How to use these twenty tips
Each tip below says what to do in one sentence and why in the next. No filler, no theory. They are grouped by job, and the groups are in the order that makes the most sense to work through, as the timeline shows.
You do not need to do all twenty this week. Nobody does. Pick the group you are in, do it properly, and come back. If you try to do everything, you will do each thing half-way and be unable to tell what worked.
A word on what these tips are. They are current, plain and checkable. None of them is a trick, and none promises a position. SEO on Shopify is a slow job of making each page the best answer to a real question, and these tips are the parts that are within your control. The tips are also deliberately short. Where one deserves a full guide, we link to it.
If you would rather have a professional run the list, our overview of professional Shopify SEO help explains the options. For a longer reference on the same ground, see the Shopify SEO guide.
Set up the tools, fix the pages that already get seen, then build a content habit. Speed, links and measurement run alongside all of it.
Setup: tips 1 to 4
1. Verify your store in Google Search Console
Add your domain and confirm ownership. It is the only direct source of data on how Google sees your store, and it is free.
2. Submit your sitemap
Shopify builds the sitemap automatically at your domain followed by /sitemap.xml. Submit it in Search Console so Google finds new pages sooner.
3. Use your real domain, and make one version the main one
Set your own domain as the primary domain in Shopify, so the version ending in myshopify.com redirects to it. Two live addresses split signals and confuse shoppers.
4. Turn on analytics you will actually read
Set up Google Analytics or Shopify's built-in reports and check that orders are attributed to organic search. You cannot judge what you do not measure. Our GA4 guide for Shopify covers the setup.
These four take an evening. Do them first, because every other tip is easier to judge once the data is flowing. Do not skip them because they feel dull. A store with no data is working blind, and the early weeks of data are precisely what you cannot get back later.
Pages: tips 5 to 10
5. Write a unique page title for every important page
Put the main term first and keep it near 60 characters. The title is the strongest on-page signal and the headline in the search result. See how to write Shopify titles and descriptions.
6. Write meta descriptions as short pitches
One real detail and a reason to click, in about 155 characters. They do not rank pages, but they decide who clicks.
7. Add a real introduction to every collection page
Two or three short paragraphs at the top that say what is in the collection and who it suits. Collections are your best shot at broad shopping terms. See collection page SEO.
8. Rewrite supplier product descriptions
Say what the product is, who it fits and how to use it, in your own words. Copied text appears on many sites, and Google has no reason to pick yours.
9. Name your image files and write alt text
Describe what the photo shows in plain words. It helps image search and screen readers. Our image SEO guide has the detail.
10. Give each page one H1
The product or page title is normally the H1 in a Shopify theme. Check that your theme does not add a second one in the banner, because every page should have one clear main heading.
Do these on your top ten pages first, then work outward. The pages that already get impressions in Search Console are where a better title pays soonest.
Content: tips 11 to 15
11. Answer the questions customers already ask you
Turn every repeated email or chat into a page. The wording customers use is the wording they search with.
12. Write buying guides for your main categories
A guide to choosing the right size, material or style, with links to your products. Guides catch shoppers early, before they have picked a store.
13. Use your blog, and keep it on your domain
Shopify's blog is built in and costs nothing. Content on your own domain builds your own authority. See Shopify blog SEO.
14. Add an FAQ to key product and collection pages
Real questions with direct answers, in plain text on the page. They help shoppers, and search and AI assistants can quote them.
15. Update older pages instead of only adding new ones
Add a section, fix a fact, refresh an example. It signals that the page is maintained and it is cheaper than a new article.
The common thread is specificity. A page that says a lot about one narrow thing beats one that says a little about everything. If you cannot find the hours to write, that is a normal problem, and it is where many owners decide to look at done-for-you help.
Speed and structure: tips 16 to 18
16. Check your speed on a phone
Test your home, best collection and best product in PageSpeed Insights on the mobile setting. Most of your shoppers are on phones, and slow pages lose them. Our Core Web Vitals guide for Shopify explains the numbers.
17. Remove apps you do not use
Each app can add scripts to your pages. Delete unused ones and check the theme code for leftovers. See how apps slow a store.
18. Link between your own pages on purpose
Link from articles to the products and collections they discuss, and from collections to related collections. Internal links tell Google which pages matter and guide shoppers to them.
Speed and links are not glamorous. They are also the tips most likely to be done once and forgotten. Put a recurring reminder in the calendar to run the speed test again every quarter, since new apps and new banners creep in. When you add a page, link to it from at least two others the same day, and link from it to the next step a shopper would take. A page that nothing links to may as well not exist.
Links and measurement: tips 19 and 20
19. Earn links from places that know you
Suppliers, local organizations, partners, charities you support and press you have genuinely earned. A few links from real sites in your field help far more than a bought package. Google weighs where a link comes from, and Google can tell.
Ask people you already work with. A supplier may list stockists. A local group may feature a business that sponsors an event. A customer who loves your product may write about it. These are slow to collect and hard to fake, which is why they count.
20. Review the data monthly and write down one change
Open Search Console. Look at which searches brought visitors, which pages have many impressions and few clicks, and which pages fell. Choose one thing to change next month and note the date. A short monthly review beats an annual panic.
Here is the review in three questions. What did people search for before they found us? Which of our pages was shown but not clicked? Which page lost ground since last month? Each answer points to a job. The first suggests new content. The second suggests a better title or a stronger first paragraph. The third suggests an update.
If this is the part you would like an expert to carry, the question to ask is what they would report to you each month. Our guide to what a Shopify SEO report should show is a good yardstick.
The ways tip lists lead people astray
A list of tips is useful and it has a built-in weakness. It makes everything look equally important and equally quick. They are not.
Doing the easy ones and calling it done. Writing alt text for two hundred images feels productive. Rewriting your three best collection pages would pay more. Weigh each tip by the traffic of the pages it touches.
Doing them once. A lot of these are habits. Titles for new pages, links from new articles and a monthly look at the data are never finished.
Doing them everywhere at once. Change a handful of pages, wait, compare. If you change two hundred, you will not know which change did what.
Copying a competitor's pages. You can learn from what ranks above you. Copying gives Google no reason to show yours instead.
Trusting a score. Tool scores measure whether boxes are ticked. They do not measure whether your page is the best answer. Treat them as a to-do list, not a verdict. Our Shopify SEO checklist follows the same principle: it tells you what to look at, and you supply the judgement.
If you keep a note of what you did and when, you can learn from each tip instead of guessing. That is what separates a store that improves from one that tinkers.
Where to go after the twenty
Once the twenty are done, the next gains come from depth and volume: more pages that answer real questions, better internal links and a steady trickle of earned references.
That is also the moment to decide what you will keep doing yourself. Setup, titles and data review are good to keep in-house, because they take little time and need your knowledge of the business. Writing at volume is the part that most owners hand off, because it takes the most hours.
For the standing rules behind these tips, our reference on Shopify SEO best practices collects them in one place. For a plan sized to a store with a short product list, see Shopify SEO for small stores.
Whatever you do next, keep the habit of writing down what you changed. It sounds minor and it is the habit that most separates owners who learn from SEO from owners who feel it never works.
How the tips change by store type
The twenty tips apply to every store, though the weight shifts with the kind of business you run.
A store with a few dozen products. Put most of your effort into tips 5 to 9. Every product and collection page can be made genuinely good, and that is the advantage you have over big retailers.
A store with thousands of products. You cannot hand-write everything. Use tips 5 and 6 as patterns, hand-write the top pages, and spend your attention on structure and internal links in tip 18.
A store that sells something people research first. Think furniture, supplements, equipment, anything with a long decision. Content tips 11 to 14 will carry most of the weight, because shoppers search for guides and comparisons before they search for a product.
A store that sells repeat purchases. Reviews, FAQs and care guides help, and so does tip 15, keeping older pages current.
A store with a strong brand name. Tip 20 matters more than usual. Branded searches behave differently from product searches, so separate them when you read Search Console.
Whatever the type, do the setup tips first and keep the monthly review. The rest you can order by where your visitors already are.
How RunOctopus handles this
RunOctopus handles the content tips on this list, the ones that take the most hours. It 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.
There is nothing to install, nothing to approve, nothing to upload and nothing to schedule. Pages go live on their own. In the first week you get 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. Reports show where ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Gemini name your business.
The setup, speed and measurement tips are still yours or a developer's to handle. To see what Ollie would plan for your store, use the free site read. Paste your address and Ollie reads the site and shows the plan. No account, no call.