SEO on Sellerlane

Good SEO on Sellerlane is mostly about filling in a few fields well — the platform already ships server-rendered HTML, clean URLs, structured data, a sitemap, and a customisable robots.txt. This page covers what happens automatically and every knob you can turn.

What you get automatically

• Server-rendered pages — search engines (and AI crawlers) receive complete HTML, not a JavaScript loading shell.
• Image optimisation — images are resized and compressed per device and served from a CDN.
• Product structured data — product pages emit Product / Offer JSON-LD (price, availability, SKU/GTIN/MPN, brand) automatically, plus an AggregateRating snippet once a product has reviews.
• Multi-file sitemap — sitemap.xml and its child files are rebuilt as your catalog changes; the private snapshot is served by the buyer origin with the active public domain applied at request time.
• Customisable robots.txt — sensible default crawl rules ship out of the box, and you can override them from your theme.
• Canonical tags — variant, filter, and pagination URLs carry canonical tags so duplicate content doesn’t dilute rankings.
• HTTPS everywhere — SSL is provisioned and renewed automatically; it’s both a trust and a ranking signal.

Note

Sellerlane supports several published storefront languages. The primary locale uses the bare URL; each published non-primary locale uses its lowercase prefix. Canonical and hreflang links are emitted only for real published equivalents. This is language localization, not Shopify Markets country/catalog/currency switching. See Locales and translation.

Home-page title, description, and social image

Open Settings → Preferences to set the store’s home-page title (maximum 70 characters), meta description (maximum 320 characters), and default social sharing image (1200×630 recommended). The title falls back to the store name when blank; a blank description is omitted. The search-listing card is an editorial preview, so a search engine can still choose a different snippet.

These fields do not overwrite resource-specific product, collection, page, blog, or article metadata. See Online store preferences.

Edit title tags and meta descriptions

Every product, collection, page, and blog post has a Search Engine Listing section (called Search Engine Optimization on pages) with three fields: Meta Title, Meta Description, and URL Handle. These map to the <title> tag and meta description that Google shows in results.

1. Open the record — a product, collection, Online store → Pages, or a blog post.

2. Scroll to Search Engine Listing and expand it.

3. Set the Meta Title. The in-app helper recommends a max of 70 characters; aim for roughly 60 so it isn’t truncated. Lead with the product/keyword, then your brand.

4. Set the Meta Description. The helper recommends a max of 160 characters; around 155 reads cleanly. Write a benefit-led sentence a shopper would click.

5. Leave a field blank to fall back to the default — the product, collection, or page title is used as the meta title, so a listing is never empty.

6. Save.

On products and collections you’ll also see a Generate action that drafts an SEO-friendly meta title, description, and handle for you; review the suggestions before saving rather than accepting them blind.

Tip

For India-facing stores, write the way buyers actually search — include the local term and the English one (for example kurti and tunic), the use-case (office wear, festive), and material or size where it matters. These words double as on-page content for AI search engines.

URL handles and keeping old links alive

The URL Handle is the slug in the address — /products/cotton-saree. Keep handles short, lowercase, hyphenated, and descriptive; they’re a light ranking signal and they show in shared links.

When you change a handle, the field exposes a Redirect old URLs to this URL automatically (recommended) checkbox (on pages it reads Redirect old URL (old-handle) to new URL). Leave it on:

• On — the old path is kept as a non-canonical route, so existing links and previously-indexed URLs keep resolving to the renamed product or page and the SEO equity carries over.
• Off — the old path is removed and starts returning 404 Not Found, dropping any rankings tied to it.

Caution

Always keep the redirect checkbox enabled when you rename something that’s already live and indexed. There is no separate “URL redirects” table for path changes — this per-record checkbox is the mechanism.

Alt text for image search

Add descriptive alt text to product and section images. It powers Google Images, helps AI crawlers, and is required for accessibility. Describe what’s in the image plainly — navy linen shirt, front view — rather than stuffing keywords. Set it on the product’s media and on image settings in the visual editor.

Sitemaps

Your sitemap is a multi-file index. The root sitemap.xml is an index that links to child files for each content type — for example sitemap_products_1.xml, sitemap_collections_1.xml, sitemap_pages_1.xml, and sitemap_blogs_1.xml (large catalogs split across numbered files). The files are regenerated as your catalog changes. The logical snapshot is stored privately in S3; the buyer route substitutes the trusted active request origin into every location when serving it. This lets the same store snapshot produce correct URLs on its accepted custom domain without exposing the bucket or rebuilding per request. You never edit these files by hand.

Find your sitemap at https://yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml (on whichever domain the store is live on — your custom domain or yourstore.sellerlane.io).

Caution

Password-protected stores intentionally return 404 for sitemap files and serve a Disallow: / robots policy. Remove password protection from Online store preferences before asking a search engine to index the store.

Submit it to Google Search Console

1. In Google Search Console, add a property for your storefront domain.

2. Verify ownership (see Verifying ownership below).

3. Open Sitemaps, enter sitemap.xml, and submit.

4. Google reads the index file and follows it to every child sitemap automatically.

robots.txt

robots.txt controls which crawlers may fetch which paths. Sellerlane renders it from a robots.txt.liquid template, so it’s fully customisable — but the defaults are good and most stores never touch it.

The defaults block crawlers from non-content paths (/admin, /cart, /checkout, /account, /search, sorted/filtered collection URLs, theme previews, and similar), add polite Crawl-delay rules for heavy bots like AhrefsBot and MJ12bot, and append a Sitemap: directive pointing at your sitemap.xml. The sitemap origin is derived from a trusted host source, so the directive always points at the right domain.

To customise, add a robots.txt.liquid template to your theme and iterate over the robots object so you keep the safe defaults while adding your own rules:

{% for group in robots.default_groups %}
{{ group.user_agent }}
{% for rule in group.rules %}{{ rule }}
{% endfor %}{% if group.sitemap != blank %}{{ group.sitemap }}
{% endif %}
{% endfor %}

From there you can add a custom group, an extra Disallow/Allow line, or a Crawl-delay. See the robots object reference for the full property list. If the template is missing or errors, the built-in default is served, so you can’t accidentally break crawling.

Structured data (rich results)

Product pages emit Product / Offer JSON-LD automatically — name, price, currency, availability, SKU, GTIN, MPN, and brand — plus an AggregateRating block (rating value and review count) once the product has reviews, which is what produces star snippets in search results.

For anything else, use the structured_data Liquid filter in your theme to emit JSON-LD for a product or an article (blog post):

<script type="application/ld+json">{{ product | structured_data }}</script>

See the structured_data filter reference for what each type outputs. Don’t hand-roll competing Product JSON-LD on a page that already emits it — duplicate blocks confuse crawlers.

Product feeds for shopping channels

Sellerlane generates product feeds you can connect to shopping channels — no app required. Each feed is a CSV available on your storefront:

• Google Merchant Center — https://yourdomain.com/feeds/google.csv (also /feeds/google-merchant-center.csv)
• Meta / Facebook & Instagram — https://yourdomain.com/feeds/meta.csv (alias /feeds/facebook.csv)
• Pinterest — https://yourdomain.com/feeds/pinterest.csv

Each row is a variant and includes the columns the channel expects — id, title, description, link, image_link, availability, price, sale_price, condition, brand, gtin, mpn, item_group_id, google_product_category, and product_type. Only online-enabled, purchasable products with a price and image are emitted.

1. In Google Merchant Center (or Meta Commerce Manager / Pinterest), create a catalog and choose to add products via a scheduled feed / feed URL.

2. Paste the matching feed URL above.

3. Set a daily fetch schedule so the channel re-reads your live catalog as prices and stock change.

4. Fix any attributes the channel flags — gtin/mpn come from a variant’s identifiers, and google_product_category / brand from the product’s category and brand, so fill those on the product to clear disapprovals.

Blog SEO

The built-in blog is where you publish the content that earns rankings over time. Each post has its own Meta Title (SEO), Meta Description (SEO), and handle — set them the same way as products. Practical tips:

• Give every post a focused topic and a keyword-led title.
• Link from posts to the relevant product and collection pages (internal links spread authority).
• Posts are included in the sitemap and can emit Article JSON-LD via the structured_data filter.

Verifying ownership

To use Google Search Console (or Bing Webmaster Tools) you must verify you own the domain. The reliable method on Sellerlane is DNS verification:

1. In Search Console, choose the Domain property type (or HTML-tag for a URL-prefix property) and copy the verification value.

2. For the DNS method, go to Settings → Domains, find the DNS records panel, and add the TXT record Google gives you at your registrar.

3. Click Refresh all DNS on the Domains screen, then click Verify in Search Console.

See Custom domains and DNS and deliverability troubleshooting for adding records and primary-domain enforcement (only your primary domain should be indexed).

Search redirects (on-site search)

Separate from SEO path handling, Online store → Filter & Search → Redirects lets you send shoppers who search your storefront for certain terms straight to a chosen page. The screen is titled Search Redirects — “Redirect users from search queries to specific pages.”

1. Go to Online store → Filter & Search, then the Redirects tab.

2. Click Create Redirect.

3. Add one or more Search Queries — any of these terms triggers the redirect.

4. Enter the Target URL — relative (/collections/summer-sale) or absolute.

5. Save. Searches for those terms now jump to the target instead of a results page.

This is a merchandising tool for your internal search, not a 301 for changed handles — for renamed products and pages, use the redirect checkbox described above.

Troubleshooting

• My page isn’t indexed. New pages take time to be crawled — submit the sitemap and request indexing in Search Console. Also confirm the path isn’t blocked by a custom robots.txt rule and that the page is published/visible.
• An old URL 404s after I renamed something. The redirect checkbox was off when you changed the handle. Re-set the handle to the new value with Redirect old URLs enabled so the old path resolves again.
• A product is missing from Google Shopping. The feed isn’t connected yet, the product is offline/unpurchasable (so it’s excluded from the feed), or Merchant Center disapproved it — fill in gtin/mpn, brand, and google_product_category on the product.
• Search Console reports duplicate or missing titles. Blank meta titles fall back to the record’s title. If several records share a title, give each a distinct Meta Title.

Next steps

Search & discovery

Configure on-site search, synonyms, and merchandising in Search & discovery.

Custom domains

Connect your domain and verify ownership in Custom domains.

Online store preferences

Set home-page metadata, the social image, password protection, and crawler access in Online store preferences.

robots object

Customise crawl rules with the robots object reference.

structured_data filter

Emit custom JSON-LD with the structured_data filter.