Fixed scope
Fixed price
against a written scope
- Written scope and acceptance criteria up front
- Fixed price against that scope
- Staged delivery with review points
- Change requests priced separately, never absorbed silently
Shopify SEO, starting with what is broken
Technical SEO first — crawl budget, faceted navigation, canonicals, structured data and page speed — then content and internal linking. Most Shopify stores have a technical ceiling they are pressed against, and no amount of blog posts moves it.
Fix the ceiling before adding content
Shopify generates a great deal of URL surface on its own: collection filters, sort orders, product-in-collection paths, tag pages, paginated series. Left unmanaged, that surface consumes crawl budget and splits authority across near-duplicate pages.
Faceted navigation is the usual culprit
Every filter combination is a URL. On a store with six filters and a large catalogue that is tens of thousands of near-identical pages competing with each other and consuming the crawl budget your real pages need.
The fix is deciding deliberately which facet combinations deserve to be indexed, which should be canonicalised, and which should not be crawlable at all — then implementing that consistently in the theme.
What we fix
Content that earns its place
Publishing volume for its own sake stopped working some time ago. What still works is content that answers a question your product pages cannot, targets intent you can actually rank for, and links internally to the pages that make money.
We would rather ship six pieces a year that rank than sixty that fill a calendar.
How the programme runs
What Shopify SEO actually involves
Platform-specific problems need platform-specific answers. Generic SEO advice does not survive contact with a Shopify collection page.
Crawl & index management
Deciding what should be crawlable, what should be indexable and what should be neither — then enforcing it in the theme, robots and sitemaps.
Faceted navigation
Which filter and sort combinations are indexable, which are canonicalised to the parent collection, and which are blocked outright. Left unmanaged this is the biggest single source of wasted crawl budget on a Shopify store.
Structured data
Product, breadcrumb, FAQ, article and organisation markup that validates and reflects what is actually on the page.
Duplicate paths
Products reachable at more than one URL, tag pages and paginated series — canonicalised consistently rather than case by case.
Core Web Vitals
LCP under 2.5s, INP under 200ms, CLS under 0.1 — Google’s published thresholds, measured on your real templates with your app stack live rather than on a lab run of the homepage.
International
Hreflang across Markets, currency and language selection, and canonical handling that does not fight your regional domains.
What an SEO programme covers
Technical first, because it sets the ceiling. Content and links come after.
Technical audit & fixes
Crawl analysis, index bloat, canonicals, redirects, sitemaps and the theme changes needed to fix them.
Collection & product optimisation
Titles, descriptions, on-page copy areas, internal linking and the merchandising decisions that affect rankings.
Content built around intent, not volume
Keyword and intent research mapped to the pages that can realistically rank, then content that answers what a product page cannot and links internally to the pages that make money. Six pieces that rank beat sixty that fill a calendar.
- Intent mapped
- Internal links
- Fewer, better
Reporting that separates SEO from everything else
Non-brand organic sessions and revenue reported separately from brand and paid, so the programme is judged on what it actually influenced. Seasonality and algorithm updates are called out rather than quietly absorbed into a good-looking chart.
- Rankings
- Non-brand organic
- Revenue attributed
International SEO
Hreflang, market targeting and canonical handling for multi-region stores.
Migration protection
If a replatform or redesign is coming, the redirect map is SEO scope — see Shopify Migration.
Technical SEO vs content marketing
Both matter. The order matters more, and most programmes get it backwards.
| Content-first | Technical-first | |
|---|---|---|
| Sets the ceiling | No | Yes |
| Time to first effect | Months | Weeks, in crawl and index data |
| Cost of doing it later | Content gets re-crawled anyway | Everything published sits under a broken ceiling |
| Fixes index bloat | No | Yes |
| Improves pages that already convert | Rarely | Directly |
| Ongoing cost | Continuous | Front-loaded, then maintenance |
| Compounds | Yes, if it ranks | Yes, across every page |
| Right first when | Technical baseline is already sound | Almost always |
How we work
How an SEO programme runs
7 stages. Open any one of them.
Technical baseline
Find the ceiling.
Crawl analysis, index coverage, faceted URL surface, canonicals, structured data and Core Web Vitals, with findings ranked by impact.
Technical remediation
Theme-level, not plugin-level.
The changes implemented in the theme so they hold — canonicals, robots directives, sitemap logic, structured data and redirects.
Intent and opportunity
What can you actually rank for.
Keyword and intent research mapped against your catalogue and authority, filtered to what is realistically winnable.
Collections and products
The pages that already convert.
Titles, descriptions, on-page copy areas and internal linking on the templates that carry commercial intent.
Content
Fewer, better.
Content that answers what a product page cannot, published against a plan rather than a quota, and linked to the pages that make money.
Reporting
Non-brand, separately.
Rankings, non-brand organic sessions and revenue, with seasonality and algorithm updates called out rather than absorbed.
Next cycle
Compounding, not campaign.
What worked gets more investment, what did not gets stopped. SEO compounds only if the losers are actually cut.
Ways to engage
Three shapes, depending on how well defined the work is. Every one starts with a scoped written proposal — no work begins on a verbal estimate.
Retainer
Monthly
block of hours
- A block of hours each month
- Prioritized by you, replanned as often as you like
- The same developers month to month
- Reporting on what the hours went to
Time & materials
Tracked time
billed as used
- Billed against tracked time
- Suits discovery, R&D and migrations
- Estimate per ticket before it starts
- Stop or change direction at any point
Rates are quoted against a written scope rather than published as a tier, because the same service costs very different amounts on a five-template store and a five-hundred-template one.
Context
The categories we build for
Search intent differs wildly by category, and so does the balance between technical fixes and content.
Fashion & Apparel
Beauty & Cosmetics
Food & Beverage
Jewelry & Luxury
Home & Outdoor
Electronics
Health & Supplements
Subscription
Sports & Fitness
Multi-region
Marketplace & Multi-store
Questions about Shopify SEO
Technical SEO first — crawl and index management, faceted navigation, canonicals, duplicate product paths, structured data and Core Web Vitals — then collection and product optimisation, intent-led content and internal linking. The technical baseline sets the ceiling everything else sits under, which is why it comes first.
Technical SEO fixes can show in crawl and index data within weeks. Ranking and revenue movement typically takes months and depends heavily on your authority and competition. Anyone quoting a specific timeline before auditing your Shopify store is guessing.
Shopify is capable, with platform-specific quirks that need managing: duplicate product paths, tag pages, faceted URL explosion from collection filters, and limited control over some system URLs. None of it is disqualifying, and all of it needs deliberate handling in the theme.
Not necessarily. If your collection and product pages are not yet optimised and your technical baseline is weak, blogging is the wrong place to start — content sits under whatever ceiling the technical issues set. Content becomes worth it once the pages that already convert are working.
The same fundamentals do most of the work: clean semantic markup, correct structured data, crawlable content and clear factual answers. We do not sell a separate “AI SEO” product, because as of now it is largely the same work under a newer name.
No, and a guarantee would be a reason to be suspicious. We commit to the work, the reporting and honest attribution — including telling you when a change in traffic was seasonality or an algorithm update rather than us.
No. We stay on organic and technical SEO and the Shopify storefront work that supports both, and we work alongside your paid team — the analytics audit usually benefits them as well.
Then the redirect map is the most important SEO work you will do this year, and it belongs inside the project rather than after it. On a Shopify migration we treat the full URL inventory and redirect map as primary scope.
Non-brand organic sessions and revenue, reported separately from brand and paid, alongside rankings for tracked terms. Seasonality and known algorithm updates are annotated rather than left to flatter the chart.
Pressed against a technical ceiling?
Send us your domain. We will tell you what is capping you technically before anyone talks about content.