SEO for online stores that actually sell.
An online store doesn't have an SEO problem with ten pages, but with ten thousand. Filters, variants and sort orders create URLs faster than Google can fetch them. So the question isn't how you optimise everything, but what you let Google see in the first place.
24 checks, instant results, no registration
How four filters create more URLs than you have products
reg. W.001Four filter fields, and the multiplication underneath
Made-up example store, not a client file: a category with 800 products and four filter fields. The sum is shown alongside so you can check it yourself. The point isn't the number itself but its shape: filters don't add up, they multiply, which is why the number of URLs runs so far ahead of the number of products.
four filter fields produce almost seven times as many URLs as you have products, and none of them have their own content
Four types of page, four different jobs
reg. W.002most online stores pour their time into product copy while the category page stays empty
thresholds and sums, not promises about results
What a crawler sees in an online store
reg. W.003Six lines from the report of the same example store
Six of the 6,176 URLs from FIG.01, chosen because each shows a different kind of fault. A recreated report, not a measurement of an existing shop. Read the fourth column as the most important one: it decides whether a line is a cosmetic flaw or a page that is costing you revenue.
The same page, on the left what persuades and on the right what is machine-readable
Two columns side by side, because a product page is viewed by two very different readers who don't ask for the same thing. Our own checklist per reader; there is no figure in it and no site is being assessed.
the same page, two readers: what convinces the visitor and what the machine can read are separate layers
The JSON-LD block of a product page, with the gaps in it
The same example store, now the structured data for a product. The labels at the bottom show what is there and what is missing. This is about the shape of the fault: price and stock that only appear on screen and not in the markup are, for a machine, not there at all.
JSON-LD remains Google's preferred format for structured data
Three ways to know where you stand
reg. W.004- 24 checks covering technique, on-page, content and AI visibility
- Run it on a category page, not on your homepage
- No registration, no email address needed
- Done within seconds
- Your five most important pages, for an online store usually two categories and two products
- Comparison with the competitors currently above you
- Broader than the paid audit, but still an honest picture
- You get an invitation for a half-hour call
- No obligation, even if you want to carry on by yourself
- Twenty chosen with purpose: categories, product templates and filters
- Crawl and indexing status of your entire catalogue
- A running order: what comes first, what it affects, how much work it is
- Ongoing collaboration afterwards is available for €250 per month
all rates are also on the pricing page · we take on one client per market, so we never work for your competitor
Why SEO for online stores works differently
With a service-based site you work through ten to fifty pages. You write them, you improve them, you're done. With an online store that doesn't work, because you don't write most of your pages: your software generates them. Every filter combination, every sort order, every variant is a URL.
Templates and rules instead of individual pages
That changes where your work sits. You're not optimising individual pages but templates and rules. One improvement to your product template touches eight hundred pages at once. One mistake in your filter setup does too.
Online store SEO is selection, not optimisation
Google doesn't fetch an unlimited number of pages. If you have tens of thousands of URLs, most of which show almost the same products, part of that attention goes there instead of to the pages that actually generate revenue. So the question isn't how you optimise everything, but what you let Google see in the first place.
How crawling, rendering and indexing fit together is explained at technical SEO. Want to look more broadly at your store? The online store analysis is the next step.
Category pages are your money pages
This is where the volume sits. Someone searching for "women's running shoes" wants to choose, not land on one specific model. That search lands on a category page, and that is exactly the page that is empty on so many online stores: a title, a row of products, and nothing else.
What a category page needs
Its own text explaining what is in the category and how to choose, not as a wall of text at the bottom but somewhere it actually gets read. An H1 that names the subject. Internal links to the subcategories that matter. And a structure in which every product that needs to rank is reachable within three clicks.
Why this helps your products too
Category pages gather authority and pass it on to the products underneath. A strong category lifts hundreds of product pages with it. It barely works the other way round: a hundred well-written product pages under an empty category stay loose sand.
The order of the blocks on a category page
A cross-section from top to bottom, with the reason for each block's place. This is the structure we use, not a Google standard and not a measurement. The order is the point: the text explaining how to choose belongs above the grid, not as a lump underneath it.
almost every shop has blocks 1 and 4 · the four in between decide whether you capture the broad search
Filters and facets: where your crawl budget disappears
Filters are pleasant for visitors and a disaster for search engines, unless you steer them. A handful of filter fields can already produce tens of thousands of URLs that all show almost the same products. For Google, that is just as many pages to assess, and almost none of them deserve a place in the index.
The rule: only index what there is demand for
A filter combination may be indexed if people genuinely search for it and the page has its own content. "Black running shoes" can be such a page. "Black running shoes, size 42, sorted by price ascending" is not.What to do with the rest
Everything without its own search demand gets a canonical pointing to the category, or is blocked. Sort parameters do not belong there by default. Also make sure your sitemap only contains URLs you actually want to win with, because a sitemap full of filter combinations sends exactly the wrong signal.Why the canonical matters
A canonical stops Google seeing the same content through multiple URLs. Without one, you risk it showing the wrong version, and with filters that is almost always a version you never wanted to rank.One question, two outcomes, and no third option
The rule from the paragraph above, drawn as a decision. There is deliberately only one question in it, because adding more turns the choice for each filter combination into a discussion instead of a rule. Our own working rule, not guidance from a search engine.
one question, two outcomes · most shops never answer it and let everything be indexed
Product pages and structured data
Most product pages carry the manufacturer's copy. That same text then sits on dozens of online stores at once, and Google has to choose which version to show. If you add nothing that the other stores don't already have, there is no reason to pick you.
The minimum set of markup
Product with name, sku, brand and image. Offer with price, currency and availability. BreadcrumbList on both your category and product pages, so the path is visible. And AggregateRating only if those reviews are genuinely on the page too, because adding markup without visible reviews is one of the classic mistakes.
Why this is starting to matter more
AI systems searching for products on someone's behalf don't read design, they read structure. If your price, stock and shipping options aren't in JSON-LD, they can't take your offer into account. More on this is at agentic commerce, and on the structure of the page itself at product page structure.
Two search results for the same page side by side
Recreated search results for the made-up example store, not a screenshot from Google. On the left the result without Product markup, on the right the same product with it. The content of the page does not change; only what Google is allowed to show from it changes.
same text, same page · on the right the breadcrumb sits in the URL line and price, rating and stock are visible before the click
Speed with a large catalogue
Online stores are slow for predictable reasons: lots of images, lots of scripts for filters and the basket, and a database that has to fetch hundreds of products for every category page.
Start with the server
Google treats a server response time under 800 milliseconds as good. Start with that figure, because everything that comes after it can never be faster than the moment your server starts to respond. If you're above a second, a plugin is rarely the fix and you should look at your hosting instead. A caching layer over a slow server just moves the problem.
Then the three metrics
LCP measures how fast the largest visible element loads, with a threshold of 2.5 seconds. On a product page that is usually your main photo. INP measures how fast your site responds to interaction, threshold 200 milliseconds, and that is exactly where heavy filter scripts hurt you. CLS measures shifts during loading and must stay under 0.1; images without fixed dimensions are the usual cause here.
Google bases these figures on 28 days of real user data, so an improvement made today only shows in full four weeks later. Google assesses these figures per page, but Search Console groups them by template, so one slow filter page immediately colours a whole group red in the report. More on this is at Core Web Vitals and making your site faster.
A waterfall of a page that misses the threshold
Example figures, not a measurement of an existing shop: chosen to show which items eat up the time on an online store. What is fixed are the two thresholds beside it, because Google publishes those itself: a server response under 800 milliseconds and an LCP under 2.5 seconds.
red is where the gains are · the server already starts above 800ms, which slows down everything that follows
SEO and Shopping Ads reinforce each other
With online stores, the choice between organic and paid is rarely an either-or question. Shopping Ads deliver immediate traffic with high purchase intent: buyers see your product, price and photo before they click. SEO builds up more slowly but stays in place once you stop paying.
What the channels give each other
What's interesting is what they give each other. Your Shopping campaigns show within weeks which products and search terms actually convert. That is exactly the information you need to decide which category pages get organic priority, instead of guessing based on search volume.
Less dependent on advertising budget
The other way round, strong organic traffic reduces your dependence on advertising budget for the terms where you are already at the top. How we set up Shopping Ads and Merchant Center is covered at the paid search page.
Paid peaks immediately, organic only builds in later
Deliberately schematic and without a vertical axis, because we have no client figures to back up these two lines. Only the pattern is shown: Shopping Ads deliver from the first month and drop away as soon as you stop, organic builds up and stays in place. So the heights are a shape, not a number.
schematic, not a measurement · the ratio differs by market, but the pattern is that paid peaks immediately and organic only builds in later
Frequently asked questions about SEO for online stores
Why is SEO for online stores different from a regular site?
It's about scale. A service-based site has ten to fifty pages you can work through one by one. An online store generates thousands, and your software creates most of them itself: filters, sort orders, variants and pagination. So you're not optimising individual pages but templates and rules, and above all you decide which URLs Google is even allowed to see.
Which pages bring in the most revenue?
Category pages. They capture the broad searches where the volume sits, they send internal link authority through to your products and they give the visitor an overview. Product pages win on brand plus model number, but that is narrow traffic. Most online stores pour their time into product copy while the category page stays empty.
What do I do with my filters and facets?
Only let filter combinations with real search volume and their own content be indexed. Everything else gets a canonical pointing to the category or is blocked. Filters are the biggest source of wasted crawl budget in an online store: a handful of filter fields can quickly produce tens of thousands of URLs that all show almost the same products.
What structured data does an online store need?
The minimum set is Product with name, sku, brand and image, Offer with price, currency and availability, and BreadcrumbList on both category and product. That is what makes rich results in the search results possible. JSON-LD is Google's preferred format. Watch out for the classic mistake: adding review markup without those reviews actually being visible on the page.
What does SEO for an online store cost?
A full technical audit costs 750 euro one-off, for up to 20 pages. For an online store you choose those twenty with purpose: your homepage, your main categories, a few product templates and your filter structure. If you want us to then work on your visibility on a structural basis, that is 250 euro a month. Our service rates for SEO, Google Ads, social media and branding are on the pricing page, and the subscription prices for Jarvis and the MyParcel Dashboard are on their own product pages.
Is SEO or Google Shopping better for my online store?
That isn't an either-or question. Shopping Ads deliver immediate traffic with high purchase intent and you see straight away which products and search terms convert. SEO builds up more slowly but stays in place once you stop paying. The data from Shopping also tells you where to focus your organic effort, so the two reinforce each other.
Start with one category page
Reviewing an online store feels like a project of months, but the first step is small. Run the scan on your most important category page, not on your homepage. That is where your volume sits, and that is where you will see straight away whether the basics are right.
Want us to take a look? We go through five pages by hand: your homepage, two categories and two products. That is enough to see whether your problem lies in your templates or in your filter structure. After that you can hire an SEO specialist or carry on yourself with the knowledge base.