Getting customers to your Shopify product pages organically (by browsing on search engines, or LLMs too nowadays) is way more cost-effective for your business than constantly spending on ads, especially with click spend rising. To save you some time, I’m going to tell you how we go about optimising Shopify product pages to be found
Getting customers to your Shopify product pages organically (by browsing on search engines, or LLMs too nowadays) is way more cost-effective for your business than constantly spending on ads, especially with click spend rising.
To save you some time, I’m going to tell you how we go about optimising Shopify product pages to be found in search, showing some real examples of what we’ve done with our clients to make them more visible online.
We’ve got a whole other blog on how to do keyword research for SEO, but for product pages, you always want to focus on commercial keywords related to your products..
You can use Google’s keyword planner for free to do your research as long as you have a Google ads account.
Or there are loads of paid SEO tools you can use. We use Wincher and AHrefs most often.
For commercial keywords, you’ll still want to target a range of short-tail keywords (broad) and long-tail keywords.
You can find out the difference in our short-tail vs long-tail keywords blog.
As an example from one of our clients, golfshoes.co.uk, they target a range of keywords, narrowing down each search as you get through the website:
Homepage – They target the broadest category of “golf shoes”
Category pages – They break this down into “Men’s Golf Shoes”, “Women’s Golf Shoes” and “Junior Golf Shoes,” allowing them to target more specific product searches:
They also break their categories down by brand:
Depending on your product type and how many variations you have, you can take your keyword research extremely granular. For example, golfshoes.co.uk has categories as specific as laceless golf shoes, which has 90 searches a month:
And while it does have fewer than 100 searches a month, this query also has a difficulty score of 0, meaning even for a relatively new Shopify website, this would be easier to rank for.
This is why understanding your product and how your customers search for it is so important for optimising Shopify product pages for SEO.
Without this research, you might find yourself targeting keywords that are extremely difficult to rank for, or missing out on a load of search volume.
To use another of our clients as an example, Clarkes Golf.
They sell a range of golf equipment and clothing.
One of the things we found doing keyword research is that a large proportion of golfers shop specifically for left-handed clubs (rather than just looking for golf clubs and then filtering down on a category page).
This meant that by creating a category and product page targeting left-handed golfers, we’d have a much better chance of ranking, rather than using a more generic search of golf clubs and putting left-handed products on the page:
And, as you can see, it means when potential customers search for left-handed golf clubs, Clarkes Golf is visible:
The thing with keywords is that it’s not just about cramming as many of them onto a page as you can (at least not any more).
But, there are places on your product page where you should put your main keywords, and variations, to make it easier for search engines to understand what your page is about, so it can be crawled and indexed.
The H1 is the main title on the page and is one of the things search engines look at when checking what your page is about. So your main product keyword needs to be in the H1 of the product page.
You can see from this example from our client ODs designer clothing how the name of the product is the main title on the page (and this changes as users browse the different colour options)
The meta title is the blue heading that appears in search results below the URL. Again, this is another signal to search engines to give context of what your page is about, so your main keyword (or a close variation) should be used here:
Meta descriptions don’t really have an impact on your search visibility, but they can impact the click-through rate to your website. So, while you don’t need to be as SEO focused here, you should use the meta description to encourage the user to take action.
It’s worth noting that Google is increasingly rewriting meta descriptions based on what it thinks the information should be.
But, we’d still recommend you write your own.
This is one of the areas where we see eCommerce businesses struggle, because it’s an easy thing to overlook.
As we’ve said, search engines are looking at certain parts of your product page to judge what that page is about, and file names and alt tags are included.
A lot of eCommerce managers overlook this, and the file name ends up being something like IMG092304, because that’s what the file name was when they downloaded the image.
Rewrite the file name to make it relevant to what the image is. For Clarkes, this would be something like: Nike men’s golf polo shirt blue.
Alt tags are the description of an image that appears when you hover over it, or when the image fails to load.
These are more of a website accessibility feature, but search engines do use them to understand what the picture is about, and this is another place you can add a relevant keyword.
Product descriptions are probably one of the more obvious places to put your keywords, but don’t overdo it.
Remember, SEO isn’t about keyword stuffing (if anything, you’re more likely to get penalised for it than rewarded).
Add keywords into the product description naturally so it sounds like something a person would write (and makes sense to read).
Getting the product keyword into every URL can be tricky when you have lots of similar products in different categories. But, if you structure your Shopify site correctly, you should be able to do it.
Typically, your Shopity store’s URL structure is going to look something like:
Homepage → category page → product page
Which gives you the best chance of getting the right keywords in the right places:
Now you know where to put your product page keywords, let’s look at a few more technical things.
There’s a whole other blog you can read on how to optimise title tags and meta descriptions, so I won’t go too into it here.
But Shopify is known to create titles and meta descriptions automatically.
It’s easy to leave these as they are (assuming they’ve been created with best practice built in).
I’d highly recommend you rewrite these and optimise them yourself, as they can be quite generic and sometimes duplicated among products (which can be bad for your SEO).
Your title tags should be under 60 characters and focused on your page’s main keyword:
Shopify has a tendency to automatically add your brand name to the end of a title tag, but you can remove this easily if it takes it over the character limit, or you want to put different information in.
As I’ve said, meta descriptions aren’t really a ranking factor for SEO when it comes to your Shopify product pages, but they can influence whether someone clicks through to your website.
So make it clear in the meta description what the user will get by coming to your product page:
Keep URLs short and to the point. Use your product keyword and keep the structure as simple as you can to help users get around your store.
The biggest problem with product descriptions when it comes to SEO is when you use the generic content sent by the manufacturer (which does happen quite a lot)
Doing this runs the risk of creating duplicate content not only on your site, but duplicating (or copying) product descriptions from competitor sites that’ve used the generic description as well.
So we always say write your own product descriptions (and it’s something our SEO copywriting experts do with our clients).
With product descriptions, the challenge is making the product sound enticing, without giving the reader a huge block of text to read. Doing this makes it more likely key benefits or features will be missed.
So keep your product descriptions scannable (two to three lines max).
Probably the easiest thing to do is pull out key features as a list or use bullet points, something we use quite regularly with Clarkes Golf’s products:
Also include any specifics about the product, like the materials used, any specifications, what the fit is like if you’re selling clothes and whether the product is compatible with any other products the buyer might have (this is usually most important when selling tech products like headphones, remotes or controllers).
Any good product page will have at least one product image (usually more showing off the product from different angles or being used in real scenarios).
But while images are great for product pages, they can create challenges for SEO, or at least become missed opportunities for some easy wins.
Because most product images are hi-res (to show off the product), it can result in large image files.
Large image files slow down your website (because it’s harder to load them), which can hurt your SEO and the user experience.
Shopify can automatically compress large file sizes to help with site speed performance, or you can use another tool like TinyPNG before uploading images to your Shopify store.
You can use lazy loading on your product page, which basically stops the image from loading until it’s needed, like when the user scrolls down the page and the image becomes visible.
I’ve already mentioned this briefly, but it’s worth talking about it again.
Remember, Google can’t tell what your image is about unless you tell it.
So, rewrite your file names from the generic IMG0000 to something more descriptive about the product. Something like nike-navy-mens-golf-hoodie-back.
And use your alt text to give more description of what the image is about.
You can add alt text to an image directly in your CMS.
Schema markup is structured data that sits in the backend of your website.
A customer will never see it, but search engines use it to pull and display relevant information about the page in SERPs (search engine results pages)
Using schema, your listing can display additional information that could improve click-through rates, and make your listing bigger in search results. This information can include:
You can use a schema markup generator to create this and add it to the header of your Shopify site.
In the example below, you can see how schema can help improve your product listing with additional information:
Internal links not only make it easier for customers to get around your Shopify store and find what they’re looking for, they make it easier for Google to find all your website pages and index them.
It can also help to pass authority from high-ranking pages to other pages, boosting your website’s overall visibility.
There are a few things I always recommend when looking at internally linking product pages:
If a customer is looking at one product, there’s a good chance they’ll also be interested in other similar products, or accessories to the product they’re looking at.
You can link here using anchors like, similar products, you may also like, other people also bought.
All these options allow you to link pages together for SEO, but also encourage higher-order values:
Breadcrumbs improve your product page SEO (and your whole website’s SEO) by providing a clear structure between pages, while also making it easier for users to get around your site and look at products within a category.
Breadcrumbs look something like this:
You can see how this creates a clear website structure between the homepage, category page, and product page.
This helps search engines understand your site’s hierarchy and find and index pages.
It also makes it easier for customers to shop.
Without breadcrumb links, there’d be no easy way for a user to navigate back to a category page to look at other products, or find a page they’ve just been on.
A lot of people still wonder if blogging for businesses still works (it’s something else we’ve written a blog about)
And the answer is yes. Even with AI overviews and LLMs, blogs are still highly valuable for SEO in their own right, but also for creating more internal links around your website.
Imagine you’re a beginner golfer looking for your first set of golf clubs.
You’re not likely to just dive right in, search for “golf clubs”, and buy the first set you see.
You’re more likely to do some research and try to find a golf set that’s best for a beginner.
This is something you can write a blog about (and something Clarkes Golf has done)
But while this helps to make you more visible in search when customers are researching, it also gives you the chance to link directly to the products you’re recommending the reader look at:
This not only encourages users to browse your products. It creates those page links that make it easier for search engines to find and crawl all your pages.
As well as your product descriptions and images, there are a few others things to consider adding to your Shopify product pages to improve trust and overcome some final sales objections.
As customers, we pay attention to reviews from other people who’ve used a product we’re interested in. You’ll know for yourself that even a couple of negative reviews in a sea of positivity can be enough to make you hesitate.
And recent positive reviews can be the thing that turns a potential customer into a paying one.
You can use schema markup to add product reviews your Shopify product pages.
Frequently Asked Questions are a great way to answer final sales objections or give information that wouldn’t necessarily fit on a main product page.
The one bit of advice on FAQs is to actually use questions your customers are asking, not just things that will help with SEO.
Remember, all content should be for people first, and this is your chance to give information to convince people to buy.
Use questions about your shipping or returns policy, questions about exchanging items or how customers can buy from you.
About 70% of eCommerce purchases are now made on mobile.
So, mobile-first product pages are important for the user experience.
If your Shopify product pages are only optimised for desktops and the mobile experience is secondary, you’re missing out on the majority of purchases.
Plus, Google and search engines are now mobile-first, meaning websites that are built for mobile are more likely to rank, so it’s better for your SEO.
Redirects have the potential to be problematic for eCommerce stores in general, not just those on Shopify.
This is because you’ll likely have products being discontinued that no longer need to be on the website.
But, removing product pages without redirects can cause 404 errors, which users hate, and search don’t like either.
Instead, manage your redirects with 301 redirects and send users to the most relevant page (like a category page)
Canonical tags are a signal to search engines which page to prioritise when you have two URLs with similar content.
With Shopify stores, they can be tricky to manage because you’ll likely have the same product available in different categories.
Shopify adds canonical tags automatically, but you should review these to make sure the tag is on the page you want it to be on.
As an eCommerce manager or business owner, it’s a tough job to keep on top of your product page SEO.
There’s lots to keep track of and moving parts that need to be adapted as your website changes and product lines evolve.
You don’t need to handle every aspect of this yourself.
Working with a Shopify SEO agency can help.
We’ve got experts in all things Shopify, from technical and content SEO to Shopify web development, who can handle all the technical aspects of your product page SEO.
If you want to know about how we can help, get in touch.
If you’re not ready for that, we’ve got loads more Shopify and eCommerce content to help you make your business more visible and profitable.
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