choose, plus a title and description that match what people search. For product pages, it means titles and descriptions written for shoppers, with the details people check before buying. For the home page and key pages, it means clear statements of what you sell and who for.
It also includes internal links. Collection pages linking to relevant products and guides, articles linking back to collections. These links tell Google how your site fits together and pass authority between pages.
This is where many stores have the most unrealized value. Collection pages with a single line of text, product pages copied from a supplier, and titles that are just the product name. Each is a missed chance to match a real search.
For the standards on each page type, see Shopify collection page SEO and Shopify product page SEO. If a proposal says on-page optimization and cannot name which pages and what changes, ask for the list.
Content services
Content is how a store reaches searches it has no page for. Someone typing a question into Google or an AI assistant is not looking for your product name. They are looking for an answer, and the store with the best answer on its own site gets found.
Content services produce articles, buying guides, comparison pages, FAQs and tools. The best ones are built from questions your customers actually ask, such as how to choose between two product types, how to care for a product or what to check before buying.
Quality matters more than quantity here, and volume matters too. A store with five thoughtful articles will usually lose to a store with fifty equally good ones on a topic, because the second covers more of the questions. The challenge is doing both, which is why content is the hardest service to buy well.
Judge content services by their samples. Read two pieces as a buyer. Do they answer the question quickly? Do they say something specific? Would you trust the store that wrote them?
For the blog side of this work, read Shopify blog SEO. It covers how to structure articles on a store so they support your collections rather than sit apart from them.
Link and reporting services
Two groups of services sit at the edges of most proposals, and both are worth understanding.
Links
Links from other sites to yours are a real ranking factor. Earning them is slow and depends on having something worth linking to. Good link work is outreach, partnerships and publicity, and results are uneven. Bad link work is buying links in bulk, which can cause harm. Be careful of any package that promises a fixed number of links per month for a fixed price. The link side is covered in our red flags page.
For a small store, links are usually not the first priority. A store with weak product pages and no content gains more from fixing those. Links help most once there is something strong to point at.
Reporting
Reporting is how you know what is happening. A good report uses Google Search Console, shows which pages earn clicks and impressions, and explains in words what changed and why. A poor report is a long file of metrics that do not move with your business.
Reporting is necessary but should not be the main thing you pay for. If a proposal lists it as a headline service, ask what changes on your store as a result. Our page on what a monthly Shopify SEO report should show describes the standard to hold a provider to.
What a store under $1M actually needs
Most stores under a million dollars in annual sales do not need the full menu. They need the first three groups in a sensible order, and they need to resist the extras.
First, fix what blocks you. A short technical check to clear obstacles. This is a few days of work, not a retainer.
Second, rewrite your money pages. The collections and products that bring or could bring the most revenue. This is the highest payoff for the effort and it makes every other service work better.
Third, build content steadily. Articles and guides that answer buyer questions, published at a pace you can sustain. This is where long-term growth comes from, and it is where most of a monthly budget should go after the first two steps.
Fourth, measure simply. A monthly look at Search Console, which you can do yourself or have summarized in a few lines.
Leave for later. Paid link packages, large audits repeated each month, and anything that bills hours for meetings.
There is more on prioritizing in Shopify SEO for small stores, and a do-it-yourself version of the same sequence in our Shopify SEO checklist.
AI visibility as a service line
A newer line has appeared on many menus: services that aim to get your store named by ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Gemini. It deserves a careful look.
Part of it is real. Assistants answer by drawing on pages they can read and trust, so clear, specific pages that answer questions help. Reports on whether assistants currently name your store are also real and useful. They show you where you stand.
Part of it is hype. Nobody controls what an assistant says. The same question asked twice can name different stores. Any service promising a guaranteed mention is selling something it cannot deliver.
The practical test is whether the service is built on pages and measurement or on promises. If it is the former, it overlaps heavily with good content work, and you may be buying the same thing under a different name. If it is the latter, pass.
For the details of how Shopify stores can show up in assistant answers, read Shopify ChatGPT optimization.
When comparing providers, ask whether AI visibility work is separate from the content work or part of it. The better answer is usually part of it.
How to read a services page
Every provider has a services page. A few habits let you read one in five minutes and know what it means.
Sort each listed service into the five groups. If a provider lists twenty services and they all fall into two groups, the menu is padded.
Look for verbs and objects. Rewrite collection pages. Publish articles. Fix redirects. These are things you can check. Phrases like holistic strategy, growth partnership and optimization are not.
Look for numbers. How many pages, how many articles, how often. A services page with no numbers has not committed to anything.
Look for what is missing. Many pages list technical audits and links but say nothing about writing. If writing is not on the menu, the provider will advise but not produce.
Then take the list and ask what is included at each price. The page on reading a Shopify SEO package shows how to translate a package into its real outputs.
Finally, ask for what you need and not what they offer. If you want fifteen collection pages rewritten and a monthly article, say so and ask for a quote on exactly that. Providers who can do it will. Providers who cannot will try to steer you back to their package, which tells you something.
Ordering the services over a year
It helps to see the menu spread across twelve months, because the order matters as much as the choice.
In the first month, do the technical check and the first on-page rewrites. These are fast, and they make everything after them work better. Publishing content onto a store with blocked pages or empty collections wastes the content.
In months two to four, shift most of the effort to content. Start with the questions closest to a purchase, such as how to choose between two products or what to check before buying, then widen to the questions further up. Link new articles to the collections they support.
Around month four, start reading results properly. Which pages earn impressions but few clicks? Those need better titles. Which earn clicks but few sales? Those need better copy or a clearer next step. This feedback decides what the next quarter holds.
From month six, consider links, if the pages are strong enough to deserve them. Earned links to a good guide or tool are worth far more than bought links to a thin page.
Throughout, keep reporting light. A short monthly look at Search Console, written in plain words, is enough.
This is only a sequence, not a schedule you must follow. The principle is to spend effort where the payoff is highest first and to leave the expensive, uncertain work until the basics are in place.
How RunOctopus handles this
Most of the menu above is advice, audits or hours. RunOctopus is built around the two groups that change your store, the pages and the content.
RunOctopus is a done-for-you service. Its AI, Ollie, researches your business, then writes and publishes pages directly on your own website. A team plans, writes, reviews and publishes alongside Ollie. It works with Shopify, WordPress, WooCommerce and Wix. You install nothing, approve nothing, upload nothing and schedule nothing, and pages go live on their own.
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. You also get reports 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.
For scale, an agency doing this work charges about $3,209 a month (2026 average, 439 providers) and publishes 4 to 12 pieces. You can see what Ollie would do for your store before you decide anything. Paste your address into the free site read. Ollie reads the site and shows the plan. No account, no call.