Ecommerce SEO Services: What They Include and What to Ask
Ecommerce SEO services cover the problems an online store has that a brochure site does not: thousands of near-identical pages, filters that create infinite URLs, products that go out of stock, and category pages with nothing on them but a grid. A good programme fixes those first, then builds the category and guide content that brings buyers in, and measures revenue from organic search rather than traffic. This guide explains what to expect and what to ask.
- Category pages, not product pages, win most commercial searches for a store. Most programmes should start there.
- Faceted navigation, variants and out-of-stock handling cause most technical problems in ecommerce. Fix them at the template level.
- Product schema with price, availability and reviews still produces rich results. It is the highest-value structured data a store has.
- Measure revenue and non-branded clicks to category pages. Traffic alone is not a result for a store.
What ecommerce SEO services cover
Ecommerce SEO services cover four things: making the store crawlable and fast despite its size, making category and product pages answer the searches buyers make, marking products up so Google can show price and availability in results, and measuring organic revenue so decisions are based on money rather than rankings.
The order matters. A store with 20,000 URLs that Google is choosing not to index does not need more content; it needs fewer, better URLs. A store that is well indexed but whose category pages are a grid with a heading needs content on those pages before it needs a blog. And a store with no revenue tracking cannot tell the difference between the two.
One more thing that is specific to stores: assistants such as ChatGPT and Google's AI Overviews increasingly answer product questions with a shortlist. They draw on the same structured data and page content, plus shopping feeds. A store that has clean product data and clear category pages is the one that gets named.
The problems specific to online stores
Every store has some of these. An ecommerce SEO audit should name which ones you have and how many URLs each affects.
- Faceted navigation. Filters for size, colour, price and brand create URL combinations that Google treats as separate pages. Most should be blocked from indexing; a few, such as brand within a category, should be allowed because people search for them.
- Product variants. One product in eight colours can be eight pages with the same text. Decide on a canonical, and describe the variants on it.
- Thin category pages. A heading and a product grid gives Google nothing to rank. Category pages need a short, useful explanation of the range and how to choose.
- Out of stock and discontinued products. Deleted pages lose their rankings and links. Keep the page with a clear message and alternatives, or redirect it to the closest replacement.
- Internal search pages. They get indexed by accident and compete with categories. Block them.
- Pagination. Page two onward of a category should be crawlable and canonical to itself, not to page one.
- Duplicate descriptions from suppliers. The same product text on a hundred stores ranks on none of them. Rewrite the products that matter.
Most of these are template fixes, which means one change solves the problem across thousands of pages. The technical SEO service page describes how we find and fix them, and whether the fix is done on your platform or handed to your developer as a tested ticket.
What a good programme does, month by month
A store programme follows the same cycle as any other, weighted toward templates and categories. Here is what the first six months usually contain.
| Period | Work | What you should see |
|---|---|---|
| Month 1 | Crawl, index audit, revenue tracking, keyword map of categories against searches | A plan that says which templates and which categories come first |
| Months 2 to 3 | Template fixes: facets, canonicals, pagination, speed, product schema | Fewer indexed junk URLs, product rich results appearing, faster pages |
| Months 3 to 4 | Category page content for the top categories, rewritten product pages for the top sellers | Impressions rising on category pages for non-branded searches |
| Months 4 to 6 | Buying guides and comparison pages that link into categories, review process, internal linking | Clicks and revenue from organic to category and guide pages |
| Ongoing | New ranges, seasonal categories, refresh of what ranks, digital PR for the range | Year-over-year growth in organic revenue |
The content strategy page covers the category and guide content, and the rich results and schema page covers product markup. Together they are most of the visible work on a store programme.
Platform notes
The platform decides how much of the technical work is settings and how much is code. None of them are bad for SEO; each has habits to manage.
- Shopify: collections and products are well structured out of the box. Watch the duplicate product URLs created under collection paths, tag pages, and app scripts that slow the storefront.
- WooCommerce: flexible but dependent on the theme and plugins. Speed and facet handling are the usual work, and hosting matters more than on other platforms.
- Magento and Adobe Commerce: powerful layered navigation that creates a very large number of filter URLs. Facet rules are the first job.
- Headless and custom builds: rendering is the risk. If product data loads in the browser after the page, Google may not see it. Test with a rendered crawl before anything else.
- Marketplaces alongside your own store: your own site should carry the fuller content, or the marketplace listing will outrank it for your own products.
Our parent company builds software, so platform work is done rather than recommended. If your developer prefers to implement, we hand over tested tickets with exact changes.
How ecommerce SEO services are priced
Stores usually fit our Growth plan at CAD $4,500 a month, which is built for sites with hundreds of pages that need a content engine, or the Scale plan at CAD $8,500 a month for large catalogues, migrations and multi-language work. The pricing page lists the hours and deliverables in each. A one-time audit and 90-day plan is CAD $1,800 if you want the findings before committing.
Across the market, the cost of ecommerce SEO is driven by catalogue size, the platform, how many templates need work, whether the provider implements or only recommends, and how much content the categories need. Beware of per-keyword or per-page pricing; a store has too many of both for that to mean anything. Ask for hours and the list of what they buy.
How to judge the work
Judge a store programme on four numbers, read in your own accounts: non-branded clicks to category pages, organic revenue, the share of products showing price and availability in search results, and the number of indexed pages that should not be. Rankings for a handful of head terms tell you very little.
Ask any provider these before signing:
- Which of my templates will you change in the first 90 days, and will you do it or ticket it?
- How will you handle facets and variants, and how will I see the result in Search Console?
- Which categories will get content first, and why those?
- How will you attribute revenue to organic search, and will it be in a dashboard I own?
- What have you done on my platform before, and what went wrong?
Our guide on whether your SEO agency is working explains how to check the work monthly, and the analytics and reporting page shows how we tie organic visits to sales. To talk through your store, book a strategy call; we crawl the site first so the call is about your catalogue, not a slide deck.
Questions
What do ecommerce SEO services include?
Technical work on crawling, indexing, facets, variants and speed; content on category and product pages; product schema for rich results; buying guides that feed categories; and revenue measurement. The mix depends on what the audit finds.
Should I focus on product pages or category pages?
Category pages first, for almost every store. Buyers search for the type of thing more often than the exact product, and a category page can answer that search. Product pages matter for specific model and brand searches and for the best sellers.
How long does ecommerce SEO take to show results?
Template fixes and product rich results often show within weeks. Category content takes a few months to settle. Organic revenue growth is usually visible within six months when the store has a reasonable history. New stores in competitive categories take longer, and nobody can promise a date.
Does product schema still matter?
Yes. Product markup with price, availability and review data is one of the rich result types Google still shows, and it feeds shopping surfaces and AI answers as well. It is the highest-value structured data a store has.
What does ecommerce SEO cost?
Our Growth plan is CAD $4,500 a month and Scale is CAD $8,500, both month-to-month with hours and deliverables in writing. A one-time audit and plan is CAD $1,800. Market prices depend on catalogue size, platform and whether the provider implements the changes.