“What Shopify SEO apps do you recommend for a new Shopify store?”

Ah, today I choose violence!

You see, my friend, I’m not the biggest fan of most Shopify SEO apps, especially for newer stores.

(Kai Davis: I zag where other consultants zig!)

Most Shopify SEO apps… aren’t that great. They sell you an over-inflated list of ‘all-in-one’ features, a hyped-up list of benefits, and then just spit out the same tired inactionable warnings about:

Low text to HTML ratio

Or,

Duplicate meta descriptions

Alas, these insights are rarely — if ever! — worth the time, attention, and money you’re spending on that Shopify SEO app. Or the time, attention, and money you’re spending on fixing them.

Recommended apps + tooling for new stores

If you’re a new store on Shopify, there are a few (free!) tools that I recommend. But none of them are Shopify SEO apps.

The most important things for you to install are:

Google Search Console (Free). This is Google’s tool that, among many things, will tell you the keywords that your pages are ranking for in Google. That’s valuable to have!
Google Analytics (Free). This is Google’s free analytics tool. Yes, there is a lot to complain about with Google Analytics 4. It’s still a useful tool to have on your site to understand where your traffic is coming from and what it’s doing once it lands there.

Beyond that, for a newer or smaller store, there aren’t that many Shopify SEO apps that I recommend.

That’s not to say I’m against all apps! I just believe you should be cautious about what apps you install/pay for, especially when you’re a newer store.

I’m a huge fan of Ilana Davis’s JSON-LD for SEO — recently named the best SEO app by Shopify!.

But even that app is best for larger ecommerce stores who are looking for specific help with structured data, not general SEO help.

JSON-LD for SEO isn’t what I’d recommend for every Shopify store or a smaller Shopify store, unless they’re looking at specific structured data challenges or objectives.

What to do instead of chasing the latest app

Google — and your customers! — don’t care about what apps you’re running.

They care about your content, collections, and products. They care about what you’re selling that can help them. They care about seeing content of yours that aligns with the questions you’re asking.

So, to seize that opportunity, you should:

Install Google Search Console and Google Analytics. These will help you understand what pages are ranking, the keywords they’re ranking for, and the traffic they’re generating.
Create ~5-10 collection pages on your site. Use a specific SEO title, collection name (headline), and collection description. Find inspiration by looking at the collections your more established competitors have. Identify the ones that align with your audience and products, and build similar collections for your products.
Write ~5 blog posts talking about ‘best [product type]’ (for a product that you sell.) Go into detail about the features and benefits that make your product different, and where customers call out it’s better than the alternative.
Find questions in online forums and communities (e.g., twitter, Facebook, reddit). Look at the questions people ask when considering products and stores like yours. Write blog posts answering those individual questions and post them on your site.

Those actions — more than any app will tell you to do — will have you creating relevant content for your audience that’s about your products and collections and helps your audience with their questions.

That’s the best way to think about this. Not, “What app should I use?”, but “What content should I create?”

Collections targeting relevant commercial terms and blogs answering relevant community questions will take you far.

Are you looking for help identifying which collections, blogs, and other pages to create to grow your traffic and sales? Sounds like you’d benefit from an SEO Opportunity Report.

Excelsior!

Kai