Free Shopify SEO audit, by a senior consultant
Find out what's keeping your Shopify store off page one
Send me your store's address and I'll go through it the way I would for a paying client. You get a short written Shopify SEO audit with the three to five fixes that would move revenue first, what each one is worth at your size, and a straight answer on whether SEO is worth your time yet.
- Written by me rather than a tool, in plain English
- Covers the Shopify-specific problems the free audit tools miss
- Fixes ranked by what they'd add in sales against the work involved
- No logins, no score out of a hundred, and usually back within three working days
- 0 to 281clicks a week from Google for one Shopify store, in fourteen weeks (case study below)
- Page 6 to 1that store's average Google ranking, first week to last (position 53.9 to 9.8)
- 10 yearsin SEO, from The Telegraph's newsroom to independent ecommerce brands
What you get
What a hand-done Shopify SEO audit gives you
Two to three pages on your store, with the fixes in the order they'd pay and the evidence behind each one. These three findings are from the store in the case study below, with the brand and product names taken out, and they're the format you'd get.
Fix 1
Build a proper collection page for the brand and point the menu at it, rather than at the vendor page Shopify generates.
- Evidence
- The vendor page (/collections/vendors?q=brand) had 385 impressions (times shown in Google) and 18 clicks over the fourteen weeks, ranking around eighth for searches for the brand. A proper collection page can carry text and rank higher for the same searches.
- Effort
- Half an hour to create the collection and update the menu, plus a line in the theme to hide the vendor page from Google so the two don't compete.
Fix 2
Remove the paid app that writes product data for Google. The theme already tells Google each product's price, stock and rating.
- Evidence
- The app's paid features depend on a Google Merchant Center account, which the store's category can't have, so they did nothing here, and its basic ones duplicated what the theme already output. Two sources describing the same product is how stores lose the price and star rating under their Google listing.
- Effort
- Five minutes, and a monthly fee saved.
Fix 3
Stop Google listing the tracking copies of product URLs alongside the real ones.
- Evidence
- A product URL with the tracking parameters the Google Shopping feed adds (utm_source=google) was listed alongside the clean one, with 24 impressions of its own.
- Effort
- A small change in the theme, where the canonical tag (the line that tells Google which address is the real one) was set to include the variant rather than the plain product address.
Everything the audit covers
The free audit tools read every page of your store and give it a score out of a hundred. This is a written view of your store against the two or three that outrank it, built to be acted on.
Two to three pages, about your store
Plain English, in an email you can forward to your developer or theme agency as it is. It's for a store owner rather than for another SEO, so nothing in it needs decoding.
The three to five fixes that would move revenue first, in order
Ranked by how soon each one would show up in sales against how much work it is. If a fix is small, I'll say it's small. If something would take a developer a week, I'll say that too.
The evidence behind each fix
Every recommendation comes with what I found on your store, so you can check it yourself. The three findings above show the format.
What organic search could be worth to you
I take the revenue range you give me and the search demand in your category and put a realistic range on what organic search could add, so you can decide whether any of this is worth doing.
Where you stand against the stores that outrank you
The searches you already rank for, and the pages sitting on page two where a push would pay, compared with the stores directly above you.
How you show up in AI search
Whether ChatGPT, Google's AI Overviews and Perplexity mention your store for the questions buyers in your category ask, which pages they cite instead, and what would change that.
Case study
From 0 to 281 clicks a week, on a Shopify store Google won't run ads for
A UK Shopify retailer came to me in June 2026 with almost no traffic from Google. In the first of the fourteen weeks in the chart the store had 0 clicks from Google and an average position of 53.9, which in practice means page five or six for the searches that mattered. The category is one Google won't run Shopping or search ads for, so organic search was the only way to reach buyers on Google at all.
The work ran in the order the audit would have put it in, and the chart shows what happened. Clicks went from 0 a week to 281 by week 14, and the average position moved from 53.9 to 9.8. Across the fourteen weeks that's 856 clicks from 24,919 impressions, which is the number of times Google showed the store in its results. Of the 1,000 searches Google Search Console lists for the store (the most its report will show), 438 now rank in the top ten and 143 in the top three.
Clicks from Google, per week
Average Google position, per week
| Week beginning | Clicks | Impressions | Average position |
|---|---|---|---|
| 16 Jun 2026 | 0 | 261 | 53.9 |
| 23 Jun 2026 | 3 | 545 | 49.2 |
| 30 Jun 2026 | 3 | 532 | 43.5 |
| 7 Jul 2026 | 6 | 533 | 44.0 |
| 14 Jul 2026 | 2 | 568 | 39.7 |
| 21 Jul 2026 | 11 | 802 | 37.1 |
| 28 Jul 2026 | 30 | 964 | 34.3 |
| 4 Aug 2026 | 26 | 1100 | 29.1 |
| 11 Aug 2026 | 40 | 1308 | 25.9 |
| 18 Aug 2026 | 63 | 2081 | 23.6 |
| 25 Aug 2026 | 84 | 3098 | 20.5 |
| 1 Sep 2026 | 125 | 3553 | 14.9 |
| 8 Sep 2026 | 182 | 4301 | 12.2 |
| 15 Sep 2026 | 281 | 5273 | 9.8 |
What the work was
None of it was unusual. The store could have done most of it itself with the list below, in that order, which is the point of the audit. The order mattered more than any single fix, because the content and the links only pay off once Google can find and trust the pages they point at.
The store is anonymised because its category attracts attention the owner would rather avoid, and because the point is the method rather than the brand. The numbers are straight from its Search Console.
Getting the whole catalogue into Google
Google was listing a vendor page and a tracking-parameter copy of a product URL instead of the real pages, and part of the catalogue wasn't in the sitemap, which is the list of pages a store hands to Google. Those were fixed first so the collection and product pages could be found at all.
Collection pages rewritten around real searches
Titles, opening text and a price-banded collection built for the way people search. That one collection now ranks on page one for the obvious "best [product] under £50 UK" search and is the store's fourth most-clicked page.
Product pages and product data tidied up
Every link inside the store was pointed at the product's main address rather than the longer copy of it Shopify creates under each collection, and a paid app that told Google the product's price and rating came off, because the theme already did that.
Reviews and a buying guide on the store's own blog
Two product reviews and a buying guide, written to answer the questions buyers ask before they choose. The review of the store's best-selling product now ranks around seventh and sends readers into the product page.
Links from publications that cover the category
Around a dozen articles linking to the store over three months, including one on MSN, pointed at the collection and product pages with the fewest sites linking to them rather than at the homepage.
Send me your store's address and I'll tell you where yours would start, and what the first fix is likely to be worth at your size.
Get my free auditHow it works
What happens after you send the form
Send the form
Your store's address, a monthly revenue range and an email. There are no logins to share and no Search Console access to set up, because the audit works from the public store and the ranking tools I pay for.
I go through the store myself
I run a full crawl with Screaming Frog, which reads every page the way Google does, pull your rankings and your competitors' from SEMrush, check Google's own speed data from real visitors, and ask the AI search tools your category's buying questions. It takes a few hours per store, which is why there's sometimes a short queue.
The audit lands in your inbox
Within three working days in most cases. Two to three pages in plain English, with the fixes in order and a realistic view of what organic search could add to the business.
Then it's up to you
Take the list to your developer and get on with it, or if the numbers justify it, I'll send over my packages with a recommendation. If organic search isn't worth the effort for your store yet, I'll say that instead. If you'd like to go through the findings together, you can book a short walkthrough once you've read it.
Who it's for
The stores it helps most
I take on a limited number of these each week, so it's worth being clear about where the audit makes the most difference.
A good fit
- Shopify or Shopify Plus stores trading for six months or more
- A range of products rather than a single item, so there are collection pages to work with
- Revenue in the tens of thousands a month or above, where a page-one ranking changes the numbers
- UK stores first, and any store selling in English where I can check the competitors
- An owner or marketing lead who will act on the findings, or a developer who can
Probably not yet
- Stores that haven't launched yet, where there are no rankings or competitors to assess
- Dropshipping stores selling the same catalogue as a hundred others, where SEO is rarely the first thing to fix
- Anyone who wants an automated score rather than a written view from a person
If that's you, send the form anyway and I'll say so plainly, with a pointer to what I'd fix first instead.
The audit, in detail
The eight things a Shopify SEO audit checks, and why each matters on Shopify
This is the checklist I work through, for the free audit and for paid audits. It's here in full partly so you can see what you're getting and partly because you can run a fair amount of it yourself in an afternoon. Open any section for the detail, and each one ends with a check you can do today.
Which pages Google has listed
Shopify creates URLs you never asked for.Read the full check
Every product reached through a collection gets a second address at /collections/[collection]/products/[product], tag filters create /collections/[collection]/[tag] pages, and the vendor and type pages at /collections/vendors?q= and /collections/types?q= exist whether you link to them or not. Shopify marks most of these with a canonical tag, a line of code that tells Google which address is the real one. Google treats that as a suggestion rather than a rule. On the store in the case study, a vendor page was pulling 385 impressions over fourteen weeks that belonged on the brand's proper collection page, and a product URL with Google's own tracking parameters attached (added by the product feed sync) was listed next to the clean one.
Check it yourself
Search Google for site:yourstore.com and compare the number of results with the number of products and collections in your admin. A big gap either way is the first sign of a problem.
What I check
- Which pages Google has listed, checked against which it should have
- Whether the sitemap (the list of pages Shopify hands to Google) includes products, collections, pages and blog posts, and whether anything in it is marked hidden or has moved
- The robots file, if anyone has ever edited it (it tells Google which parts of the store to ignore)
- Collection-scoped product URLs, tag pages, vendor and type pages, the addresses created by sorting and filtering (?sort_by= and the like), and the store's own search results pages
- Pages Google lists that nothing on the store links to, and pages linked everywhere that are marked hidden from Google
Collection pages
Collection pages carry the buying searches ("linen shirts", "cordless drills", "waterproof hiking boots"), and on most Shopify stores they are a grid of products with a title and nothing else.Read the full check
Google has nothing to go on, so the page sits on page two or three behind a competitor who wrote 150 words. This is where rankings move soonest, because the pages already exist and Google often already shows them.
Check it yourself
Open your three biggest collections on a phone. If there's no text above or below the product grid, and the name in the browser tab (or the blue link in Google) is the collection's admin name, they're underperforming.
What I check
- A page title (the blue link in Google) and a heading at the top of the page that match how people search, rather than the collection's admin name
- An opening block of text that helps someone choose, with the search phrase used naturally rather than pasted in
- Smart collection rules pulling in products that don't belong, and two collections overlapping so Google can't tell which to rank
- Which collections with search demand are missing from the main navigation
- Sub-collections and price-banded collections where the searches justify them
Product pages
Product pages win the searches for specific products and model names, and they lose them to Amazon, the manufacturer and the marketplaces when the copy is the manufacturer's own text.Read the full check
Shopify also shows a "page not found" error when you delete a product, so every discontinued line that had links or rankings needs a redirect set up in the URL redirects tool, and on older stores there are usually dozens that never got one.
Check it yourself
Paste a sentence from one of your product descriptions into Google in quotation marks. If the manufacturer and five other retailers come up with the same words, it's their copy, and Google has no reason to rank yours above theirs.
What I check
- Unique product copy that answers the pre-purchase questions, versus pasted manufacturer text
- Variant URLs (the ?variant= addresses) and whether the theme links to /products/ or to the longer collection-scoped copy
- Deleted and out-of-stock products, and whether each one sends people to a replacement, shows an error, or is still listed in Google with nothing to buy
- Image file names and the written description behind each image that Google reads, which matter more for ecommerce than for most sites
- Reviews app output, and whether the reviews are visible to Google as well as to shoppers
Structured data and rich results
Structured data is hidden code on a product page that tells Google the price, stock and star rating so it can show them under your listing.Read the full check
Most current Shopify themes output it on their own. Add an app that writes its own (they're sold as schema or SEO apps), or a reviews app that does the same, and Google receives two versions with different prices or ratings and either picks one or drops the extra detail altogether. The merchant listing results in Search Console (the price and availability shown under a product in the results) come from this code, so when it breaks, those go too.
Check it yourself
Put a product URL into Google's Rich Results Test at search.google.com/test/rich-results. If it lists the product twice, two things are describing it (the theme and an app, or two apps), and that's the problem.
What I check
- One source of product structured data, usually the theme, and whether any app is duplicating it
- Price, availability, rating and review count in that code matching what the page shows
- The Merchant listings and Product snippets reports in Search Console (paid audit)
- The business and breadcrumb details in the same code, and whether the store's name is consistent across them
- Google's free Rich Results Test, which shows what it can read from each page, run on the product, collection and home templates
Speed, and the apps that slow a store down
Shopify's hosting is fast. What slows a store down is the theme and the apps.Read the full check
Every app can add its own code to every page, and apps that were uninstalled months ago often leave code behind in the theme. On the store in the case study, 84% of clicks over the fourteen weeks came from phones, which is where a slow store loses both rankings and sales.
Check it yourself
Run a product page through pagespeed.web.dev and read the top section, which is real visitors' data, rather than the score underneath. If it says there isn't enough data, Google hasn't seen enough visitors to measure the store yet, and the score is all you have. Then open Apps in your Shopify admin and count the ones you haven't opened in six months.
What I check
- Google's own speed measurements from real visitors' phones (it calls them Core Web Vitals), rather than a one-off test score
- Which apps add code to the product and collection templates, what each one costs in load time, and which are still in use
- Leftover code from removed apps in the theme files
- Fonts, the large banner image at the top of the page, sliders and video that hold up the first thing a phone shows
- Third-party widgets (chat, reviews, ad tracking code, pop-ups) and the order they load in
Content, the blog and internal links
Shopify's blog is basic, but a review or buying guide at /blogs/guides/ that ranks for "[product] review" or "best [category] UK" sends ready-to-buy readers straight into the product page, and it's the kind of page AI search tools cite.Read the full check
On the case study store, a single review now draws over 3,000 impressions a month, and the product page it links to ranks eighth for the product's own name with 8% of the people who see it clicking through, which is unusually high for a result in eighth place.
Check it yourself
Search Google for "best [your category] UK" and "[your best-selling product] review". If the results are publishers, Reddit and competitors and none of them is you, that's the gap.
What I check
- Whether the store answers any of the questions buyers ask before they choose
- Whether guides and reviews link to products, and whether products link back
- Content that competes with a collection or product page for the same search
- The blog's own structure, since Shopify's /blogs/ URLs and tags create the same duplication problems as collections
- Which questions in your category are being answered by competitors, publishers or Reddit instead of you
Measurement and AI search visibility
None of the above is worth much if the store can't see what search is doing for it.Read the full check
The first two checks here need access to your Google accounts, so they come with the paid audit rather than the free audit. The AI search checks don't. For most categories the pages ChatGPT and Google's AI Overviews cite are reviews and comparison guides rather than product pages, which is why the content section above matters more than it used to.
Check it yourself
Ask ChatGPT "what's the best [your category] to buy in the UK" and "where should I buy [your best-selling product]". Note which stores and pages it names. If it's never you, that's the starting point.
What I check
- Google Search Console set up for the whole domain, with the sitemap submitted and no pages Google is refusing to list (paid audit)
- Google Analytics recording purchases, with search traffic separated from paid and social (paid audit)
- A Google Merchant Center feed (the product list you send Google for Shopping results), where the category allows one, and whether it's approved
- Whether ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI Overviews mention the store for the five to ten questions a buyer in your category asks
- Which pages those tools cite instead, and what it would take to be one of them
If you'd rather have me run it than run it yourself, the form at the top of the page or the bottom is all it takes.
Who's doing the audit
Ten years in SEO, most of it on sites that sell things
I'm Will Sibley, an independent Shopify SEO consultant based in the UK. I've worked in SEO for ten years, including as Senior SEO Manager at The Telegraph, where the audit-led approach I ran across the newsroom helped grow the Money section's search traffic by 220% year on year. Since going independent I've worked mostly with ecommerce brands, from building product and collection structures for Cuppers Choice, a specialty coffee brand, to the anonymised Shopify store in the case study above.
Part of my week is spent inside By the Numbers, a Shopify analytics app, running growth assessments for its merchants. That means I see the order, customer and traffic data behind a lot of Shopify stores rather than just their rankings, and it shapes what I recommend. A fix that looks good in an SEO tool and does nothing for repeat purchase or average order value isn't a fix I'll put at the top of your list.
Sibley Digital is me rather than an agency, so the person who assesses your store is the person who would fix it and report on it. Where a project needs more hands, for a large content programme or digital PR, I bring in specialists I've worked with for years and manage them myself.
“Will is an exceptional SEO professional who collaborated seamlessly with teams across the newsroom to raise SEO standards and deliver measurable results. His expertise and innovative strategies were instrumental in driving The Telegraph's search visibility and organic growth across key target areas.”
Harry Clarkson-Bennett
SEO Director, The Telegraph
“I've worked with Will for several years across all aspects of digital marketing and his diligence and expertise are second to none. He has a sharp analytical mind, a strategic approach, and consistently delivers results. Beyond his technical skills, he's a pleasure to work with, collaborative, proactive, and always ready to tackle new challenges. I would highly recommend him.”
Joshua Neilly
Founder, Fat Fish Marketing
Brands I've worked with
FAQs
Shopify SEO audit questions
- Is it really free, and what's the catch?
- Yes, and there isn't one. It's the same first look I'd take at any store before agreeing to work on it, so the time is already part of how I work. Some stores go on to hire me for the fixes, which is how the free ones pay for themselves, and plenty don't, which is fine. I don't share or sell the details, and you won't hear from me again unless you reply.
- Why do you ask for monthly revenue?
- Because the same fix is worth very different amounts to different stores. Moving a collection page from position nine to position three might add £400 a month to one store and £9,000 to another, and the recommendation changes with it.
- How long does it take?
- Three working days from the form to the audit in your inbox, in most cases. At busy times it can be a day or two longer, and I'll tell you if so.
- What do you need access to?
- Nothing, for the free audit. It works from the public store, a crawl, Google's own speed data and SEMrush. If you go on to a paid audit, Search Console and Google Analytics access make it a great deal more precise, because I can then see every search the store ranks for and what each page earns.
- How is the free audit different from your paid one?
- The free one works from the outside, with no access to your accounts, and comes back as two to three pages. The paid audit on my SEO audit page works with access to your Search Console and analytics, goes page by page through the store, and ends in a developer-ready task list. The checks are the same. The depth and the data behind them are not.
- How is this different from the free Shopify SEO audit tools?
- The tools read every page of your store and give it a score. They're fine at spotting a missing image description or a long title. They can't tell you that your best collection page has no text, that your vendor page outranks your brand collection, or that the review on your blog is doing the product page's job. They also don't know what your revenue is, so they can't tell you whether a fix is worth three hours or three weeks. This audit is written by a person who has looked at your store and your competitors, and it says what to do first.
- Does it cover Shopify Plus and headless stores?
- Yes. Shopify Plus stores have the same URL structure and the same collection and product templates, so the checks are the same, with more attention to multiple markets and currencies. Headless stores, where the shop front is built separately from Shopify on Hydrogen or another framework, have different problems, mostly around whether Google can read the pages at all, and the audit covers those instead.
- Is Shopify good for SEO?
- Good enough that it's rarely the thing holding a store back. The constraints people complain about, such as the /collections/ and /products/ URL prefixes, the basic blog and the way filters create pages, are all manageable. The things that decide rankings are the content on your collection and product pages and the links pointing at them, and those are entirely in your control. I've written up the practical detail in my Shopify SEO guide.
- Can you do the fixes as well?
- Yes. Hands-on in the theme and the Shopify admin, or written up as specifications your developer or theme agency can pick up without a meeting. If you're looking for a Shopify SEO consultant rather than an agency, that's what you'd be hiring. Most stores I work with take a monthly retainer for the fixes, content and links together, and I'll recommend whichever shape fits the size of the opportunity.
- I run an agency with Shopify clients. Can I use this?
- Yes. If your clients keep asking about SEO, I deliver it under your brand, with NDAs signed and no contact with your clients. That's my white-label service, and the audit is a sensible first step for any store you're onboarding.
Get started
Get your free Shopify SEO audit
The store in the case study went from 0 to 281 clicks a week in fourteen weeks by working through the five steps above, in that order. Send me your store's address and I'll tell you where yours would start and what each fix is likely to be worth at your size.
It's usually back within three working days. If organic search isn't worth the effort for your store yet, I'll say that instead, with a pointer to what I'd fix first.
Guides
Shopify SEO: the practical guide
What actually moves organic traffic on Shopify: collection pages, the constraints that matter, the ones that don't, and the app-stack habits that hurt.
Category page SEO: the highest-leverage template on your store
Category page SEO in practice: mapping every category to a real query, opening copy that earns its place, and the structure that lifts a whole catalogue.
Product page SEO: winning the long tail your categories can't reach
Product page SEO in practice: titles that match real searches, descriptions worth writing, and the structured data that earns rich results.
An ecommerce SEO strategy that compounds
A working ecommerce SEO strategy: category pages first, technical fixes that lift the whole catalogue, and content that supports the money pages.