How to Set Up SEO Settings in Shopify: A Step-by-Step Guide

Setting up SEO properly in Shopify is one of the most important steps you can take to ensure your store gets discovered by potential customers through search engines. While Shopify provides a solid foundation for SEO out of the box, understanding how to configure its settings correctly can make a significant difference in your organic visibility.

This guide walks you through every SEO setting available in Shopify, explains what each one does, and shows you how to optimize them for better search performance.

Understanding Shopify's SEO Structure

Before diving into specific settings, it helps to understand how Shopify handles SEO at a structural level.

Shopify automatically generates certain SEO elements for your store, including title tags, meta descriptions, canonical URLs, and sitemaps. However, many of these elements can and should be customized to better match your target keywords and search intent.

The platform separates SEO settings into several areas:

• Store-wide settings that affect your entire site
• Page-level settings for individual products, collections, pages, and blog posts
• Theme settings that control how content is displayed
• Technical settings like redirects and URL structures

Getting each of these right ensures your store has the best possible chance of ranking in search results.

Step 1: Configure Your Store's General SEO Settings

Start by setting up your store's foundational SEO elements. These settings affect how search engines understand and display your entire site.

Set Your Homepage Title and Meta Description

Your homepage title and meta description are often the first things potential customers see in search results.

To configure these:

1. Go to Online Store in your Shopify admin
2. Click Preferences
3. Find the Homepage title and Homepage meta description fields
4. Enter your optimized title (50-60 characters) and description (150-160 characters)

Your homepage title should clearly communicate what your store sells. For example, "Organic Coffee Beans - Freshly Roasted and Delivered" is more effective than just "Welcome to Our Store."

The meta description should expand on this, providing additional context that encourages clicks while naturally including relevant keywords.

Configure Your Store's Default Page Title Format

Shopify allows you to set a template for how page titles are formatted across your site.

In the same Preferences section, you'll see a field for Title. This controls the default format for all pages that don't have custom titles set.

The default format is usually {{ page_title }} - {{ shop.name }}. This means if you have a product called "Colombian Dark Roast," the full page title becomes "Colombian Dark Roast - Your Store Name."

This format works well for most stores because it includes both the specific page name and your brand, helping with recognition in search results.

Step 2: Optimize Individual Page SEO Settings

Every product, collection, page, and blog post in Shopify has its own SEO settings. Optimizing these individually gives you much more control over how each page appears in search results.

Product Page SEO

Product pages are often your most important pages for organic traffic, as they directly lead to sales.

For each product:

1. Navigate to Products in your admin
2. Select a product to edit
3. Scroll down to Search engine listing preview
4. Click Edit website SEO

Here you can customize:

• Page title: Should include your target keyword and be descriptive of the product. Keep it under 60 characters.
• Description: Summarize what makes this product valuable. Include relevant keywords naturally but write primarily for humans.
• URL handle: Keep URLs short, readable, and keyword-focused. Avoid unnecessary words like "the" or "and."

For example, if you're selling a stainless steel water bottle, a good URL would be /products/stainless-steel-water-bottle rather than /products/the-best-water-bottle-you-will-ever-buy.

Collection Page SEO

Collection pages help organize your products and can rank for broader category keywords.

To optimize collection pages:

1. Go to Products, then Collections
2. Select a collection
3. Scroll to Search engine listing preview and click Edit

Collection titles should be clear and descriptive. If you have a collection for winter jackets, "Men's Winter Jackets" is better than "Stay Warm This Season."

The meta description should explain what customers will find in this collection and why they should browse it.

Blog Post SEO

If you're publishing blog content, each post should be optimized individually.

1. Navigate to Online Store, then Blog Posts
2. Select a post
3. Scroll to Search engine listing preview

Blog post titles should clearly indicate what the article covers. If your post explains how to brew pour-over coffee, the title should say exactly that rather than something vague like "Coffee Tips."

The meta description should summarize the key takeaway or benefit of reading the post.

Regular Page SEO

Standard pages like About, Contact, or custom landing pages also have SEO settings.

1. Go to Online Store, then Pages
2. Select a page
3. Scroll to Search engine listing preview

Even pages that might not drive significant traffic should have optimized titles and descriptions. They contribute to your site's overall relevance and authority.

Step 3: Set Up Proper URL Structure

Clean, logical URLs help both users and search engines understand your site's structure.

Use Descriptive URL Handles

When you create products, collections, or pages, Shopify automatically generates a URL based on the title. However, you should review and edit these to ensure they're optimized.

Good URL practices:

• Keep URLs short and readable
• Use hyphens to separate words, not underscores
• Include your target keyword when relevant
• Avoid special characters, numbers (unless part of a product model), or unnecessary words

For example, /products/organic-colombian-coffee is better than /products/product-12345-organic-coffee-from-colombia-best-quality.

Avoid Changing URLs After Publishing

Once a page is live and indexed by search engines, changing its URL can cause issues. If you must change a URL, set up a redirect from the old URL to the new one.

To create redirects in Shopify:

1. Go to Online Store, then Navigation
2. Click URL Redirects
3. Click Create URL redirect
4. Enter the old URL path and the new URL path

This ensures anyone who bookmarked the old URL or finds it in search results will automatically be sent to the correct page.

Step 4: Optimize Your Site's Image SEO

Images are an important part of SEO, particularly for product-based stores.

Use Descriptive File Names

Before uploading images to Shopify, rename them with descriptive, keyword-rich file names.

Instead of IMG_1234.jpg, use stainless-steel-water-bottle-blue.jpg. This helps search engines understand what the image shows.

Add Alt Text to Every Image

Alt text serves two purposes: it helps visually impaired users understand images through screen readers, and it provides context to search engines.

To add alt text in Shopify:

1. When editing a product, collection, or page, click on an image
2. Click Edit in the image preview
3. Add descriptive alt text in the Alt text field

Good alt text describes what's in the image clearly and concisely. For a product image, you might write "Blue stainless steel water bottle with insulated lid on wooden table."

Avoid keyword stuffing. Alt text should be natural and useful, not just a list of keywords.

Step 5: Configure Your Sitemap Settings

Shopify automatically generates an XML sitemap for your store, which helps search engines discover and index your pages.

Your sitemap is available at yourstore.com/sitemap.xml. You don't need to create it manually, but you should submit it to search engines.

Submit Your Sitemap to Google Search Console

To help Google find and index your pages more efficiently:

1. Sign in to Google Search Console
2. Select your property (your store's URL)
3. Go to Sitemaps in the left sidebar
4. Enter sitemap.xml in the sitemap URL field
5. Click Submit

Google will now regularly check your sitemap for new or updated pages.

Step 6: Set Up Proper Heading Structure

Headings help organize your content and signal to search engines what your page is about.

When creating product descriptions, collection descriptions, or blog posts, use headings logically:

• Use H1 for your main page title (Shopify does this automatically for product and collection names)
• Use H2 for major sections
• Use H3 for subsections within those sections

Don't skip heading levels. Don't go from H1 to H3 without an H2 in between.

In Shopify's rich text editor, you can select heading levels from the formatting dropdown. Make sure to use the "Heading" options rather than just making text bold or large, as this creates the proper HTML heading tags that search engines recognize.

Step 7: Optimize Your Store's Loading Speed

Page speed is a confirmed ranking factor, and it significantly affects user experience.

Choose a Fast, Well-Coded Theme

Your theme has a major impact on performance. When selecting a theme, check its demo site speed using Google's PageSpeed Insights.

Free themes from Shopify's theme store are generally well-optimized. If you're using a third-party theme, make sure it's from a reputable developer.

Optimize Image Sizes

Large images are one of the most common causes of slow page loads.

Before uploading images:

• Resize them to the dimensions they'll actually be displayed at (no need for a 4000px wide image if it only displays at 800px)
• Compress them using tools like TinyPNG or ImageOptim
• Use modern formats like WebP when possible

Shopify automatically converts images to WebP in supported browsers, but starting with optimized images still helps.

Limit the Number of Apps

Every app you install can add code to your store, potentially slowing it down. Regularly audit your installed apps and remove any you're not actively using.

Step 8: Configure Your robots.txt File

The robots.txt file tells search engines which parts of your site they should and shouldn't crawl.

Shopify automatically generates a robots.txt file that works well for most stores. You can view it at yourstore.com/robots.txt.

By default, Shopify blocks certain pages that shouldn't appear in search results, like:

• Cart and checkout pages
• Search results pages
• Internal admin pages

For most stores, you don't need to modify this. However, if you want to customize your robots.txt file, you can do so by editing your theme files:

1. Go to Online Store, then Themes
2. Click Actions, then Edit code
3. Find robots.txt.liquid in the Templates folder

Only edit this file if you're comfortable with the technical implications of blocking certain pages from search engines.

Step 9: Set Up Structured Data

Structured data (also called schema markup) helps search engines understand your content better and can enable rich results in search.

Shopify themes include basic structured data for products by default, including:

• Product name
• Price
• Availability
• Reviews (if you have a review app installed)

This structured data can make your products appear in Google Shopping results and display rich snippets like star ratings directly in search results.

To verify your structured data is working correctly:

1. Go to Google's Rich Results Test
2. Enter the URL of one of your product pages
3. Review the results to ensure product data is being read correctly

Most modern Shopify themes handle this automatically, but it's worth checking to ensure everything is configured properly.

Step 10: Optimize for Mobile

Google uses mobile-first indexing, meaning it primarily looks at the mobile version of your site when determining rankings.

All modern Shopify themes are responsive, meaning they automatically adapt to different screen sizes. However, you should still test your store on actual mobile devices to ensure:

• Text is readable without zooming
• Buttons and links are easy to tap
• Images load properly and don't slow down the page
• Navigation is intuitive on small screens

You can also use Google Search Console's Mobile Usability report to identify any mobile-specific issues with your site.

Step 11: Monitor and Maintain Your SEO Settings

SEO is not a one-time setup. Regular monitoring and updates are essential for long-term success.

Use Google Search Console

Google Search Console is a free tool that shows you how Google sees your site. It provides valuable data on:

• Which keywords your site ranks for
• How many clicks you're getting from search
• Technical issues that might be affecting your rankings
• Which pages are indexed

Set up Search Console for your store and check it regularly to catch and fix issues early.

Review and Update Content Regularly

As your product catalog changes, make sure to:

• Update or remove outdated products
• Add new products with optimized titles and descriptions
• Refresh old blog posts with current information
• Check for broken links or images

Keeping your content fresh and accurate signals to search engines that your site is actively maintained and trustworthy.

Common Shopify SEO Mistakes to Avoid

Even with proper setup, certain mistakes can undermine your SEO efforts.

Duplicate Content

Using manufacturer product descriptions without modification creates duplicate content, as the same text appears on multiple sites across the web. Always write unique product descriptions.

Thin Content

Product pages with just a title and a couple of sentences don't provide enough value to rank well. Aim for at least 150-300 words of unique, helpful content on each product page.

Ignoring Page Titles and Meta Descriptions

Many store owners leave these at their defaults. Taking the time to customize them for each important page can significantly improve click-through rates from search results.

Not Using Collections Strategically

Collections are valuable category pages that can rank for broader keywords. Create collections around logical product groupings and optimize them just as you would product pages.

Neglecting Blog Content

Informational blog content can attract visitors who aren't ready to buy yet but are researching solutions. This builds awareness and authority over time.