Shopify International SEO: A Complete Guide

But it’s important to handle this with care to make sure you get in front of the right audiences in the right countries. You may need to consider multiple languages or alternative products for different regions. And you don’t want this development to destroy the organic visibility you’ve already built up.

In this guide, you’ll get practical advice on Shopify international SEO. You’ll get insights into the structural decisions, the technical detail and the localisation work that international SEO needs to work well.

Does Shopify Markets handle international SEO automatically?

Shopify Markets does a good chunk of the technical work for you, but not everything. It generates hreflang tags automatically and includes them in your sitemap. Out of the box, you get the tools to set local pricing, currencies and domains per market.

But there are still aspects you’ll need to cover yourself. Shopify Markets won’t do your local keyword research. It won’t write your product and content pages in each local language. And it won’t decide the right URL structure for your business. Those are strategic decisions that you’ll need to make yourself.

How can I optimise my Shopify store for international search engines?

There are four key areas to focus on in Shopify. Firstly, you need to choose the right store structure for each market.

You need properly localised content that connects authentically with your international audience. Then you need to signal to search engines which page belongs to which country and language. That’s where hreflang comes in.

You also need solid technical foundations for every market version of your Shopify ecommerce site. That includes canonicals, indexation and performance. We go into this, and more, in detail below.

Choosing the right international Shopify structure

Country-specific domains, subfolders or subdomains

Shopify gives you a few options for structuring your international domains.

Subfolders

This structure keeps everything under a single, primary domain. You add a country code to the end of your existing root domain. For example, ecommercestore.com/fr or ecommercestore.com/it

Subfolders are a reasonable option for SEO because you retain domain authority. But be aware that this structure isn’t totally clear to search engines and users that it’s a different version of your ecommerce site. It can work for language variants but might not be the most performing for localisation signals.

Subdomains

Subdomains (or subdirectories) still indicate the region, but offer a little more separation than subfolders. For example, the structure would be fr.ecommercestore.com or it.ecommercestore.com.

It may appear like a middling option, but it’s not great for your customers or search engines. It’s a messy solution. The url isn’t clean for customers and you’re not creating decent signals for Google either. It’s a lose-lose option really.

Country-code top level domains (ccTLDs)

This is a country-specific domain and sends the strongest signal to search engines and customers that you’re relevant locally. For example, ecommercestore.fr or ecommercestore.it

If you’re in France and see a .fr ecommerce site, you know that the products, pricing and content are relevant to you. You’re more likely to click through. Google also picks up on that location signal and authority’s passed through hreflang tags.

You do need to continue to build SEO authority in every market. Shopify makes it pretty simple to deal with multiple sites, collating them in one handy dashboard. It’s the strongest solution to build your business in each region.

What URL structure does Shopify Markets use?

Shopify Markets is built primarily around subfolders and subdomains. You can connect a country-specific domain you already own to an individual market if you’d prefer though.

Shopify Markets applies that consistently across your sitemap, canonical tags and hreflang setup.

Bear in mind that the URL structure you pick at the start effectively becomes the backbone of your whole international SEO setup. So, it’s worth getting it right from the outset rather than changing it later.

Shopify Markets vs expansion stores

Your choice between Shopify Markets and expansion stores shapes everything that comes afterwards. So it’s important to make an informed decision.

Shopify Markets

Shopify Markets really simplifies international ecommerce SEO. You can manage multiple regions from a single store. It supports custom pricing and fulfilment rules per market. Helpfully, it handles hreflang automatically too. And you don’t need to upgrade to Shopify Plus to access this.

The downside is that your content’s mirrored across markets. You’re not running fully independent ecommerce sites. Your products and content are simply localised rather than being bespoke to each location.

If you’re expanding from a single market to multiple, Shopify Markets scales pretty smoothly. You can add new markets with configuration rather than a more complex technical rebuild.

Expansion stores

If flexibility’s a priority, expansion stores tick the box. You can produce unique copy for each region, rather than just translated content. Your inventory and product fulfilment is specific to each region too. That’s ideal for markets that need different product ranges or have a dedicated local team.

However, you do need Shopify Plus to access this. And each of your stores needs its own hreflang implementation set up manually or via an app.

Expansion stores don’t scale in the same way as Shopify Markets either. Every time you add a store, you duplicate your app stack, your theme maintenance and your content workload. And that’s an additional ongoing operational cost.

What is hreflang and why does it matter?

Here comes the techy, but very important part of international SEO, bit.

Basically, hreflang tells search engines which version of your webpage to show to which audience, depending on their language and location. It takes out the guesswork. Search engines don’t have to work out whether your product pages in different languages are duplicate content or two alternate versions. There’s a specific language code tag to tell them.

Hreflang helps each market’s version of your site rank on its own terms.

Does Shopify Markets set up hreflang tags properly?

Once you’ve set up international subfolders (such as /fr/, /de/, /en-gb/) or connected domains per market through Shopify Markets, hreflang tags are created automatically for each active market.

No manual code required. That’s a huge advantage over managing hreflang by hand. It’s always worth spot-checking though. You can find gaps crop up after events like a theme update or addition of a new market.

Localising your Shopify store for each market

Putting in the effort to produce truly localised content makes a big difference to your international SEO. Simply Google translating content from another site may seem like a shortcut, but it tends to lack authenticity, cultural nuances and local keywords. And that negatively impacts your search rankings and conversion rates.

To produce truly unique, local content for each region, you need expansion stores rather than Shopify Markets.

Proper localisation means:

• Product and category pages: Written with local search volumes and cultural behaviours in mind.
• Metadata: Page titles, meta descriptions, alt text – every aspect of metadata – need to be optimised for the search queries people actually make in that language.
• Blog content: Tailor content to local interests, seasons and their problems you can solve. What works in one country may not be applicable elsewhere.

Local keyword research should underpin all of this. Search volume, phrasing and even the questions people ask can differ significantly market to market.

Shopify international SEO checklist

And finally, here’s your international SEO best practice checklist to run through when creating your Shopify site.

• URL structure: Apply a a consistent, SEO-friendly format (subfolder, subdomain or domain) across every market.
• Hreflang: Check every page has hreflang tags, links back correctly to its alternates in other markets and is included in your sitemap.
• Regional redirects: Don’t automatically redirect an IP address. Create a banner or pop-up to ask if a user wants to use their local site rather than the one they’re on (eg from US site to UK).
• Local keyword research: Find out what search queries people actually make in that market.
• Content localisation: Don’t simply use Google to translate content. Create authentic versions that connect with local people. Have a native speaker verify its tone and copy too.
• Canonicals: Make sure each localised page points to itself, not to your primary market’s version.
• Indexation: Confirm every market’s pages are actually being crawled and indexed by search engines. Look out for any that have been blocked or are missing from the sitemap.
• Local currency: Ensure your pricing displays correctly and consistently for each market and its currency.
• Inventory and fulfilment: Check that the products shown as available in each market reflect what you can actually deliver there.
• Performance by market: Use Google Analytics and Google Search Console to monitor metrics like rankings, organic traffic and conversion rates per market.

Take a look at our Shopify SEO checklist for further help.

International SEO help

Expanding to new markets isn’t as simple as copying, translating and pasting existing content for a different country. There are multiple aspects of international SEO that need to be considered and applied.

This guide and checklist is your starting point and will give you plenty of food for thought. But if you’d like some professional help with your international ecommerce SEO, please contact us. We’d be happy to help.