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Shopify handles a reasonable amount of SEO by default and constrains a few things you cannot change. Knowing which is which saves effort spent on problems that are not yours to fix.

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What Shopify does by default

  • Generates sitemap.xml automatically, including products, collections, pages, and blog posts
  • Sets canonical tags on product and collection pages
  • Produces a robots.txt — editable on any plan by adding a robots.txt.liquid template to your theme
  • Serves over HTTPS with a CDN
  • Adds basic product structured data on most themes — quality varies significantly by theme

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What Shopify constrains

These are fixed by the platform and not worth fighting:
  • URL structure. Products live under /products/, collections under /collections/. The prefixes cannot be removed.
  • Duplicate product URLs. The same product is reachable at /products/x and /collections/y/products/x. Shopify canonicalises to the former.
  • Limited server-side control. No access to server config, so redirects and headers are handled through Shopify’s own tooling.

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Where the real work is

In practice, most Shopify SEO gains come from a short list:

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What Ryze does on a Shopify store

Once your store is connected, the weekly Technical Audit checks the top pages from your Search Console: meta titles and descriptions, JSON-LD schema, canonical tags, robots.txt, sitemap, broken links, images, page speed, HTTPS, and llms.txt. Each issue has a Fix with agent button. What the agent can change depends on how your store is connected:
  • Standard Shopify connection — product, collection, page and blog SEO fields, and product image alt text.
  • Shopify Custom App with the write_themes scope — also theme files: robots.txt.liquid, canonical tags and JSON-LD schema snippets. URL redirects additionally need the write_online_store_navigation scope, which only a custom app can grant.
Where it lacks access, the agent tells you exactly what to change yourself. The Content Plan adds articles built from real demand to your store’s blog.

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Primary references