To say that Shopify SEO Optimization can be complicated would be an understatement.
When dealing with Shopify SEO, here’s a small sample of what you should be considering, resolving, and optimizing on an ongoing basis:
- Indexing Problems
- Mobile Optimization
- Page Load Speed
- Content Issues
- Schema Markup
- HTTP vs. HTTPS
- Backlink Profile
- Bounce Rate
- Site Architecture
- Local & International SEO
- Content Quality
- Analytics and Tracking
Are you as overwhelmed as I am by reading that list?
As a sales and marketing specialist at Magical Apps, I surveyed about 600 Shopify store owners earlier this year to learn how I can help them get more out of their websites. I know most merchants already understand the importance of improving their SEO to enhance the visibility of their store online. But at the same time, they have enough to worry about when it comes to running their online store already. Doing SEO well takes time, effort, and knowledge.
Implementing good SEO is not a sprint, but rather a marathon. There aren’t many shortcuts to success. You can spend thousands of dollars to hire a consultant, but even then, it will take time.
What you have to do first is learn how to walk before you can run. In the context of SEO for Shopify stores, what I mean is to use a Shopify SEO app to help guide you through the basics and even automate some of the more tedious tasks for you.
A complete SEO strategy requires both on-page and off-page SEO tactics. But a good foundation for SEO typically begins with what is called “on-page technical SEO”.
In this article, I’ve compared the six best Shopify apps to get you started with on-site SEO for your Shopify store. Using any of these apps will help you build a strong foundation and prepare you for when you are ready to implement more advanced SEO strategies.
SEO Doctor is the Best on-page technical SEO app on Shopify
The best on-page technical SEO Shopify apps:
- SEO Doctor – Comprehensive SEO tools and best support but requires manual work on free plan.
- Avada SEO & Image Optimizer – Comprehensive on-site SEO features but expensive.
- Booster SEO – User-friendly but critical features are locked to high-priced tiers.
- Smart SEO – Affordable plans for stores of all sizes but limited features.
- SearchPie – Friendly, personalized support but dependent on AI and auto-generate features.
- SEO King – Critical SEO features available on lower-tiered plans but dependent on AI.
#1 SEO Doctor for Search Engines
Comprehensive SEO tools and best support but requires manual work on free plan.
Starts with a free plan and additional payment plans
SEO Doctor Pros vs. Cons
| SEO Doctor Pros | SEO Doctor Cons |
| Responsive and knowledgeable customer support Easy-to-Use Improves Organic Traffic Automated SEO Optimization On-Page SEO Issue Fixes Guided Checklist Bulk Issue Resolution Optimization Progress Tracking | Requires manual work if not on paid plan Slight learning curve |
SEO Doctor for Search Engines Overview
SEO Doctor is designed to assist online store owners in optimizing their e-commerce websites for search engines. The primary goal of the app is to improve search rankings and increase organic traffic by addressing various on-page SEO issues.
The app scans your store to identify and help you fix common on-page SEO issues. This includes optimizing meta tags (e.g., title tags, meta descriptions), handling broken links, and managing image file names. These optimizations are crucial for improving search engine visibility.
Setting up SEO Doctor is easy too – SEO Doctor also provides a guided checklist that assists you in addressing specific SEO issues associated with your products. This step-by-step approach ensures that you don’t miss any critical optimization tasks.
Users can reference SEO Doctor’s Guide to Frequently Asked Questions for answers to common questions about the app, but their support team also provides friendly and helpful assistance by email.
Store owners can save time by setting conditions and rules using the app’s autopilot feature to fix SEO issues in bulk. This automation is particularly beneficial for larger stores with extensive product catalogs.
The app offers tools to monitor the progress of your SEO optimization efforts. This includes a dynamic overall score and a ranking chart, allowing you to gauge the impact of your optimizations on search engine rankings over time.
SEO Doctor for Search engines helps merchants simplify and automate the process of on-page SEO optimization for e-commerce stores. It provides a comprehensive set of tools and features to help store owners address common SEO issues, track progress, and ultimately improve their search engine rankings, potentially leading to increased organic traffic and sales. This can be particularly valuable for Shopify merchants looking to enhance their online presence and competitiveness in the e-commerce space.
SEO Doctor for Search Engines helps merchants simplify and automate the process of on-page SEO optimization for e-commerce stores.
SEO Doctor for Search Engines Reviews
With a 4.6 star rating out of 5, merchants are writing about how effective this app is in enhancing their website’s SEO and boosting their site speed. Users also mention how much they like the autopilot feature, insights on SEO errors, and competitor comparison tools.
Along with reporting an increase in organic traffic, sales and improved rankings, users are also really pleased with the customer support they are receiving.
Merchants who are new to SEO can’t stop talking about how easy and helpful SEO Doctor is. Run Inspired Designs talks about their experience as SEO novices, “I’ve already implemented the suggestions and am starting to see an increase in my traffic. There is more work to be done, but at least with SEO Doctor, I know what needs to be improved.”
Talking about the impact SEO Doctor has had on their website, Natalie Ryan Design mentions, “Without me doing ANYTHING this app got my SEO score to about 80%… SEO is a minefield and I think this app has definitely been an important part of my web strategy.”
With organic ratings being so important to merchants, Deals King Australia shares how easy it is to use this app, “This is the one Essential App you need if you are serious about boosting your organic rankings. It works and is easy to manage”
#2 Avada SEO & Image Optimizer
Comprehensive on-site SEO features, but expensive for medium-to-large stores.
Starts with a free plan and additional payment plans
Avada SEO & Image Optimizer Pros vs. Cons
| Avada SEO & Image Optimizer Pros | Avada SEO & Image Optimizer Cons |
| Comprehensive on-site SEO features Focused on page speed optimization Good reputation with 4.9 rating and high customer satisfaction | Expensive for stores with 50+ products Important features locked to higher plan |
Avada SEO & Image Optimizer Overview
Avada SEO is a Shopify app that offers a comprehensive set of tools and features aimed at supercharging your website’s SEO efforts and improving its overall performance.
The app focuses on optimizing page speed, which is critical for user experience and SEO. It achieves this through features like image optimization, smart speed enhancements, and lazy loading. These improvements can lead to faster page loading times, helping to retain visitors and potentially boosting search engine rankings.
Avada SEO provides tools to optimize various on-page SEO elements. This includes optimizing meta tags (e.g., title tags, meta descriptions), local business information, and Google structured data. Properly optimized meta tags and structured data can enhance your website’s visibility in search engine results.
The app conducts automated SEO audits for different types of pages on your website, such as product pages, collection pages, and blog posts. These audits help identify SEO issues and suggest improvements, making it easier for you to optimize your content.
Managing broken links is essential for both user experience and SEO, as they can negatively affect your site’s credibility. Avada SEO also detects broken links on your website and offers solutions for page redirection.
The app provides detailed SEO reports that highlight issues that need attention. These reports can serve as a valuable resource for identifying and addressing SEO problems.
To help you stay informed about critical SEO problems, Avada SEO offers automated email notifications for SEO issues. This ensures that you can address issues promptly.
The app includes performance-tracking tools that allow you to monitor your SEO efforts over time. This feature helps you gauge the impact of your optimizations and stay competitive in search rankings.
The app supports JSON-LD structured data, which can provide additional context to search engines about your content. Additionally, its app listing page mentions “Chat GPT” to improve page speed and ranking, although specific details about this feature are not provided in the overview so we are not sure what this exactly looks like.
As comprehensive as Avada SEO may be, the price point can be expensive with their first paid plan jumping straight to $34.95/month. This might make some merchants reluctant to try this app since you can find more affordable apps that essentially offer the same service. However, one thing we can’t neglect to mention is their 24/7 live chat support which really does set their customer support apart from the other apps.
Avada SEO & Image Optimizer Reviews
With a whopping 5 thousand five-star reviews, Avada SEO comes in with an impressive 4.9 star overall rating. Users are talking about how user-friendly the app is, how effective its optimization features are, and the improvement of their site speed, load times, and organic traffic. Merchants also appreciate the app’s keyword tracking and competitor analysis features.
Talking about the improvement of their website speed, Backpackinglight also mentions the app’s ease of use, “The shop feels a bit faster and more responsive, and the speed score doubled (big improvement). It is quite easy to use – most features only require you to turn them on.”
With ease of use being such a common theme for users, happiness with the level of customer support is also very prevalent. So Cute I Need One Too shares their experience, “I would recommend this app because it is user-friendly. Not knowing what I am doing it has tons of information along with links to show you how to do each task…. I had Jasmine help me today and she was awesome. I got better help today than the help I have paid for. ”
With efficiency being so important in the e-commerce world, belteleachat highlights the benefit of automation Avada SEO offers, “The app is very detailed and point out all issues with your SEO and how to improve, it has a lot of automations which saves you a lot of time.”
#3 Booster SEO & Image Optimizer
User-friendly interface, but critical features are locked to high-priced tiers.
Starts with a free plan and additional payment plans
Booster SEO & Image Optimizer Pros vs. Cons
| Booster SEO Pros | Booster SEO Cons |
| User-friendly interface Free plan available to all store sizes 4.9 rating and high customer satisfaction 7-day free trial | Limited features on free plan. No meta tags or broken links. Image compression only available on $69/mo plan |
Booster SEO & Image Optimizer Overview
Booster SEO & Image Optimizer is an all-in-one SEO tool. It focuses on improving website rankings, optimizing page load speed, and enhancing overall SEO scores.
The app emphasizes reliability and is backed by a team of over 30 professionals with nearly a decade of experience in the SEO space. It also claims to adhere to strict guidelines on SEO best practices, assuring users of dependable solutions.
A key focus of the app is to set up users for on-page SEO success, which is crucial for achieving higher rankings in Google search results.
Booster SEO offers a bulk image compression engine to enhance page load speed and improve SEO scores. Faster-loading pages can enhance user experience and potentially improve search engine rankings.
The app helps ensure that meta tags, including title tags and meta descriptions, are both relevant and optimized. These elements are essential for ranking and conversion optimization.
Users can leverage the AutoPilot feature, which identifies and rectifies SEO issues based on customizable rules. This automation can save time and ensure that your store remains optimized. Merchants should note that the AutoPilot feature relates only to your store’s page title and meta description.
The app provides tools for monitoring and automatically redirecting broken links, which can have a detrimental effect on SEO. Managing these issues can help maintain and improve your website’s search engine performance.
Booster SEO & Image Optimizer Reviews
This is another app that customers are happy about the SEO analysis and image optimization it offers. Users are talking about the performance insights, suggestions to improve SEO, and the analytics Booster SEO offers to help them make decisions. Merchants are experiencing an increase in traffic to their stores, improvement in their rankings, and even an increase in sales. Like other highly used apps, their customer support is continuously praised where it is common to see mentions of staff names.
With the performance of apps being so important to the end user, ALATAYS writes about how much time this app saves them, “Great app and does exactly what it says it will do, Quick and easy and only a couple of clicks and has saved me hours and hours of work in one click.”
Merchants may go through many apps to find the right fit, Cultureopolis talks about how customer support convinced them that Booster SEO was for them, “We’ve gone through 4-5 different SEO apps trying to find the right fit. Confident after chatting with Trish and the support provided that Booster SEO & Image Optimizer is the perfect fit for our store.”
Users may wonder if they are getting their money’s worth with apps, Top Deck Inn speaks to this issue by saying “….with the support of Pat and her team, I feel that I’m able to manage my searches and breakdown my customers search results, making me able to create ads more suitable for my customers. Definitely worth the price”
#4 Smart SEO
Affordable plans for stores of all sizes, but limited features comparatively.
Starts with a free plan and additional payment plans
Smart SEO Pros vs. Cons
| Smart SEO Pros | Smart SEO Cons |
| Automatic meta tag generation Automatic broken link fixes Responsive customer service team User-friendly interface Affordable plans for larger stores | Limited features on free plan. No meta tags or broken links. Image compression only available on $69/mo plan |
Smart SEO Overview
Smart SEO is a comprehensive Shopify app designed to solidify your website’s SEO foundation, ultimately leading to improved rankings, increased organic traffic, and higher sales. With a focus on simplifying the complexities of SEO, Smart SEO equips online store owners with the necessary tools and automation to address critical SEO areas effortlessly.
This app streamlines the process of creating relevant product Meta Tags, instantly saving valuable time and effort. Properly optimized Meta Tags are essential for improving search engine visibility.
Smart SEO also offers image optimization capabilities, which play a crucial role in SEO by enhancing page load speed and user experience, factors that contribute to higher rankings in search engine results pages (SERPs).
With this app focusing on optimizing page speed, it can result in a better user experience (UX) and improved rankings in SERPs. Faster-loading pages can reduce bounce rates and keep visitors engaged.
The app provides support for JSON-LD structured data, aiding Google in better understanding your store’s content. This can lead to more informative and visually appealing search results, potentially increasing click-through rates.
Smart SEO includes a feature that automatically detects and fixes broken links within your store. Managing broken links is essential for preserving SEO rankings and ensuring a seamless user experience.
The app also comes with reporting features that list backlinks to your website so you have more control over your link-building strategy. The report includes a total list count for detected backlinks and information about each backlink, including where it’s coming from and the date it was added to the report.
Although some apps on this list have a keyword-suggestion feature, this app does not have that. So you’ll need to know what keywords are best for your products to get the most of this app.
Smart SEO Reviews
Upon reading reviews for Smart SEO it’s clear that the customer service team is responsive and helpful. Should you run into any issues with the setup, it is recommended you reach out to them asap so they can help you resolve the issue.
MAVEN Wallets from Canada said, “The team discovered an issue with my code that was interfering with this app and…they fixed it within a couple of hours. Appreciate this help and service.”
For the most part, the app should be easy to set up based on most user reviews. Women Go Swish noted this saying, “The app is very user friendly and the customer support is outstanding.”
Many other users also attest that the app does what it says, so there aren’t any reviews of users finding that the app misled them or was missing features.
However, some users have run into trouble installing the app, which might come from code or other existing apps interfering with the Smart SEO.
#5 SearchPie: SEO Booster & Speed
Friendly, personalized support, but features are dependent on AI.
Starts with a free plan and additional payment plans.
SearchPie: SEO Booster & Speed Pros vs. Cons
| SearchPie Pros | SearchPie Cons |
| High-touch personalized support Keyword Explore feature to identify best keywords SEO reports include actionable to-do list | Customized meta tags locked to higher rate plan Dependent on AI features Not ideal for large stores with thousands of products |
SearchPie: SEO Booster & Speed Overview
Similar to the other apps on this list, SearchPie focuses on simplifying on-site SEO and provides a balance of both self-serve tools and automation to address critical SEO issues.
SearchPie uses AI to generate product meta tags to save you time and effort. The app also offers a keyword suggestion feature called Keyword Explore, providing real-time recommendations to help you target the best keywords for your products. This feature can significantly enhance your SEO efforts by ensuring you’re focusing on the most relevant and high-impact keywords.
SearchPie also generates image alt text and automatically compresses images for you, too. Image compression is one of many features that help to reduce page load speed. Faster load times will also improve the user experience, help reduce bounce rates and keep visitors engaged.
The app supports JSON-LD structured data which helps search engines like Google understand the content on your site better. In general, Google recommends using JSON-LD for structured data if your site’s setup allows it, as it’s the easiest solution for website owners to implement and maintain at scale.
The app provides SEO audits, offering actionable insights into your store’s SEO health with an SEO score. These audits cover general on-site SEO issues such as meta descriptions, alt text, and keyword usage, helping you fine-tune your SEO strategy.
SearchPie: SEO Booster & Speed Reviews
SearchPie has 4 plans to choose from including a free plan. Many users report receiving personalized support, even on the free plan. Kitty Klingers wrote “Worked with Wendy, on the free plan she walked me through all the functionality and helped setup my SEO plan. The process took about 30 minutes.”
The support users receive is high-touch. One user TGD Studio says, “They took the time to understand my specific business goals and guided me through.”
Generally, reviews are favourable with a whopping 3,921 reviews and 4.9 rating. It’s common to find generally satisfactory reviews like “It is a good app because they will support you through the process.”
#6 SEO King
Critical SEO features available on lower-tiered plans, but dependent on AI.
Starts with a free plan and additional payment plans
SEO King Pros vs. Cons
| SEO King Pros | SEO King Cons |
| Affordable plans for stores of all sizes Meta titles and description content generation Unlimited bulk edits of image names & alt text on lower plan 14-day free trial | Customized meta tags locked to higher plan Dependent on AI features Not ideal for stores with 1000+ products |
SEO King Overview
SEO King is another on-site SEO tool that helps you analyze your store, diagnose the problems impacting your rankings, and give you the solutions to outrank your rivals.
The app comes with a keyword planner that identifies the most used keywords across your store, and creates a list with the frequency of those keywords. This helps with overall SEO planning and is useful when crafting meta tags and titles. SEO King also offers keyword suggestions, helping you identify the best keywords to target for your products.
The app’s AI features also write SEO-optimized product descriptions, putting those top keywords into practice and saving you time and effort in writing your own product descriptions.
Similarly to other SEO apps, SEO King will use AI to generate meta titles and descriptions for your store. Properly optimized meta tags are essential for improving your visibility on search engines and attracting more potential customers.
The app also offers image compression and image optimization features to improve your store’s loading time and page speeds.
SEO King allows for the bulk editing of image alt text. This is a huge time-saver for stores because the process of bulk editing alt text natively is difficult for most store merchants.
Overall SEO King distinguishes itself with its user-friendliness, advanced automation, and comprehensive features, making it a top choice for Shopify store owners looking to improve their on-site SEO.
SEO King Overview
SEO King has an established reputation with 1,091 reviews and a 4.6 rating.
Most reviews address the value in the app’s ability to eliminate tedious tasks of on-site optimization. “The app makes many things in the SEO area much easier. Be it renaming images without having to re-upload them, or monitoring 404 errors and then easily fixing them with the app.” cited by TECBULL.
Another user DCLToys also commented, “SEO King does a really good job of automating tedious SEO tasks.”
Another important consideration with SEO apps is whether or not they deliver results. Good Vibes Thread Co. says SEO King has “provided exceptional SEO services that have greatly improved my website’s visibility and traffic.” so some users report seeing an increase in traffic after using the app.
Compared to other apps on this list, SEO King does have a slightly lower ranking. Their 1-star and 2-star reviews include some complaints about billing issues, receiving inadequate customer support, and having some automation override Shopify features that are necessary for site functions such as product images being deleted.
Conclusion
Improving your on-site SEO is crucial for fixing common issues that are stifling your store’s performance and visibility.
Although Shopify offers some built-in features that help automate some on-site SEO for you, they are often inadequate and result in SEO issues that usually need to be corrected natively or with an app.
The best way to improve your store’s on-site SEO with minimal time and effort is with an app. The six apps we’ve reviewed offer a range of features to help you tackle on-page technical SEO effectively.
SEO Doctor is our top pick for most stores. It comes with a comprehensive set of automated SEO tools that handle everything from meta tags to broken links. It also comes with a guided checklist to help walk you through the process and improve your on-site SEO thoroughly.
SEO Doctor’s bulk editing features save merchants plenty of time that would otherwise be wasted writing alt text, meta titles, or meta descriptions manually. The autopilot feature allows you to save further time if you’re too busy to monitor your on-site SEO going forward.
Merchants are also eligible for fast and friendly support should they need any assistance using the app.
SEO Doctor
Use the SEO Doctor for Search Engines app for access SEO tools to audit and optimize your store on autopilot. Improve your search ranking and sell more.