What Shopify will and will not let you do
Shopify is fast, secure and easy to run. It is also opinionated about URLs, and some of those opinions cost you rankings. Every product sits under /collections/x/products/y, so a single product can live under a dozen different collection URLs, none of which is a true canonical you control. Tag pages, filtered views and app-injected scripts add more thin, near-duplicate pages behind them. None of this is a reason to avoid Shopify. It is a reason to hire someone who has fixed it before.
What’s included
We work inside the platform, not against it.
- Collection architecture. A collection structure mapped to real search demand, not to your warehouse categories, with clear parent-child logic and no orphaned collections.
- PDP template optimisation. Titles, headings, image alt text and on-page content built into the product template so every new product launches search-ready, not fixed retrospectively one page at a time.
- Metafield-driven schema. Product and breadcrumb data structured through Shopify metafields so it stays accurate as stock changes, without hand-editing theme code.
- App and speed audit. Most Shopify speed problems come from installed apps, not the platform. We audit what is running, what it costs you in load time, and what it earns you in return.
- Blog-to-collection internal linking. Editorial content that links into commercial collections and PDPs, so blog traffic feeds the pages that convert.
- International via Shopify Markets. Multi-currency and multi-region setup that keeps each market’s pages canonical and correctly targeted, rather than duplicating the same catalogue across subfolders.
The five Shopify SEO limits and our workarounds
- Nested product URLs. Every product can sit under multiple collection paths. We pick one canonical path per product and enforce it, so link equity consolidates instead of splitting.
/collections/duplication. Sort and filter parameters generate near-identical collection pages. We canonicalise and, where filters have real search demand, promote the useful ones to indexable pages in their own right.- Tag pages. Shopify auto-generates tag archives with little unique content. We noindex the ones with no search value and build out the few that do.
- App-injected JavaScript. Reviews widgets, upsell apps and trackers can block rendering or bury content search engines never see. We audit render output as well as page speed scores.
- Theme-level schema gaps. Many Shopify themes ship without proper Product or BreadcrumbList markup, or duplicate it across apps. We correct it at the theme level so it stays consistent.
Shopify stores we’ve grown
These are stores we’ve independently verified are running on Shopify, with the results as published on their own case studies.
- Haskapa: 72% increase in sales, from a wave-based micro-influencer campaign that launched an unfamiliar superfood berry to Instagram audiences. See the Haskapa case study.
- 888 Vapour: 80%+ organic traffic growth year-over-year, from a structured SEO consultation in one of UK ecommerce’s most saturated markets. See the 888 Vapour case study.
- T Juice: 176% increase in organic revenue, from a geo-targeted micro-influencer strategy in an industry where traditional digital advertising is restricted. See the T Juice case study.
- Georgiana Scott: 55% increase in organic sales, from a structured, category-focused SEO campaign on key category pages. See the Georgiana Scott case study.
- HighKind: 71% increase in organic sales, from a full rebrand (from Extracts) backed by targeted outreach and a long-term ambassador programme. See the HighKind case study.
Other platforms
WooCommerce. WordPress-native stores bring their own problems, plugin bloat, category vs. tag confusion, and themes that were never built for commerce. See our WooCommerce SEO approach.
Magento / Adobe Commerce. Powerful catalogue logic, but slow by default and prone to layered-navigation duplication at scale. See our Magento SEO approach.
What it costs
Shopify SEO runs on the same retainer as the rest of our search work: from £1,250 a month, with no minimum term, 60 days’ notice, at any point. What moves the price is catalogue size, how many apps are installed, and whether you are trading in one market or several through Shopify Markets. A 200-SKU single-market store and a 20,000-SKU multi-region catalogue are not the same job. Book a call and we will price it against your store rather than a generic tier.
Related services
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The Work
SEO campaigns we have run
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Frequently asked questions
Usually not. Most of what people buy an SEO app for is either available in the theme or is a metafield change. We would rather edit the theme than add a subscription and another script on every page load. Where an app genuinely is the right answer, we tell you what it costs, what it adds to page weight and what happens if you remove it later. Anything we do install gets removed cleanly if you cancel, and we document what it touched.
We implement them. With collaborator access we make theme and metafield changes directly, on a duplicated theme first, then publish once you have seen it. Where a change belongs to a developer you already work with, we write it as a specific ticket with the reason and the test, and we verify it after the release. What we do not do is hand over a findings document and treat that as the deliverable.
By reporting revenue rather than sessions. We report organic revenue, transactions and conversion rate for the pages we have worked on, alongside the query set that brought people there. Sessions on their own tell you very little, because a rise driven by informational traffic can look identical to one that pays. Where a revenue movement is seasonal or driven by a promotion rather than by our work, we say so in the report instead of leaving the inference sitting there.
The fastest wins on a Shopify store are usually collection pages already ranking just outside the top few positions, and product pages with traffic that do not convert. Both are fixable without waiting for new content to age. We start there, then move to the structural work such as internal linking from collections into products, which takes longer but compounds. You get the priority order and the reasoning up front, and you can overrule it where something matters commercially.
Yes. We work on a duplicated theme, send you a preview link and a written summary of what changed and why, and publish only once you have approved it. Copy goes through the same loop in batches. The only planning consequence is that the batch size has to suit how much your team can review each month, so we agree that at the start rather than discovering it in month three.
A migration can cost you rankings if it is done badly, broken redirects and lost canonical structure are the usual causes. Done properly, with a full URL mapping and 301 plan before launch, most stores hold or improve their visibility.
Not through the admin UI directly, but yes through theme-level canonical tags and careful collection architecture. It takes deliberate setup; it does not happen by default.
Indirectly, yes. Apps that slow page load or inject render-blocking scripts hurt Core Web Vitals, and enough of them can bury your actual product content from crawlers. We audit what is running before recommending removals.
It works for most stores. The bigger issue is usually that the blog sits disconnected from the collections it should be feeding traffic into. We fix the linking, not the platform choice.
Markets handles currency, domain structure and basic targeting well. It does not handle hreflang validation, duplicate-content risk between near-identical market pages, or localisation depth. That is where we come in.
Technical fixes like canonicalisation and schema can be reflected in crawling within weeks. Ranking movement on competitive collection and product terms typically takes three to six months, in line with any other platform.
Yes, including multi-store and B2B/wholesale channel setups, which carry their own architecture questions beyond a standard Shopify store.
We still audit and optimise it, but implementation changes, some fixes go through the storefront API or a custom frontend rather than the standard theme editor.
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