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Shopify migration

Shopify migration without losing your SEO

Q: Can I keep my current URLs?

Hardly ever. Shopify fixes the first part of the path (/products/, /collections/, /blogs/) and only lets you choose the end, so the redirect map becomes the central piece of the migration.

If you are moving your shop to Shopify from WooCommerce, PrestaShop, Magento or a custom-built site, I prepare the migration so that Google finds every product and every collection at its new address. I work from Valencia with shops all over Spain.

Tell me which shop you're migrating

I take every product in your shop to its new address on Shopify.

What’s specific to Shopify

What changes when your shop moves to Shopify

Shopify comes with fixed rules that shape your shop’s SEO, and you should know them before you start building it.

Shopify sets the paths: product pages live under /products/ and blog posts under /blogs/ followed by the blog’s name. You choose the end of each address but not the rest, so almost none of your current shop’s URLs will stay exactly as they are.
A redirect only kicks in if the old URL returns a 404 error: if a page exists at that same address in the new shop, Shopify ignores the redirect. I check this before uploading the map, not afterwards.
There is a limit of 100,000 redirects: shopify Plus allows more. In large catalogues, with variants, filters and old pages, you have to decide what deserves its own redirect and what gets grouped into the nearest collection.
URLs with parameters may not redirect as you expect: according to Shopify’s documentation, old filter, sorting and pagination URLs with a ? in the address may not redirect properly, so I review them separately.
The robots.txt file is edited from the theme: it is done with the robots.txt.liquid template. Shopify considers it an unsupported customisation and warns that a mistake can cost you all your traffic, so I only touch it if there is a clear reason.
The sitemap is generated automatically: it includes products, collections, pages and blog posts. You don’t have to build it, but before submitting it to Search Console I check that it includes everything it should.

How I work

The three phases of the migration

This is the order I work in on a migration.

Before the migration

Defining the scope: moving to Shopify is hardly ever just a change of platform. It usually comes with new URLs and sometimes with a new domain or design. Each change carries its own risks, and together they get more complicated, so I first put in writing what changes and what doesn’t.
Benchmark of the current situation: I analyse Search Console with at least 12 to 16 months of performance by page and by query, Analytics, the rankings of the keywords that bring you sales, Core Web Vitals and inbound links. This is the snapshot we will compare everything against afterwards.
Full crawl of the current shop: with Screaming Frog or a similar tool I extract every URL, status code, title, meta description, canonical, hreflang, internal link and click depth. In a shop, discontinued products, variants and paginated pages turn up that nobody remembered.
Redirect map: old URL and new URL, one by one, starting with those that bring in traffic or have links. Nothing gets sent to the home page wholesale. Anything without an equivalent goes to the nearest collection. The map is tested before the switchover day and uploaded to Shopify using its CSV import.
Review of the new shop before it opens: while it is being built, the shop is password protected. I review the product and collection templates, canonicals, structured data and speed, check that no internal links point to old addresses and make sure the sitemap lists the new ones.
Plan and timeline: I choose a date outside your peak season (sales, Black Friday or the Christmas campaign), with developers available on the switchover day and the days after, and with a rollback plan in case something goes wrong.

Migration day

I check in production that the 301s work, with no chains or loops, using a large sample of the map before and after the switch. On Shopify I also check that no old URL matches a new page, because in that case the redirect does not kick in.
I crawl the new shop and the list of old URLs to confirm their status codes.
I submit the new sitemap to Search Console. If the domain changes, I verify the new property and use the Change of Address tool.

After the migration

Daily monitoring for the first two weeks: indexing in Search Console, 404 and 5xx errors, rankings for the benchmark keywords and organic traffic by section (collections, products and blog). To see what Googlebot is crawling I use the Crawl Stats report in Search Console.
I update the external links you control, such as profiles, directories, marketplaces or partners, and request changes to the most important links pointing to your shop.
I compare against the benchmark at 2, 4, 8 and 12 weeks. A temporary drop is normal, but if it still hasn’t recovered after two months, the cause needs to be found.

Before we start

What I can’t guarantee

That there will be no drop at all. Every migration shakes up traffic for a few weeks, and my job is to keep the drop short and make sure no content or links are lost along the way.
An exact recovery date. It depends on how many URLs change, the size of the catalogue and how quickly Google recrawls the shop.
That Shopify will rank better on its own. The platform won’t move you up on Google, but it takes technical work off your plate, so you can spend that time on your catalogue and content.

Questions

Frequently asked questions about migrating to Shopify

A temporary drop is common while Google crawls the new addresses. How long it lasts depends on the quality of the redirect map and on the new shop not losing content or internal links along the way.

Hardly ever. Shopify fixes the first part of the path (/products/, /collections/, /blogs/) and only lets you choose the end, so the redirect map becomes the central piece of the migration.

Not when you import products. You have to upload the map of old URLs and new URLs. Shopify lets you import it in bulk from a CSV file, and I review it before and after uploading.

Yes. I work independently as an SEO consultant in Valencia and coordinate with whoever is doing the development so that SEO decisions arrive in time, especially the collection structure, templates, redirects and the switchover date.

Before you start building the new shop, because the decisions that weigh most on SEO, such as the collection structure or which products are migrated, are made at the beginning.

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