How to do keyword research for a Shopify store

Find the words shoppers type, read real volumes in Search Console and Keyword Planner, and give every Shopify page one main keyword.

What this is for

Keyword research means working out which words your customers type into Google when they want what you sell, then deciding which page on your store answers each one. Shopify's help centre describes the job in the same terms. source, checked 28 September 2026

When you finish, you have one sheet with a main keyword for each collection, product and planned article, the monthly searches you read for it, and the page it belongs to. This guide gives you no volumes to copy. They differ by country and move month to month, so you read your own in Google's tools. Putting the result into titles is covered in writing meta titles for collection pages.

Time needed and what you need

Time needed: about 3 hours. Most of it goes on reading Search Console queries and Keyword Planner ideas; mapping keywords to pages at the end takes about half an hour.

A spreadsheet with columns for keyword, intent, monthly searches, date read and target page
Access to Google Search Console for your store, if it is already set up
A Google Ads account with its setup finished, because Keyword Planner lives inside Google Ads
Your product reviews and recent customer emails, for the words buyers use themselves

The steps

Start with the searches that already find you, then widen out. Guessing first and checking later is how stores end up writing pages for phrases nobody types.

1. Write down the words customers use, not your catalogue names

Before you open any tool, collect 20 to 30 phrases from places where customers speak for themselves: review text, questions in support emails, comments on your social posts. Two shoppers can want the same product and describe it differently, a point Google's starter guide makes with a food example. source, checked 28 September 2026

Leave your own product names off the list unless people search for them. A candle called Evening No. 4 is a name; smoky vanilla soy candle is a search.

2. Export the queries Search Console already shows

Open the Performance report, leave the search type on web, and switch the table to the Queries tab. Every row is a real search that showed your store. The report opens on a three-month window, so widen the date range to 12 months if anything you sell is seasonal. If Search Console is not connected yet, set up Google Search Console first and come back in a few weeks. source, checked 28 September 2026

Turn on impressions and average position next to clicks, then export. Queries with plenty of impressions but an average position past 10 are the quickest wins: Google already links them with your store, it just ranks you low.

3. Widen the list in Keyword Planner

In Google Ads, open Keyword Planner from the tools menu and choose to discover new keywords. Start from five or six of your phrases, or from a website such as a competitor's collection page. Each idea comes with an estimate of monthly searches, and that is the number to copy into your sheet with today's date beside it. source, checked 28 September 2026

Keyword Planner stays locked until the Google Ads account setup is complete, billing details included. You do not have to run an ad to use it. source, checked 28 September 2026

Set the location and language to the countries you ship to before you read a single number. A worldwide volume tells a store that delivers to one country very little.

4. Label every keyword by what the searcher wants

Shopify's SEO overview splits search intent into informational, navigational, transactional and commercial investigation. The label decides which kind of page can rank: someone typing buy handmade soap wants a product or a collection, someone typing how to make soap wants an article. source, checked 28 September 2026

A named product or a buy phrase: a product page
A plural category or a for phrase, like soap for sensitive skin: a collection page
A question or a how-to phrase: a blog post
Your brand name: the home page

5. Weigh search volume against how exactly the phrase fits

Shopify's advice is to favour keywords that are specific to your products and still searched often, and it warns that busy keywords come with more competition. source, checked 28 September 2026

For a small store the one-word term is usually out of reach. Soap belongs to marketplaces and big brands; unscented goat milk soap bar is a phrase a shop that makes it can own. Add a fit column scored 1 to 3 and prefer the 3s even when their volume is lower. Keyword difficulty scores from paid tools can help you choose, but each tool calculates its own.

6. Give each page one main keyword

Assign every collection, product and planned article one main keyword plus two or three close variations. If two pages end up with the same main keyword they compete with each other, so merge them or give one a different angle. Keywords with no page yet become your list of collections to create and posts to write.

Shopify names four places where a page's keyword belongs: the page title, the meta description, image alt text and the body copy. Add a column for each so you can tick them off as you edit. source, checked 28 September 2026

7. Write the keywords in as sentences people would say

Use each page's main keyword in its title, its heading and the opening lines of its description, in words a shopper would use aloud. Shopify's help centre warns that keywords dropped in at random put off shoppers and search engines alike. source, checked 28 September 2026

Skip any meta keywords field your theme or an app offers. Google has said plainly that it ignores that tag, so the time is better spent on visible text. source, checked 28 September 2026

8. Check the pages you changed a month later

Go back to the Performance report, filter by page for each page you edited, and compare impressions and average position with the month before the change. Shopify's help centre says edits can take a couple of weeks to appear in results, so do not judge a page after a few days. source, checked 28 September 2026

A worked example

For a handmade soap store with 140 products and 9 collections
Worked example (an invented store, with invented numbers)
The store exports 12 months of Search Console queries: 1,860 in total, 1,420 of them with fewer than 10 impressions. It keeps the other 440.
Keyword Planner, set to the one country the store ships to, returns 210 ideas from six seed phrases. Thirty are for products the store does not make, so 180 go into the sheet, which now holds 620 keywords.
Labelling by intent gives 350 buying keywords and 270 questions. Of the 350, 338 map to the 9 collections and 41 products, 50 pages in all; the other 12 justify 3 new collections. The 270 questions group into 24 blog post topics, each with one main keyword.

Common mistakes

Copying monthly search numbers from a blog post or a tool left on its default country. Read them in Keyword Planner for the countries you ship to, and keep the date beside each number so you know when it was true.

Chasing the biggest number. A one-word term puts you up against marketplaces and household brands. A longer phrase that describes your exact product brings fewer visitors who are closer to buying.

Giving a collection and a blog post the same main keyword. They split the attention between them. Give the collection the buying phrase and the post a question phrase, then link the post to the collection.

Repeating every variation in one paragraph. Google's starter guide says heavy repetition tires readers and breaks its spam policies. source, checked 28 September 2026

Doing this with Tilly

Tilly's free audit needs only your store URL. It reads your storefront, reviews and marketing and builds customer personas, which you can use to check that your keyword list covers what each group of customers is looking for. It does not read search volumes, so keep using Keyword Planner and Search Console for those. The SEO agent is one of 8 agents that work from the same brand profile.

Questions people ask

Do I need a paid keyword tool?

Not to start. Search Console shows the searches that already find your store and Keyword Planner gives volume estimates for new ones. Paid tools add competitor data and difficulty scores, which save time on a large catalogue, but their numbers are their own estimates.

Why does Keyword Planner return nothing for my phrase?

Google leaves out phrases with very little search volume and phrases it treats as sensitive. Try a broader version, or look in Search Console to see whether the exact phrase already brings you impressions. source, checked 28 September 2026

Does every variation of a keyword need to appear on the page?

No. Google's starter guide says its language matching can connect a page with searches whose exact words the page never uses. Write naturally and use the main phrase where it fits. source, checked 28 September 2026

See this on your own store

Paste your store URL. The first pass takes about a minute and needs no account. Save a card (nothing is charged) and Tilly reads the whole store and works out who buys from you.