How to migrate to Shopify without losing SEO

Why do stores lose SEO when they move to Shopify?

Search engines rank individual URLs, not stores. When a migration changes a URL and nothing tells search engines where the page went, the old address returns a 404, its accumulated authority is lost and the new page has to earn its position from scratch.

Shopify makes this almost certain to happen, because its URL structure is fixed. Products live under /products/, collections under /collections/, content pages under /pages/ and articles under /blogs/<blog>/. A Salesforce Commerce Cloud, WooCommerce or Magento store rarely uses those paths, so nearly every URL changes. That is manageable, as long as each change is planned.

How do you build the URL inventory and redirect map?

Collect old URLs from several sources, because no single one is complete. Combine them, remove duplicates and decide where each one should go.

• A full crawl of the current store, including category pagination and filtered pages that are indexable.
• The platform's own export of products, categories and content pages.
• The Search Console performance and indexing reports, which show URLs that earn impressions.
• Analytics landing pages and backlink reports, which surface old URLs still receiving traffic or links.

Map each old URL to its closest Shopify equivalent: product to product, category to collection, article to article. Send a retired product to its parent collection rather than the homepage. Point every redirect straight at its final destination, and update redirects left over from earlier migrations so you do not create chains.

Shopify stores redirects under URL redirects in the admin and accepts a CSV import, which is the practical route for thousands of rows. A Shopify redirect only fires when the old path does not resolve to a live page, so test the map against the finished store, not an empty one.

What else has to carry over besides redirects?

A redirect passes authority, but the destination page still has to match what ranked. Content that gets thinner or loses its metadata can slip even with a perfect redirect map.

• Titles and meta descriptions: import them into each product, collection and page's SEO fields instead of letting Shopify generate them from the product name.
• Structured data: confirm the theme outputs Product markup with price, availability and reviews where you had them before, plus breadcrumb and organization markup.
• Canonical tags: Shopify themes emit a canonical through canonical_url, and product URLs nested under a collection canonicalize to /products/<handle>. Check that custom templates and apps keep that behavior.
• Image alt text: product image alt text is a separate field, so migrate it explicitly. It is easy to lose and it matters for image search and accessibility.
• Internal links: update links in descriptions, blog posts and navigation to the new URLs so the site does not lean on its own redirects.
• Content depth: keep category and product copy, FAQs and reviews. A shorter page at a new URL is a different page to a search engine.

What should you check before and after launch?

Do the checks in two passes. The first catches mistakes while they are still cheap to fix, and the second confirms search engines see what you expect.

1. Pre-launch crawl: crawl the staging store and compare titles, descriptions, canonicals, headings and structured data against the old site.
2. Redirect test: run the full list of old URLs and confirm each returns a single 301 to a page that returns 200.
3. Launch in a planned cutover window, then remove the storefront password, check that robots.txt does not block crawling and that no template carries a stray noindex.
4. Submit Shopify's generated /sitemap.xml in Search Console, and use the Change of Address tool if the domain itself changed.
5. Monitor Search Console daily for the first weeks: page indexing, 404s, crawl stats and performance compared with the period before launch.
6. Fix what the data shows: add redirects for old URLs that still 404, and review any page that lost clicks against its old version.

Some movement in rankings is normal while search engines recrawl. Lasting drops usually trace back to a missing redirect, a page that lost content or a template that changed metadata, and the checks above are designed to find those.

How does SigmaBit approach Shopify migrations?

SigmaBit migrates stores to Shopify from Salesforce Commerce Cloud, WordPress/WooCommerce, Magento and Adobe Commerce, and custom or legacy platforms such as BigCommerce and PrestaShop. Every migration covers the full inventory: catalog, customers, order history, content, integrations and SEO.

We map every existing URL to its Shopify equivalent with 301 redirects, carry over titles, meta descriptions and structured data, rebuild the integrations that matter and cut over in a planned window. After launch we verify the new store in Search Console, so rankings, revenue and reporting carry across. See our e-commerce and Shopify work, or contact us to plan a migration.