Are you planning a Shopify Plus relaunch and want to make sure SEO does not become an afterthought? Do you know that Shopify comes with its own pitfalls — from complex redirects to duplicate content and technical limitations? And are you aware that without a clear structure, you risk ranking losses, project chaos, and wasted potential?
This is exactly where we come in: with in-depth Shopify SEO consulting, a structured migration plan, and a setup designed for brand visibility from day one.
Why is Shopify SEO so important?
A relaunch in the form of a shop system migration is one of the most common reasons for massive visibility losses — especially when SEO is considered too late or not at all.
And the risk is significantly higher when moving to Shopify Plus. Shopify comes with many technical specifics that can become obstacles to organic growth: from URL structures and filtering logic to limited or restricted access to system-critical files such as robots.txt or sitemap.xml.
Especially for growing stores that already have strong SEO performance, this means: without a clean migration and technical control, you risk ranking losses, indexing issues, and duplicate content — and with that, a drop in organic traffic. It does not have to be that way.
Shopify is powerful, but not perfect: common SEO issues
Many SEO problems do not arise intentionally, but from platform-specific characteristics. These are the issues we regularly see when moving to Shopify:
| problem |
Shopify challenge |
| Missing or incorrect 301 redirects |
Redirects cannot be managed via regex or .htaccess. There is no server-level access. |
| Automatically generated duplicate content |
Tag pages, filter URLs, and sorting options create unnecessary duplicate content. |
| Limited access to critical SEO elements |
No direct access to robots.txt, structured data, or canonicals without theme workarounds. |
| Slow load times due to bloated themes and apps |
Shopify themes are rarely performance-optimized, which negatively affects core web vitals and page speed overall. |
| Missing or inconsistent meta data and H tags |
Titles, descriptions, and headings are often overwritten by themes or apps or implemented inconsistently. |
| Fixed URL structure |
Shopify enforces a fixed URL structure that must be followed. Deviations are difficult to implement. |
|
Plugin hell |
Many plugins directly impact the frontend and user experience, can slow down the store, and may conflict with SEO measures. |
Our expert tips for Shopify relaunches
Tip 1:
1:1 redirect mapping is mandatory. You cannot define rule-based redirects — each redirect must be created individually in the Shopify admin.
Tip 2:
For the sake of page performance, choose a lean and fast theme and add required features later.
Tip 3:
Always use a batch export of product data from your old shop and a batch import into Shopify. This can be done in just a few hours and frees up valuable time for other relaunch tasks.
Choosing the right Shopify SEO apps
Shopify offers a huge selection of SEO apps — from metadata optimization to structured data. However, caution is advised. Many apps only fix symptoms, not root causes. Others add unnecessary bloat, slow down the store, or interfere with existing structures.
Our recommendation:
SEO apps should be used selectively and sparingly — aligned with your store’s requirements and the technical implementation in the theme. You should not only look at features, but also at their performance impact (page speed) and the technical interaction with your store during integration.
Typical use cases where apps can make sense:
- Metadata and bulk editing: for large catalogs with many products
- Structured data (JSON-LD): for easy generation of markup
- Broken link checker / redirect manager: for managing redirects
- Image SEO / alt tag optimization: for better image search visibility and accessibility
Important: Not every function needs an app. Many things can be implemented cleanly in the theme or via custom code. We help you decide what delivers real SEO value — and what just slows down your store.
International SEO — a special challenge in the Shopify ecosystem
Shopify is an excellent platform for international sales, but International SEO comes with its own set of challenges. Different countries, languages, and regional search behaviors require precise technical implementation and smart SEO strategies.
In the Shopify ecosystem, the following aspects are particularly critical:
- Correct use of hreflang tags to signal the right target region and language to search engines.
- Structuring country-specific domains or subdomains in a way that avoids duplicate content.
- Regional content adaptations and keyword optimizations that match local search intent.
- Technical challenges within Shopify, such as limitations in automatic hreflang implementation or setting individual metadata for different language versions.
We help you make your Shopify store visible globally — with solutions that strengthen your brand internationally and align technology, content, and structure.
SEO consulting before, during, and after your Shopify relaunch
Together, we define the required action packages for your individual relaunch roadmap during the kickoff phase. This creates the foundation for all subsequent steps. We are by your side — throughout the entire relaunch process and beyond:
Kickoff
Requirements and expectations
Key questions to clarify
- Why is the relaunch happening?
- What is the goal of the relaunch?
- What will change?
- What is the timeline?
- Which stakeholders are involved?
- Who is responsible for what?
Pre-launch
Planning and preparation
To enable a later before-and-after comparison, we capture the status quo through a structured baseline audit of the existing website — including all relevant SEO data such as URLs, traffic, rankings, backlinks, and technical aspects.
For a structured approach, we then develop:
- an SEO requirements document
- an overview of weaknesses and strengths of the current status quo
- URL and structure planning
- comprehensive redirect mapping
optional
- keyword analysis and content strategy
- SEO fundamentals training for everyone involved in creating or editing content (e.g., editorial, marketing, or development) to avoid common mistakes
Launch
Implementation and quality control
SEO check of the new website on the staging environment
- Testing the new structure, URLs, internal linking, etc.
- Ensuring no test content or sensitive data is publicly accessible
- Validating 301 redirects on staging (including potential redirect chains or loops)
Go-live testing:
- Immediately after go-live, checking crawlability, indexability, redirects again, broken links, and more
Post-launch
Monitoring and optimization
Error and performance monitoring:
- Monitoring errors, rankings, traffic, and crawling data using tools such as Google Search Console and Analytics.
- SEO early-warning system: identifying fluctuations and potential issues (e.g., lost rankings)
Corrections and fine-tuning
- Focus on refinements: we intentionally follow up on items postponed for go-live (impact over 100% completion)
optional
- long-term custom reporting / alerting
- seamless transition into a long-term SEO strategy
