Service / S-06

Ecommerce SEO for online shops

Category pages that match how people search, product pages that search engines can read, and filtered navigation that does not swamp Google with near-duplicate URLs.

Derbyshire has more online retailers than people expect: makers in the Peak District selling nationally, outdoor kit shops near the hills, specialist parts suppliers serving the motor and rail trades, and food and drink producers around Burton and Ashbourne. Their SEO problems tend to be similar.

Category pages do the heavy lifting

Most commercial searches land on category pages, not products. "Women's walking boots", "stainless steel fixings" or "gin gift sets" are category searches. We make sure each important category has a clear title, a short useful introduction, sensible sub-categories and internal links from the places customers expect to find them.

Product pages that can be read

Unique descriptions, real specifications, clear images with useful alt text, stock and price data in Product structured data, and reviews marked up only if they are genuine customer reviews collected on your own site or platform. Many shops use manufacturer descriptions word for word; rewriting the products that matter most is often worthwhile.

Warehouse aisle with racking stacked with boxed stock

Size, colour and price filters can create thousands of URLs that look almost the same. We decide which filtered views deserve to be indexable, because people search for them, and keep the rest out of the index without breaking the shopping experience.

Shopping feeds

Google's free product listings and Shopping ads both rely on your product feed. We check that Merchant Center is clean, that feed titles reflect search language and that prices and availability match the site.

Platform quirks

Shopify adds collection paths to product URLs, WooCommerce can index tag archives and attachment pages, and Magento sites often carry years of redirects. We know where each platform tends to go wrong and fix the specific issues on yours.

Who it is for locally

Derbyshire's online sellers range from makers and outdoor retailers near the Peak District to specialist parts suppliers serving the motor and rail trades, and furniture and upholstery firms in Long Eaton that sell both to trade and direct. Most run on Shopify or WooCommerce, with some older Magento builds.

What is included, step by step

Baseline. Revenue and transactions from organic search, category and product visibility, Merchant Center status and a full crawl.
Category architecture. We map your categories to how people search, finding missing categories with demand and categories that duplicate each other.
Faceted navigation plan. Which filters get indexable landing pages, which are controlled, and how internal links work.
Category content. Clear titles, headings and short introductions that help shoppers choose, plus links to subcategories and guides.
Product templates. Titles, descriptions, specifications, images, alt text and Product structured data.
Feed clean-up. Merchant Center errors, feed titles and attributes for free listings.
Supporting content. Buying guides, size and fit guides, care instructions and comparisons that answer research questions and link to categories.
Ongoing monitoring. New products, seasonal categories and out-of-stock handling.

Platform notes

Platform	Common issue	Usual fix
Shopify	Products reachable at multiple collection paths	Make internal links point to the canonical product URL
Shopify	Thin or missing collection descriptions	Add useful intros and FAQs to key collections
WooCommerce	Tag archives and attachment pages indexed	Noindex or remove, tidy the sitemap
WooCommerce	Slow pages from heavy plugins	Audit plugins, optimise images and caching
Magento	Years of layered redirects and parameter URLs	Redirect clean-up and parameter control

How long it takes and what drives the cost

Template and feed fixes can show within weeks. Category improvements typically take one to three months to settle as pages are recrawled. Cost depends on the number of products and categories, the platform, how much content needs writing and whether your developer or we implement changes.

Common mistakes

Using manufacturer descriptions word for word across thousands of products.
Letting every filter, sort and pagination URL be crawled and indexed.
Deleting discontinued products without redirects.
Hiding category text behind "read more" toggles stuffed with keywords.
Marking up reviews that are not genuine customer reviews of that product.

How we measure it

Organic revenue and transactions, visibility of priority categories, indexed product counts against the catalogue, crawl efficiency and Merchant Center health. We separate brand searches from non-brand so you can see whether new customers are finding you.

Ecommerce SEO depends on technical SEO and benefits from content for buying guides. If you are changing platform, read our redesign checklist and see migration support.

Questions we are often asked

Should every filter combination be indexable?

No. Only filtered views that people actually search for, such as a colour or material category with real demand, should be indexable. The rest should stay crawl-friendly for shoppers but out of the index.

Do we need to rewrite every product description?

Not at once. Start with best sellers and high-margin products, and with any products whose descriptions are copied from manufacturers that other retailers also use.

Is Shopify bad for SEO?

No. Shopify has some fixed URL patterns and limits, but it handles most fundamentals well. The common problems are in theme choices, apps and content, which can be fixed.

What happens to SEO when a product goes out of stock?

If it is coming back, keep the page live and say when. If it is gone for good, redirect to the closest alternative or category, or let it return a 404 if nothing fits.

Do you manage Google Shopping ads?

No, we focus on organic search. We do clean up feeds for free product listings, which also helps whoever runs your Shopping ads.

Next step

Tell us what you are trying to rank for

Send a few lines about your business and the searches that matter. We reply by email within two working days with an honest view of what is worth doing.

Send an enquiry