Shopify SEO audit: find the problems, then fix them

A blog only helps if the store underneath it is in decent shape. Missing meta descriptions, duplicate titles, images with no alt text, a sitemap pointing at the wrong pages: none of it is dramatic, and all of it quietly costs you. The usual advice is to go and check by hand. This page covers what the SEO Bison audit does, and then gives you a checklist you can use with or without it.

What the audit crawls

The audit crawls up to 40 pages of your storefront. Custom domains work. If your store is password protected, the audit asks for the storefront password first, because it cannot score a page it cannot see. It reads your robots.txt and sitemap, then visits the pages it finds and scores what is actually served.

Five scored categories

• Technical: structured data, canonical tags, pages that fail to load.
• On-page: titles, meta descriptions, headings, image alt text.
• Content: thin pages, thin product descriptions, duplicates, internal linking.
• Performance: server response time, homepage weight, script count, image dimensions and lazy-loading, all measured from SEO Bison’s own crawl.
• Indexability: whether search engines are allowed to index what you want indexed, and whether your sitemap points at the right URLs.

A category that scores 100 lists the checks it passed, so a perfect score comes with evidence rather than just a number.

What it flags

• robots.txt and sitemap problems, and broken pages
• Missing structured data, and product pages whose structured data is incomplete (photo, description, brand, SKU or barcode)
• Homepage brand information: logo, site name and social profiles
• Breadcrumb data
• Missing or badly sized titles and meta descriptions, and duplicates of either
• Missing or duplicate H1s
• Image alt-text coverage
• Thin pages and thin product descriptions
• Pages that block themselves from search (noindex)
• Sitemap pages whose canonical tag points Google at a different URL
• Leftover test or copy pages in the sitemap, and empty collections
• Sparse internal linking and canonical tags

How to read your scores

Start with the lowest category, not the overall number, because one weak area usually has a small number of causes. A low On-page score is typically a handful of missing or duplicate titles and descriptions. A low Content score usually means thin product descriptions. A low Indexability score deserves attention first, since a page that cannot be indexed cannot rank however good it is. Performance findings come from SEO Bison’s own crawl, so treat them as pointers to the heaviest pages and the busiest scripts rather than a lab measurement.

Fix with SEO Bison: preview first, then apply

For issues it can fix, each one has a Fix with SEO Bison button. It covers:

• Product image alt text, product descriptions, SEO titles and meta descriptions
• Duplicate titles and duplicate metas on products
• SEO titles and meta descriptions on collections and pages

You preview every change, then apply it to Shopify. Use Fix all of these to work through one issue, or Fix all issues automatically to work through all of them. Fixes spend the fix credits included in your plan. Your homepage and blog pages are still edited in Shopify, and thin pages get a “Generate blog posts” shortcut, because the cure for a thin page is more good content (see the Shopify AI blog writer).

A snapshot, not a live feed

The audit shows your store as of the last run. After you fix something, run it again to refresh the score. Plans include a number of audits a month, and the pricing page lists them.

Free versus paid

The Free plan includes 2 store audits a month and shows your score and category bars. Itemised issues and fixes are on paid plans.

Shopify SEO audit checklist (use it with or without the app)

Work through these in order. Each one takes minutes, and most of it is one-off.

1. Can search engines get in?

• Open yourstore.com/robots.txt and make sure it does not disallow pages you want ranked. Shopify’s default is fine for most stores.
• Open yourstore.com/sitemap.xml and confirm it loads and lists your products, collections, pages and blog posts.
• Remove the storefront password before launch. A password page blocks everything.
• Search your own site for leftover test products, “copy of” pages and empty collections, and delete or hide them.

2. Does every page have a clear title and description?

• Keep SEO titles roughly 30 to 60 characters and meta descriptions roughly 70 to 160, with the main phrase near the front.
• Make each one unique. Variants of one product often share a title by accident.
• Give every page exactly one H1 that says what the page is.

3. Are your products described well enough to rank?

• Write product descriptions beyond a one-line spec. Aim for a few real sentences about materials, use and fit.
• Add alt text to every product image, describing what the image shows in plain words.
• Fill in brand and SKU or barcode where you have them, so structured data is complete.

4. Is the structure clean?

• Check that product pages output Product structured data with price and availability. Google’s free Rich Results Test will show you.
• Confirm each page’s canonical tag points at itself, or at the page you intend.
• Check that no page you want ranked carries a noindex tag.
• Link collections, products and blog posts to each other with descriptive anchor text.

5. Is the store reasonably quick?

• Resize oversized images and set image dimensions so the page does not jump while loading.
• Lazy-load images below the fold.
• Audit your installed apps. Each one can add scripts to every page, so remove the ones you no longer use.

6. Is there content that answers questions?

• Thin collection and content pages rarely rank. Add real guidance, and publish blog posts that answer what shoppers ask before they buy.
• Pick topics with competition you can actually beat. Our guide to Shopify keyword research shows how.

Prefer not to check all of this by hand? That is what the audit does. Read the docs for details, or install the app and run it.