Optimise A Product Page For SEO: Six Fields, Then The Markup

To optimise an ecommerce product page for SEO, work through six fields you already control, in a set order. The title tag comes first with the listing text under it, then the copy and the images. Delivery and returns follow, and reviews come last.

When a product page isn’t ranking, I check first that it has been given a keyword at all, then whether it ranks for it. A page with no keyword gets one worked through its copy, along with the content sections a buyer needs.

Do it on the twenty products that already take orders before you touch the rest of the catalogue. Then check the page source, since your Shopify theme writes Product markup from those same fields and some of it is often empty.

Change The Title, Copy, Images And Trust Facts, In That Order

To find those twenty, sort your Shopify orders report by product for the last ninety days and take the top of the list, since those pages have already proved there is demand for them.

Each step fixes a different reason an ecommerce product page fails. A weak title loses the click before anyone sees the page. Once a shopper lands, thin copy or a poor photo sends them back to the results. When they stay, the order usually goes at the last moment because the delivery and returns details aren't on the page, or no review is there to settle the doubt.

In the Shopify admin the six live in different corners, so it helps to know where before you start. The title tag and the search listing sit under Search engine listing at the foot of each product. The copy is the description editor and the photos are under Media, while delivery comes from your shipping profiles and returns from your policies.

1. Write The Title Tag In The Words Shoppers Type

On Oliver Sweeney's Ludham Off White trainers page the title tag reads Ludham Off White | Men's Trainers | Oliver Sweeney. Ludham is a range name few shoppers would think to type. The useful words in that result are the two in the middle.

Your own title tags can do the same job. In the Shopify admin this is the page title field under Search engine listing, which sits apart from the product name printed as the H1, so a range name can stay on the page while the result leads with the product type, material and colour.

Keep it inside about sixty characters with your store name at the end. Then read it out loud, because a shopper who has never heard of you should know what you sell from that line alone.

2. Write The Search Listing Description Yourself

In the Shopify admin, the meta description is the box under Search engine listing. Leave it blank and the theme fills it for you with the opening lines of the product copy.

Templates can be worse: the Ludham trainers page above opens its description with Shop Ludham Off White, then the store's own domain.

Write two sentences by hand for each best seller instead.

Say what it is and give the one fact that makes someone choose it, such as the size range or the material.

Afterwards, check the page source for a second meta description tag. Some themes print two, and Google often shows the theme's version instead of yours.

3. Rewrite The Supplier's Description By Hand

When you optimise an ecommerce product page for SEO, supplier copy is often the biggest thing holding it back.

A check of 1,000 Shopify stores by Vizup found 20% of product descriptions appearing near-verbatim on another domain. Usually that's a reseller or marketplace selling the same item. There's no penalty for that, though. Google picks one page from the group to show, and it's rarely the smaller store.

Rewrite it by hand, starting with the copy you share with the most resellers. Keep raw AI out of it, because forty stockists prompting one model get forty matching pages. Put a short summary by the buy button and the detail lower down, where the measurements, the fit and the questions customers email about belong. My post on writing product copy that sells covers the tone and structure.

4. Name Every Image File After The Product In It

The file name and the alt text are the words attached to a picture. On the white faux silk hand fan page at Oddballs the main photo shows the right fan. Its file, though, is called LED_Fan_Veils_-_123_LED_Light_Up_Glowing_Performance_Fans_for_Dancers_4324.jpg, which is another product's name riding on a good image.

Rename the files before you upload them, and write alt text that says what the photo shows, such as white faux silk hand fan on a wooden frame. Alt text carries more weight than the file name, so write it first and fix the file names as you upload new photos.

Size matters too. Under Google's 2026 product data update, product feed images smaller than 500 by 500 pixels have drawn warnings since 14th April, with enforcement from 31st January 2027. Treat that as a floor and shoot well above it, because a product shown at full width on a phone needs the extra detail.

Bigger files slow a phone down, so compress them as well. I cover image weight on a Shopify store separately, but a slow page loses the sale long before it loses the ranking.

5. Put Delivery And Returns Where The Shopper Decides

The dispatch cut-off and the returns window often sit in a footer link when they belong under the price. That spot is where a shopper weighs up whether to order today, so put the delivery cost there too.

Write them as plain facts under the price, for example free delivery over a set spend and next-day dispatch for orders placed by 2pm.

If you also send a product feed to Google, set the same promise there. Google's feed now takes a handling cut-off for each product as well as for the whole account.

6. Collect Reviews Honestly And Show Them On The Page

A buyer who writes that the zip sticks, or that the strap takes a 15-inch laptop, has added a sentence your description doesn't have. It's also the sentence a hesitant shopper scrolls down looking for, which is why reviews feed rankings as well as sales.

Ask for one automatically a week or so after delivery, and if you offer something in return, say so clearly beside the reviews.

That disclosure matters because your reviews app writes those ratings into the product markup, so one undisclosed incentive puts every star on the listing at risk. Google's guidelines name money, discounts, vouchers and free products as incentives a shopper has to be told about.

Those same guidelines also stop you marking up ratings that were collected on a marketplace. More on collecting them is in my post on reviews and other social proof.

Read The Product Markup Your Shopify Theme Already Writes

You almost certainly have product markup already.

Shopify prints it with one line of Liquid that passes the product through the structured_data filter. An item with no variants comes out as a schema.org Product, and one with sizes or colours as a product group. This half of the work to optimise an ecommerce product page for SEO needs no new code, only a careful read of what the theme wrote.

Open a best seller and view the page source, then search for application/ld+json. You can also paste the URL into the Rich Results Test, and either way you check each field against what a shopper sees on that product page.

Empty Image And Description Fields Cost The Merchant Listing

That same Ludham trainers page shows a shopper photos and copy. Its markup, though, carries an empty image list and an empty description.

Image is one of the properties a merchant listing needs, so markup that sends an empty list rules the listing out. If a template or an SEO app writes empty values like these, one fix to that template repairs every product at once.

Set The Product Category Before Google Reads It As Uncategorized

Leave the category empty and the markup on that product page has nothing true to say about what you're selling. Your markup can then carry the word Uncategorized instead, which is worse than leaving the property out altogether.

Google reads the category from the page markup as well as from the product feed, so set it on every product.

The Explorer Waterproof Down Parka page at Passenger shows what a complete version looks like: the full category path ending Coats & Jackets > Parkas, a GTIN for each size and its 4.5-star rating from 20 reviews. Use it as the checklist for your own best seller, since each of those is a property Google reads when it builds a merchant listing.

Keep Sizes On One URL Under One Product Group

Shopify adds a variant number to the address when a shopper picks one, and the theme's canonical tag points those addresses back to the main product URL. That's consolidation, and there's no duplicate content penalty involved.

That parka marks its five sizes as one product group that varies by size, each size with its own SKU and price.

Drop FAQ Markup But Keep The FAQ Block

Google stopped showing FAQ rich results for every site on 7th May 2026, so FAQ markup on a product page earns nothing now.

If an app still adds it to your product template, switch that feature off, because it's code on every page with no payoff.

Your customers' questions still earn their place. Pick three or four from your customer emails and answer each in a single plain sentence under the description, where they catch long-tail searches such as whether a jacket fits over a jumper.

Give AI Shopping The Same Fields, Not New Markup

Shopify now passes product data to AI platforms through its catalogue for AI channels, and the help page lists what it reads. That list is the six fields above plus the category and the variants you've just checked.

Even so, being included doesn't guarantee a product appears in any particular answer, so the data still has to be good. None of this changes with the route a shopper takes, whether that's a search result, a free listing from your product feed or an AI assistant.

Send Links To The Product From Pages That Already Rank

Product pages earn fewer links than they deserve. A reviewer or a best-of roundup will link to one, and those links are worth chasing. Most of a product page's authority still has to come from the rest of your store, where best sellers are often short of it.

Run a Screaming Frog crawl and sort the product URLs by inlinks. You'll often find a best seller linked only from its collection grid. Give each one links from three kinds of page:

• 1. Its parent collection pages, in the intro copy as well as the grid.
• 2. The related products shoppers buy with it.
• 3. The buying guide or blog post that already ranks for its topic.

Name the product in the anchor text and keep each source to two or three products, so every link carries weight. Linking is the last job when you optimise an ecommerce product page for SEO, and the only one that happens away from the page itself. My post on internal linking from strong pages covers choosing where those links come from.

Get Your Product Pages And Their Markup Fixed

Fixing the six fields and the markup on your best sellers is the core of our on-page SEO work. Where a fault sits in the theme template, it can be fixed once for the whole catalogue rather than page by page.

Theme-level fixes like that are routine for an ecommerce SEO agency focused on product markup, because one template change reaches every product at once.

To see which searches your store already wins, claim a free SEO audit. Page one lists your top keywords with their positions and share of traffic. Page two shows valuable commercial keywords competitors win where you are not on page one, with monthly demand. It comes back the same day as a two-page PDF, with no call and nothing to pay.