SEO for Shopify & WooCommerce Stores in 2026: A Migration-Safe Playbook

Shopify and WooCommerce dominate global ecommerce SEO because they're easy to set up — and easy to break. The most common reason a healthy store loses 40% of organic traffic isn't algorithm updates; it's a botched theme migration, a broken collections-pagination structure, or duplicate-content from variant URLs. This is the migration-safe playbook.

Table of contents

1. Platform-level SEO traps in Shopify · 2. WooCommerce: the 5 default settings to change · 3. Collections, tags, filters: index strategy · 4. Migration-safe theme & platform changes · 5. Product schema that wins AI Overviews · 6. International ecommerce: hreflang & currency · 7. FAQ

Platform-level SEO traps in Shopify

Shopify auto-creates duplicate URLs for products inside collections (/products/x and /collections/y/products/x), forces /collections/all/, and hides robots.txt control until recently. Fix: canonical every product to its primary URL, noindex /collections/all/, and use the new robots.txt.liquid customization to block /search and /policies/ from crawl. **The single biggest Shopify SEO win is the canonical fix — most stores leak 30–50% crawl budget on collection-product duplicates.**

WooCommerce: the 5 default settings to change

1. Disable WooCommerce-generated category and tag archives unless you're actively optimizing them. 2. Set permalinks to /product/{slug}/ — never the default /shop/?p=ID. 3. Disable product attribute archives (/color/red/) — pure thin content. 4. Use Yoast or RankMath to control product variation indexation. 5. Enable schema for products at the theme level — most WP themes ship broken Product schema that fails Rich Results validation.

Collections, tags, filters: index strategy

Index: top-level category pages, sub-category pages with >10 products, brand pages. Noindex+follow: filter combinations (color + size + price), tag pages with <5 products, search results. Canonical: sort orders to the default sort. The rule: if a page wouldn't be a valuable landing page from organic search, it shouldn't be indexed.

Migration-safe theme & platform changes

Pre-migration: full crawl with Screaming Frog, export every URL, internal-link map, and rankings baseline. During migration: 301 every old URL to its new equivalent (never 302), preserve canonical tags, keep robots.txt and sitemap continuous. Post-migration day 1: re-crawl, fix all 4xx/5xx, resubmit sitemap. Day 7: compare to baseline. **Most migration traffic drops are recoverable if caught within 14 days; after 30 days the loss often becomes permanent.**

Product schema that wins AI Overviews

Use Product + Offer + AggregateRating + Review (real reviews only — fake reviews trigger manual actions). Add brand, sku, gtin13, mpn where applicable. AI shopping answers (Google, Perplexity Shopping) increasingly pull dish/product names + price + rating directly from schema, not page text. Stores with clean schema appear in AI shopping results; stores without are invisible regardless of organic rank.

International ecommerce: hreflang & currency

For BD stores selling internationally: separate /bd/, /us/, /uk/ subfolders with hreflang tags, currency switching via geolocation cookie (not URL parameter), and schema priceCurrency matching the displayed currency on each version. Avoid auto-redirecting users by IP — Google Search Central explicitly warns against it because it blocks Googlebot from seeing other-country versions.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Shopify or WooCommerce better for SEO?

Roughly equal in 2026 — Shopify has caught up on schema and robots.txt control; WooCommerce is more flexible but easier to misconfigure. Pick based on operational fit; SEO outcomes depend on execution, not platform.

How long should I expect ranking drops after migration?

If 301s and canonicals are clean, fluctuations stabilize within 4–8 weeks. Drops lasting longer indicate a real issue (mistakes in redirects, missing schema, slow CWV) — audit and fix rather than waiting.

Should out-of-stock products be 404'd?

No — keep them live with availability='OutOfStock', show estimated restock if known, and surface related products. Out-of-stock products often hold backlinks and seasonal traffic; deleting them throws that equity away.

Are AI-generated product descriptions safe at scale?

Safe with human review and uniqueness checks. Pure-AI bulk descriptions trigger duplicate-content and helpful-content demotions. Use AI for first drafts, human-edit for brand voice and unique selling points, and add at least one customer-facing detail (sizing notes, use cases) per product.

Do Shopify Hydrogen / headless setups change SEO requirements?

Slightly — server-side rendering and schema injection move into your code rather than the theme. Easier to break if your team isn't experienced with Next/Remix SEO patterns. Audit rendered HTML in Search Console URL Inspection before assuming Googlebot sees what users see.