Shopify's built-in SEO fields are decent, but most stores still ship with duplicate-sounding product titles, default meta descriptions, and URL handles nobody reviewed. You don't need an app to fix the basics.
Rewrite product page titles and meta descriptions
Every Shopify product and collection page has an "Edit website SEO" section where you can set a page title and meta description independent of the product name. Draft these with a free meta tag generator so they're properly sized instead of getting cut off in search results — Shopify's default often just repeats the product title verbatim, which wastes the opportunity.
Fix your URL handles before you get traffic to them
Shopify auto-generates a URL handle from your product title, which can end up long and awkward for anything with size, color or model variants in the name. Clean it up with a free slug generator — but only edit the handle before a product has real traffic and backlinks, since changing it later creates a broken link unless you also add a redirect.
Watch your product description density
It's tempting to repeat your main keyword throughout a product description to "help" ranking, but this usually reads badly to shoppers and doesn't help SEO either. Check your draft with a free keyword density checker and aim for it to read naturally first.
Check what your robots.txt is actually doing
Shopify auto-generates a robots.txt and (on most plans) now lets you customize it via a robots.txt.liquid template. Before editing it, generate a reference version with a free robots.txt generator so you know what a correct file should contain, and don't accidentally disallow your product or collection pages.
The bottom line
These four fixes cover the free, structural side of Shopify SEO. Once your catalog is large or you're running content marketing alongside the store, that's when a dedicated Shopify SEO app starts earning its subscription.
Try it yourself
Put this into practice with our SEO Tools.