The Shopify Migration SEO Checklist: Keep Your Rankings

Re-platforming to Shopify can lower costs and speed up your team, but it is also the moment many stores lose organic traffic they spent years earning. Nearly every migration changes URLs, templates and internal links, and search engines have to re-learn your site. The good news: most losses are avoidable with a disciplined process.

This is the checklist we use when moving stores to Shopify, from projects like Gallery Furniture (Salesforce Commerce Cloud to Shopify), BroBasket (WooCommerce to Shopify Plus) and Holigos (Magento to Shopify).

Before you build: benchmark and crawl

1. Export performance data. Pull 12 to 16 months of Google Search Console data (queries and pages), analytics landing-page data and revenue by landing page. This tells you which URLs matter most.
2. Crawl the current site. Use a crawler such as Screaming Frog to list every URL, status code, title, meta description, H1, canonical and internal link.
3. List backlinked URLs. Export pages with external links from Search Console or a backlink tool; they need redirects even if they get little traffic.
4. Record rankings. Track your important keywords before migration so you can compare afterwards.
5. Save structured data and content. Note existing schema (products, reviews, breadcrumbs, FAQs) and copy for top pages.

Plan the URL structure and redirects

Shopify uses fixed patterns: /products/handle, /collections/handle, /pages/handle and /blogs/blog-name/handle. Plan handles carefully, keeping them short and keyword-relevant and, where possible, matching old slugs.

1. Build a redirect map for every old URL that has traffic, rankings or backlinks, pointing to the closest relevant new URL, not the home page.
2. Handle parameters and variants. Old filtered or variant URLs should point to the parent product or collection.
3. Avoid redirect chains. Old URLs should redirect in one hop to the final destination.
4. Import redirects into Shopify using the URL redirects tool or bulk CSV import, and test them on staging where possible.

Carry over on-page SEO

1. Titles and meta descriptions for products, collections and pages, improved where weak but not discarded.
2. Headings and body content. Collection descriptions and buying guides often drive rankings; migrate them rather than starting fresh.
3. Image alt text and file names.
4. Blog posts, with the same publish dates and authors where possible.
5. Structured data. Product, Offer, Review, BreadcrumbList and Organization schema in the new theme.

Technical setup in Shopify

1. Canonical tags. Shopify adds them automatically; check that collection-scoped product URLs canonicalize to /products/.
2. Robots.txt. Review Shopify's defaults and customize via robots.txt.liquid only if needed.
3. Sitemaps. Shopify generates /sitemap.xml automatically; confirm it lists the expected URLs.
4. International and language setup. For bilingual stores (common in Canada), configure Shopify Markets so hreflang tags are correct.
5. Site speed. Limit apps, compress images, lazy-load below-the-fold media and test Core Web Vitals.
6. Internal links. Update menus, footer, content links and breadcrumbs so they point to new URLs directly, not through redirects.

Launch day

1. Remove the storefront password and any noindex tags.
2. Point the domain and check that HTTPS works on every variation (www and non-www).
3. Test a sample of redirects from your map, especially top pages.
4. Submit the new sitemap in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.
5. Verify analytics, conversion tracking and Search Console ownership.

After launch: monitor for 8 to 12 weeks

1. Watch crawl errors and 404s in Search Console and add redirects for anything missed.
2. Compare rankings and traffic against your benchmark by page, not just site-wide.
3. Check indexing of key products and collections.
4. Update external links you control, such as social profiles, directories and marketplace listings.
5. Keep the old domain and redirects in place for at least a year.

A short dip in traffic is common after any migration while search engines re-crawl. A steady decline usually means missing redirects or lost content, which the steps above catch.

Platform-specific notes

• From Salesforce Commerce Cloud: SFCC URLs often include IDs and locale paths. Map them carefully; see our SFCC to Shopify guide.
• From WooCommerce: watch for category base paths and product tags indexed as pages.
• From BigCommerce: custom URL structures need one-to-one mapping. Our Shopify vs. BigCommerce guide covers the platforms' differences.

Planning a move? Our Shopify migration team handles the data, design and SEO together.

Frequently asked questions