Shopify SEO checklist for a new store: what to do in week one

Your new store is live, the products are loaded, and Google sends you nobody. You search for your own product and find a marketplace listing, a competitor, and nothing of yours. That is normal for a new store, and most of what fixes it is plain work you can do yourself in the first week.

This Shopify SEO checklist puts that work in order, one step a day.

Ranking takes weeks to months, and nobody can promise you a position.

What you control is whether Google can read your store and understand what each page is about. That part fits in a week.

Shopify SEO checklist, step one: one topic per page

Google ranks pages, not stores. Each page should be about one thing a person would type into a search box: one product, one kind of product, one question.

Before you touch any setting, write a short list: every product, every collection, and the phrase each one should be found for. A collection called “Shop” or “All” is about nothing. A collection called “Linen table runners” is about something, and it can rank for it.

If two pages chase the same phrase, they compete with each other. Pick one and link the other to it.

Write titles and meta descriptions by hand

Shopify fills in a title and description for every page automatically, usually the product name and the first lines of your description. That default is rarely what you want a stranger to read on Google.

Open a product in the admin, scroll to the bottom and find the box named “Search engine listing”. Open it for editing and you get three fields. The same box sits at the bottom of every collection, page and blog post.

• Page title. Say what the thing is in the words a buyer uses, then your store name. Keep it short enough to show in full in the preview Shopify shows in that box.
• Meta description. Two sentences for a person deciding whether to click: what it is, who it is for, one reason to choose it. Google sometimes rewrites it, and that is fine.
• URL handle. Short, lowercase, real words. If you change it later, leave the redirect box ticked so old links keep working.

The home page is edited elsewhere. Here is where each setting in this checklist lives:

Fix your headings and images

Every page needs one main heading that says what the page is. In most Shopify themes the product title, collection title or page title already is that heading, so your job is not to add a second one.

Inside long descriptions and pages, break the text up with real subheadings from the editor’s formatting menu, not bold text. Name them after what buyers ask about: sizing, materials, care, shipping.

Images need two things:

• Alt text. A plain sentence describing the photo, for people who cannot see it and for Google Images. Open the product, click a photo and add alt text. Describe the picture; do not paste a list of keywords.
• Sensible files. Shopify resizes and compresses images when it serves them, which does most of the work. Your part: upload photos as JPG, keep PNG for graphics that need a transparent background, and name files in plain words before you upload.

Tidy your collections and link pages together

Collections are your category pages, and for broad searches they are often the pages that rank. Give each one a clear name, a short description, and its own title and meta description.

Keep the structure flat. A shopper, and Google, should reach any product from the home page in a couple of clicks: home, collection, product. Put your main collections in the main menu.

Then add links inside your text. From a product description, link to its collection and to a related product. From a blog post, link to the products it mentions. Use link text that says where the link goes, not “click here”. What belongs on the page itself is covered in the anatomy of a product page that sells.

Hand Google your sitemap, then check speed

Shopify builds a sitemap for you and keeps it current. Type your domain followed by /sitemap.xml and you will see it. You do not create or edit this file.

Your job is to tell Google where it is. First remove the store password, because Google cannot read a store that is locked. Then:

1. Open Google Search Console and add your domain as a property.
2. Prove the site is yours. Search Console gives you a short record to add to your domain’s settings. If you bought the domain through Shopify, that is under Settings > Domains.
3. Open Sitemaps in the left menu, enter sitemap.xml and submit it.

A few days later, the Pages report shows what Google has indexed and what it has skipped.

Speed belongs on this list too: a slow page loses the visitor Google just sent you. Run your home page and one product page through PageSpeed Insights on the mobile tab. If the result is poor, the fixes are in our guide to Shopify store speed.

Publish answers, and skip the shortcuts

Product and collection pages can only rank for so much. The questions people ask before they buy (how to choose a size, how to care for the material) need pages of their own. Shopify’s built-in blog is where they go.

Write one article in week one. Answer a single question properly, in your own words, and link from it to the products that solve it. Google’s own SEO Starter Guide makes the same point: content that is useful to people does more than any trick.

What not to spend time on:

• Keyword stuffing. Repeating a phrase in every line reads badly and does not help.
• Buying links. Paid link packages break Google’s rules and can get a site penalized. Links worth having come from real mentions: suppliers, local press, people who liked the product.
• Anyone who promises a ranking. Everything here is done with what Shopify already gives you, and nobody controls Google.

What to do first, today

Open the product you most want to sell and scroll to “Search engine listing”. Rewrite the title and the meta description by hand, the way you would describe the product to a stranger. Then do the next one.

Work through the rest of this Shopify SEO checklist one step a day, submit the sitemap by the end of the week, then keep publishing and give Google time.

If you would rather not do this yourself, SEO setup and fast pages are part of the Ecommerce Scaling System, our done-for-you Shopify store.