Ecommerce SEO is the work that gets an online store's collections and products shown in Google's free results, the Shopping tab and AI answers. For a store it's mostly structure and data: which collection pages exist, which filter pages Google should crawl, product data Google can read, and links that point at the products that make money. Google says that, in general, the more internal links point to a page, the more important it is relative to the rest of the site. I do this for Shopify and other platforms. I don't build stores. I make the one you have easier for Google to read and for shoppers to choose.
Written by Dan Picken, founder. Last checked 6 November 2026.Audience first
A store's collections usually follow the warehouse: how stock is ordered, not how people look for it. I start with the shoppers instead: what they type, what they filter by, and what they want answered before they'll add to cart. Then the collections, their names and the links between them follow that.
Group the searches
Broad, narrowing and ready to buy, matched to collections, filtered pages and products.
Name collections the shopper's way
Use the words in the searches, not the range names used inside the business.
Point the links at the money
From the home page, collections and buying guides to the products and subcollections that earn the most.
Worked example: a kids' shoe store
Two parents, one collection, two different first questions:
The wide-foot parent
'school shoes for wide feet'
The last-minute parent
'black leather school shoes'
Same products, two ways in. A store with one generic collection page answers neither. Two clear entry points win both searches.
From my audits
These are the patterns I check for first when I open a store in Search Console and a site crawler. They turn up on every platform.
Some Shopify themes link to /collections/school-shoes/products/black-leather while the canonical says /products/black-leather. Google is handed two addresses for every product, and the internal links point at the one you don't want indexed.
The theme adds Product markup and a reviews app adds another. Google gets two versions of the same product, sometimes with different prices or ratings.
'The Autumn Edit' or 'Core Range' instead of the words people type. A collection can't match a search nobody makes.
Products past the first screen are only reachable through a button. Google doesn't press it, so deeper products rely on the sitemap alone.
The sale price goes live on the site but the feed still shows the old one. Products get disapproved in the middle of the sale they were meant to sell.
WooCommerce puts products under /product/ by default and Shopify uses /products/. One letter, and every product address is different. Without a redirect for each one, product rankings start again from scratch.
How Google reads a store
Google finds products by following links, decides which pages matter by how they link together, then reads the product data to decide how to show them. Most store SEO problems sit in one of these five places.
Google strongly recommends linking to every product you want indexed, with ordinary links, not JavaScript clicks on other page elements.
What I do: Link from collections, buying guides and the home page to the products and subcollections that earn the most, not just the newest.
Google's crawlers don't click buttons, and it asks for a unique address for each page of a collection, linked with plain links. It also says not to make the first page the canonical for the rest.
What I do: Check that page 2 onwards of every big collection has its own address and a normal link to it.
Product snippets need a name plus a review, a rating or an offer. Merchant listings, for pages where people can buy, also need an image and an Offer with a price and currency, and the price has to be above zero.
What I do: Fix the product template once with the checker below, so every product is fixed together.
With Merchant Center, products can show free in Search, the Shopping tab, Images, Lens, YouTube and Gemini, depending on the country. Google says products crawled from your store can show even without markup or Merchant Center, but you get far less control.
What I do: Set up Merchant Center, and keep feed prices identical to the page. A mismatched price can get a product disapproved.
Google's crawl budget guide is for sites with about a million pages, or 10,000 or more that change daily, and it calls those numbers rough estimates. For most stores the real problem is duplicate and filter addresses that split signals and waste Google's time.
What I do: Fix duplicates and filters first. Only treat crawl budget as the issue if Search Console shows lots of pages 'Discovered, currently not indexed'.
AI shopping answers follow the same basics: Google says the same SEO best practices apply to AI Overviews and AI Mode. For what changes when AI recommends products, see AI search for online stores.
Product markup checker
Google has two kinds of product result. Product snippets show a rating or price on a normal result. Merchant listings are for pages where people can buy, and they need more. Paste the structured data from one of your product pages, or the whole page source (right-click the page, then 'View page source', then copy all). It checks your markup against Google's required and recommended properties.
Your page stays in your browser. Nothing is sent anywhere.
What your markup qualifies for
Paste your markup, or load the example.
Fix first
Recommended, for richer listings
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This checks the markup against Google's documented properties. It can't tell whether the markup matches what's on the page, or whether Google will choose to show it. For the final word, test the live page in Google's Rich Results Test.
Method: Buyer State Mapping
Shoppers search differently as they get closer to buying. Each kind of search needs a different page to rank, and most stores leave the middle one to chance.
1Browsing
'espresso machines for home'
Kitchen
2Narrowing
'wide fit school shoes'
Shoes
3Ready to buy
'18v cordless drill skin only'
Tools
What ecommerce SEO covers
Not every store needs all of these. Most of the gain is usually in the first four.
Which collections and subcollections exist, what they're called and how they nest, built from real searches.
Best for: Always first. Collections win the broad searches that bring in new customers.
Deciding which filter pages deserve to be indexable and keeping Google out of the rest. The filter page planner works it out for your filters.
Best for: Stores with filters for colour, size, brand or price.
Original copy for best sellers, and sizes or colours marked up as one group with ProductGroup, hasVariant and variesBy. Google asks that each variant can be preselected with its own address.
Best for: Products sold in sizes or colours, and anything other stores sell too.
Structured data and a Merchant Center feed that agree with each other and with the page.
Best for: Every store. It feeds free listings, rich results and AI shopping answers.
Links from collections, buying guides and the home page to the products that make money.
Best for: Stores where best sellers sit deep in the site, or only show up in search results.
Moving from WooCommerce, Magento or a custom build to Shopify, or between themes, without losing product rankings. See site migrations.
Best for: Before the new store is built, not the week it launches.
Product facts written as text, consistent data everywhere, and being mentioned on other sites.
Best for: Products people research before buying. See AI search for online stores.
How it works
I check how Google crawls and shows your store, and send the top 3 fixes. Then a 20-minute call.
Collection-path links, filter addresses, pagination and duplicate markup, so Google sees one clean version of every page.
Collections and subcollections from real searches, named the way shoppers search, with the links pointing at the products that pay.
Markup and feed fixed at the template, then monthly: what moved, what sold and what I'm doing next.
What you get
Signals this works on
Out of the 8 signals every page and ad sends.
For most stores: sorts out which collection, filter and product pages Google should crawl, builds collections around real searches, fixes product structured data and the Merchant Center feed, and points internal links at the products that make money. Blog content comes after the pages people buy from.
Shopify handles the basics well. It makes a sitemap and a default robots.txt that Shopify says works for most stores, and you can change it with a robots.txt.liquid file. Its limits are that product and collection addresses always start with /products/ and /collections/, and that themes and apps can add duplicate links and markup. Both are manageable.
No. I do the SEO and ads for Shopify stores and work alongside whoever builds or looks after yours. I build websites, not online shops. For a large range, I'd recommend a shop platform like Shopify over a custom build.
Not strictly. Google says products crawled from your store can show even without markup or a Merchant Center account. But Merchant Center is free, gives you control over what's shown, and is how products appear in free listings across Google.
For a merchant listing, Google requires a name, an image and an Offer with a price and currency. Availability, GTIN, brand, shipping and returns are recommended. The checker on this page shows what yours has.
Only if product and collection addresses change without redirects, and on a platform move they nearly always change. Map every old address to its closest new one, and keep the redirects for at least a year, ideally longer.
Usually not. Google's guide is aimed at sites with about a million pages, or 10,000 or more that change daily. Smaller stores are better off fixing duplicates and filter pages, which waste crawling and split signals at any size.
Google doesn't give a timeframe. Typically, crawling and duplicate fixes on an established store show within weeks, and new or rebuilt collections take a few months to settle. If you need sales this month, Shopping ads come first.
Takes a minute. Audits come back within 1 to 2 business days. For anything else, I'll get back to you as soon as possible.
What happens next
Keep going