Shopify SEO Guide to Perfect Title Tags and Meta Descriptions

If you have poorly optimised Shopify title tags and meta descriptions, you may see an increase of thirty percent in organic search visitors by following this Shopify SEO guide. I’ve seen it before for Shopify clients. That may mean a thirty percent increase in sales from basic on-page SEO.

A title tag is the blue text you see in Google while a meta description is the black text that describes the page:

You can influence what gets displayed in search results with HTML code on the website that looks like:

<title>Your title is here</title>
<meta name="description" content="Your description is here" />

Get these right on the important pages of your Shopify store and you will profit. I make no mention of meta keywords because it has no positive affect on SEO. If you use a plugin like SEO Meta Manager, do not enter meta keywords as it could hurt your rankings. Plugins like these that allow you to edit meta information in Shopify are pointless if you follow this guide, unless you have a large number of SKUs that you will not write.

What if you fail to write great titles and descriptions or even ignore this guide?

Google is likely to pick the text to display which often sucks compared to what you could write. This is not to say if you write great titles and descriptions that Google will not sometimes change them—what I’m saying is if you fail to, Google is more likely than not to create its own titles and meta descriptions for you.

Depending on your niche and organic presence, anywhere from 10-90% of your visitors first encounter your store in search. An altered search results display means you do not control your marketing message. Even worse, the store under-performs in SEO and your listing gets a low click-through rate.

Good title tags and meta descriptions are core to better rankings and increased clicks from search results. This guide teaches you how to setup, write, and optimise title tags and meta descriptions for your Shopify store.

It All Begins with Search Query Analysis

You start with a search query analysis because it determines what search queries you want to rank for. It determines what you write, who are your competitors, and the SEO of everything else you do. It’s vital to do well.

I say “do well”, not “get right” because there are many ways to write a perfect title or meta description for the page—provided you meet the criteria revealed in this guide.

The best place to begin search query analysis or what you might think of as “keyword research”, is not a keyword tool. Look at the page you are optimising then ask yourself:

If someone was to discover only this page on the Internet then walk away happy, what would they look for?

Write down all your answers. You should have multiple answers for one page. It is easy to discover in ecommerce.

• An online store called “Jill’s Fashion Store” answers the searches “jills fashion store”, “online fashion store”, or possibly “women’s fashion store”.
• A collection page of leather jackets could answer the searches “leather jackets”, “motorcycle leather jackets”, or “leather jackets for men”. For “motorcycle leather jackets” to apply, every product in the collection should be motorcycle-focused otherwise the shoppers may leave frustrated.
• A product page selling the Vintage Digital Gold Databank watch made by Casio could answer, “vintage digital gold databank”, “gold casio watch”, or “vintage digital watch”. The “casio watch” search is not answered by the product page because the page is too specific. Someone searching “casio watch” is unsure of what they want and should receive a page from another website with a list of casio watches and information about the brand.

You want to solve a searcher’s problem better than other websites. Fail to do this and SEO becomes more challenging as Google’s algorithms can (or will) detect that your competitor who better answers the search query should out-rank you. You may be able to boost SEO by improving the page to better serve visitors.

Once you have a list of keywords to optimise the page for, type them in the Google Keyword Planner tool to check if people use these search terms:

There are thousands of searches around “gold Casio watches”. That’s a lot. I recommend you narrow to lessen competition by seeing other keyword suggestions. If I click-through the ad group ideas, I came across one that perfectly answers the product page:

The “Low”, “Medium”, and “High” under competition is just for Google Ads. You don’t need to pay much attention to it, but high competition means advertisers are spending money (a good hint they are making money on the searches) while low competition means less advertisers competing for user attention and more distribution of clicks to organic search results.

Search your potential term in Google. Look at the organic results, not the ad results. The top three organic results for this example are:

Do you see “casio”, “watch”, “gold”, or “mens” in the titles and descriptions of these pages? Hardly. That’s one indication of low competition.

A more advanced strategy to evaluate competition is to do backlink analysis using Ahrefs.com. A high number of backlinks to the page or homepage of these top ranking websites means higher competition. An even more advanced keyword method to discover what you should optimise for is to use Google Ads because the platform lets you near-instantly see what search terms in organic search will bring you clicks and sales.

One simple judgement of competition is to look at websites ranking high. Asos is an online store, but they are huge. Casio.co.uk is a little worrying because they are an official brand. Competition is likely to exist.

You want to balance search volume and competition. In a perfect world you optimize for high search volume (1000+ searches) and low competition, but there too many sites in today’s ecommerce for that to be true. Just go for keywords with some search volume and moderate to low competition.

Now you know what to go after, let’s optimize your store.

How to Edit Your Shopify Title Tags and Meta Descriptions

First you need to check if your theme is compatible with the built-in SEO features of Shopify on the homepage, collection pages, product pages, and general pages. You want all these pages to be SEO-optimised to maximise search visibility. Each presents a chance to capture organic traffic.

For the homepage, go to:

1. Online Store > Preferences
2. Enter a homepage title and meta description
3. View the source code of the page to see if each updated exactly how you want. If it didn’t, you need to edit the template

For general pages, go to:

1. Online Store > Pages
2. Select a page
3. Enter a page title and meta description
4. View the source code of the page to see if each updated exactly how you want. If it didn’t, you need to edit the template

For all products, go to

1. Products
2. Select a product
3. Click on “Edit website SEO” seen at the bottom of the below screenshot:

4. Enter a page title and meta description
5. View the source code of the product page to see if each updated exactly how you want. If it didn’t, you need to edit the template

For collections, go to:

1. Products > Collections
2. Select a collection
3. Click on “Edit website SEO”
4. Enter a page title and meta description
5. View the source code of the collections page to see if each updated exactly how you want. If it didn’t, you need to edit the template

If your updates appear on the homepage, pages, collections, and products you’re fortunate to have a Shopify theme built with the option to customise these SEO factors. Jump to the next section on how to write a SEO-friendly title.

How to Edit the Title Tags in your Shopify Template

If the SEO text is not displaying how you want as per the previous section, you need to edit the template. Warning: do not edit your store’s template unless you know HTML and can easily undo your changes. Otherwise spend a few dollars on hiring a freelancer from UpWork and spend your time doing other valuable tasks. To make the edit:

1. In the admin section, go to Online Store > Themes
2. Click “Actions” on your live them then select “Edit Code”:

3. Click on the “theme.liquid” file on the left side. This is where you can edit the Shopify theme’s title tags and meta descriptions.
4. Find the text between <title> and </title> then replace it with:

<title>{{ page_title }}{% if current_tags %} &ndash; tagged "{{ current_tags | join: ', ' }}"{% endif %}{% if current_page != 1 %} &ndash; Page {{ current_page }}{% endif %}{% unless page_title contains shop.name %} &ndash; {{ shop.name }}{% endunless %}</title>


I recommend all Shopify designers use this in their templates because it allows you to control exactly how the title tags display on all pages in the store and provides fall back. When no title tag is entered:

• The homepage uses the store’s name
• A general page uses the name of the page then dash and store name
• A product page uses the name of the product then dash and store name
• A collections page uses the name of the collection then dash and store name

The configuration also:

• Supports naming best practices for pagination
• Works with tags if your template uses filters
• Does not add a dash and store name at the end of the homepage title tag if the store name is included somewhere

The store name is good to have for ecommerce in all pages when you have a strong brand presence. If you are a small store and do not have many people search your brand, begin with excluding the store name from your title tag—the store name takes up character space to dilute keyword value. Use this instead:

<title>{{ page_title }}{% if current_tags %} &ndash; tagged "{{ current_tags | join: ', ' }}"{% endif %}{% if current_page != 1 %} &ndash; Page {{ current_page }}{% endif %}</title>

Google may auto-insert the website’s name into the title. Test it for you store. It is one strategic reason to have a short name unlike “Independent Living Centres”.

How to Edit the Meta Description Tag in Your Shopify Theme

This is a lot easier to get right in your template and is often already setup.

1. Go to your theme.liquid template
2. Find the line that begins with <meta name="description" then replace it with:

<meta name="description" content="{{ page_description | escape }}" />

3. If your file does not have this, copy-and-paste the text after the closing title tag (</title>)

Congratulations. Your Shopify store’s title tags and meta descriptions are now ready to be optimised. Let’s continue to do your on-page SEO right to boost visitors and sales.

How to Write an SEO-friendly Title

Title tags are the second most important on-page factor to help SEO. The most important is great value delivered in content, images, user-experience—stuff that makes your store fantastic.

If you ignore this process, Google picks what it thinks is best:

This page had no meta description and a poorly written title tag of:

<title>SurfStitch - Clothing | Footwear | Surf | Street - Shop Online!</title>

Here’s the seven-step process for a perfect title. It should:

1. Contain your keywords from the search query analysis and keyword research you did earlier
2. Be between 50-55 characters (sometimes you can get away with 35-60 characters). Too few and you miss opportunities. Too many and the title gets cut
3. Be understandable
4. Present the answer to the person’s search query
5. Match the content on the page. This should happen when the title contains your keywords
6. Be unique to other pages on your site
7. Be attractive or interesting in some way to make people want to click. Interesting is often ticked off when other steps are done

Some perfect examples:

• Yo-Yos – Duncan & Yomega | Toys”R”Us
• Best Chef Knives – Six Recommendations | KitchenKnifeGuru
• The Tissue Box Cover Store, Over 50 styles!

Go ahead and write a few title tags for your pages. Start with your keywords. Run through the other six steps once you have a title written down. It’s better to edit than to have nothing.

Shopify provide a nice preview of your meta description and title tag when editing a product or collection. You can also use Portent’s SERP preview tool to test the display of your SEO work.

How to Write a SEO-friendly Meta Description

Google in 2009 said the meta description tag is not used in their ranking. What it does affect is user attention and click-through rate, which influences rankings.

A description is easier to write than a title. The process is the same but with more character space. Aim for 145-160 characters.

Shopify makes counting character length simple by telling you when you exceed 55 characters in the title and 160 characters in the description:

You include your keywords in the meta description so the text is bold in search results and stands out. Structure the description around your keywords. Put them down first then write around it by thinking of the intent behind the search query.

To fix a brain freeze, search your targeted keywords in Google to see what other sites do. Write something different. Amateur SEOers tell you to copy the top ranking website, but this is ineffective because me-too is poor marketing and most stores do not follow the seven-step writing process to produce the perfect title and meta description.

Advanced On-page Optimisation Strategies

If you stop your on-page SEO with a one-off setup of title tags and meta descriptions, you miss making a few simple changes that can boost rankings and CTR. Google may be displaying different text to what you wrote. Let’s check:

1. Allow two weeks for Google to re-crawl your site. This is enough time for Google to pick up the changes for most stores.
2. Discover what information Google changes in their search results. Use RankTank’s meta and rich snippet testing tool. Enter your website address in the spreadsheet. The tool will compare what you have in the HTML code of all pages against the snippet for each page when displayed in search results.
3. Rewrite titles and meta descriptions for pages that get changed in ways you’re unhappy with. Work your way through the spreadsheet.

My second favorite SEO strategy for meta optimisation is to use Google Search Console to spot easy wins in SEO. You want to identify pages that have a high ranking and low CTR, or have high impressions and low ranking.

1. Allow two weeks for Google to re-crawl your site if you’ve made recent changes to the titles or meta description.
2. Log into Google Webmaster Tools then go to the “Search Analytics” section.
3. Click the “Clicks”, “Impressions”, “CTR”, and “Position” check boxes.
4. Select the “Pages” radio icon because what you are about to do needs to be evaluated on a page-by-page basis:

5. Sort the pages with the most impressions at the top by clicking the “Impressions” column. For pages with high impressions (relative to your other pages), an average position above 20, and a low CTR (<5%), see if the meta description misses any of the seven steps. Consider a rewrite of the meta description to improve the CTR. Phrase Research is a tool where you can upload your Google Search Console search analytics data to quickly identify your best CTR opportunities. The tool looks at the average clicks for other search queries in the search position analysed.
6. Bonus tip: drill down to a specific page then click the “Queries” radio box to view queries for that page. Check if those keywords are included in your SEO on that page.
7. Second bonus tip: further optimise pages that have low rankings and high impressions. How could you make the page more completely answer the search queries it ranks for?
8. Super advanced bonus tip: split-test SERP results using SERP Turkey and Amazon Mechanical Turk.