How to add keywords to a Shopify website

Keywords are an important part of Shopify SEO, but their impact depends on using them strategically. Before adding keywords to your store, you need to perform thorough keyword research and understand your target audience and what they are searching for.

In this article, I’ll walk you through practical steps on how to add keywords to Shopify. Read to understand the best practices for keyword optimization to help you improve your SEO results.

Are keywords still important for Shopify SEO in 2026?

Keywords are still crucial to use for SEO on Shopify, but the way they’re used has shifted over the years. Before, it meant repeating the same keyword many times throughout the page. Now, search engines can better understand context and meaning, so keyword stuffing could even hurt your rankings.

A good keyword strategy to win both SEO and AEO (answer engine optimization) is using keywords to help search engines and AI models understand your content.

Here’s why using keywords is important:

• Reflects real customer searches. Keywords help reflect the words users type into search engines. Adding long-tail keywords correctly can help people find the products they’re looking for more easily.
• Helps rank higher in search engines. Search engines use keywords to understand what your product, collection, and other pages are about. When you use keywords strategically, it helps Google and other engines match the page to relevant queries, so you have better chances to rank higher.
• Improves internal search. Most Shopify themes use product titles, descriptions, metafields, or tags (if added) for store search setup. When you add descriptive keywords to your pages, the search can match queries to pages or products more accurately.

Note that SEO is a long-term process, and adding keywords isn’t a quick fix. So, look for Shopify SEO optimization opportunities and keep improving your strategy based on results.

How to research Shopify keywords for SEO

Before optimizing your Shopify store’s SEO with keywords, it’s crucial to perform keyword research. It helps identify what queries you should focus on and what works for competitors. Let’s review how to conduct keyword research for your store.

Understand the search intent

Before you decide on the keywords to use, you first need to understand the search intent of your page. There are 4 types of search intents:

• Transactional – the user is ready to buy (product pages).
• Commercial – the user is researching products (collection pages, comparison articles).
• Navigational – the user is looking for a specific brand or website (Facebook, Nike, Samsung).
• Informational – the user wants to learn about something (blog post).

For example, for product pages, the intent is transactional, so using keywords that describe the product (like materials or name) is better than using informational, hard-to-understand phrases.

Find your target audience

The keywords you choose should also reflect who the product is for. To match the search intent and select the right keywords, you need to clearly understand the needs, preferences, and language of your target audience.

Let’s say you’re selling face cream. If your target audience is women over 50, you may say that it helps with wrinkles. But if you sold it for women in their 20s, saying that it helps prevent wrinkles would be more relatable.

Use Google Search Console

If your store is already running and you’re looking on how to optimize existing keywords, then you should use Google Search Console reports. It can help you find opportunities for page optimization, such as pages ranking on page 2 or 3 and keywords that have high impressions but low clicks.

Analyze competitors

Search the keywords you want to rank for and review the top-ranking pages to see what competitors are doing right. Pay attention to where they place the primary keyword, how their page titles and H1s look, or what their product descriptions focus on.

To perform a competitor analysis faster, you can use the free TinyIMG Chrome extension. It shows you the page title, meta description, heading structure, image alt texts, and other details of any page, so you can identify optimization patterns.

Use keyword research tools

If your budget allows, I highly suggest you invest in a keyword research tool like Semrush or Ahrefs. These tools help you easily discover keywords that people search for, understand their volume and difficulty to rank.

They can even help you analyze competitors, find keyword gaps, and track rankings over time. All of it makes keyword research much faster and easier, giving you insights that you may never notice manually.

If you need a solution specifically for Shopify, you can also use TinyIMG and its AI keyword suggestions. It will give you 10 keywords based on your page URL or a title, helping you optimize content quicker.

For Shopify merchants on a budget, there’s also the free Google Keyword Planner. While it’s limited compared to paid tools like Semrush, it still gives you basic keyword data, such as search volume.

Find long-tail keywords

Ranking at the top of search engine results pages (SERPs) with short-tail keywords can be difficult because there are too many pages to compete with. Instead, you can shift focus to long-tail keywords. These are highly specific queries that your customers may search for, which can be easier to rank for.

For example, instead of trying to target the “leather jacket” keyword, try going for something more specific, like “women’s vintage brown leather jacket.”

How to add keywords to Shopify: a detailed guide

There are many places you can strategically include keywords into your pages, including page titles and meta descriptions, product descriptions, URL handles, and more. However, you don’t need to overdo it.

Some believe that keywords should appear a certain number of times. John Mueller, Google’s Search Advocate, says, “... the number of times that you use a keyword on a page, I don’t think that really matters or makes sense. When you’re writing naturally, usually that resolves itself automatically.”

Keeping that in mind, let’s review how to add keywords to your Shopify pages and the best practices for each section.

1. Page titles

Page titles, or meta titles, are the clickable headlines of your pages displayed in search engine results and at the top of your browser tab. They should be clear, easy-to-understand, and include relevant keywords naturally. They should also be no longer than 60 characters.

Let’s say you’re selling a t-shirt – create a page title based on the product’s qualities. A good example would be “Men’s Breathable Cotton Crew-Neck T-Shirt.” It mentions the gender, a product benefit (breathable cotton), and type (crew-neck).

Here’s how to insert keywords in the page title:

1. On Shopify Admin, head to Products or Collections.
2. Open the product or collection you want.
3. Scroll down to “Search engine listing” and click Edit.
4. Insert the Page title and click Save.

2. Meta descriptions

A meta description is a short summary of your page that appears under the page title in search results. It should include the primary keyword and be benefit-focused or engaging to encourage clicks. Keep meta descriptions between 150-160 characters long so search engines like Google wouldn’t cut it off mid-sentence.

Here’s how to add keywords to product page meta descriptions:

1. Go to Shopify Admin > Products or Collections.
2. Open the product or collection you want to edit.
3. Under the “Search engine listing” section, click the Edit icon.
4. Insert the optimized Meta description and click Save.

3. Product descriptions

Product descriptions are supposed to be short (1-2 paragraphs) and describe your product’s benefits and features. It should naturally incorporate the primary keyword early and then sprinkle secondary keywords if needed, but keep it natural.

For example, if you’re selling clothing, you can mention the fit, material, or other details while focusing on benefits. A good product description sentence would be: “This women’s waterproof jacket is designed for reliable protection from rain and wind, crafted with durable and breathable materials.”

Here’s how you can add keywords to your product description:

1. On your Shopify Admin, head to Products.
2. Click the product you want to edit.
3. Add the Description and click Save.

4. Image alt texts

Image alt texts, or alternative texts, are short descriptions attached to images. It’s used by search engines to understand what your image shows. Best alt text practices involve using the keywords that best describe the picture and keeping it straightforward and short – under 125 characters.

Here’s how you can add keywords to image alt texts on Shopify:

1. On your Shopify account, click Products.
2. Open the product with images.
3. Under the Media section, click the image you want to edit.
4. Insert the Alt text and click Save.

Alternatively, you can also edit image alt texts by opening up the images in the Content > Files section.

5. First-level heading (H1)

The first-level heading (H1) is the main heading on your page that describes what it’s about, like the title of your blog post or the name of your product.

There should always be just one H1 per page, closely aligned with the page title. It should include the primary keyword, but keep it simple and don’t overstuff it with fluff.

You can add keywords to your H1 on Shopify by following these steps:

1. Open the page you want to edit.
2. Under the “Title” section, insert the H1 text you want.
3. Click Save.

6. URL handles

A URL handle is the part of the web address that points to a specific page. For example, if the URL looks like this: “myclothingstore.com/collections/jackets/products/mens-black-waterproof-jacket/,” then the “mens-black-waterproof-jacket” part is the URL handle.

An SEO-friendly URL handle should include the primary keyword and be straightforward. Keep it short and hyphenated so search engines can easily understand what the page is about.

You can edit URL handles for any type of page the same way. Here’s an example of how to add keywords to the URL handle of a product page:

1. Head to the Product section and open the product you need.
2. Under Search engine listing, click the Edit icon.
3. Insert the URL handle and click Save.

What about product tags?

I’ve seen some confusion from the Shopify Community about using tags on Shopify product pages as a place to add keywords. It’s important to clarify: product tags have nothing to do with SEO – they’re tools for navigation.

Google and other search engines can’t see the tags you add to your products. Instead, tags categorize your products and help customers find them better through your store’s search results.

According to Shopify, even “tags with intentional misspellings that your customers commonly use can help them to find your products in storefront search.”

How TinyIMG helps with Shopify keyword optimization

TinyIMG is a Shopify SEO & speed optimization app that is designed to automate simple tasks so merchants can focus on sales. Here’s how TinyIMG can help you optimize your Shopify store with keywords:

• On-page SEO audit – quickly fix common SEO issues with action-ready checklists. It checks whether your content includes the primary keyword, finds out if your images include alt texts, reviews your meta title and description length, and more.
• AI metadata generation – create SEO-friendly page titles and meta descriptions in seconds. You can add special instructions to include the keywords you want or choose a different language.
• Alt text optimization – bulk edit alt texts to make it faster, or automate alt text creation with templates.
• AI keyword suggestions – get 10 keyword suggestions for any topic, powered by AI, based on the page URL or title.

Final thoughts

Adding keywords to Shopify is about quality rather than quantity. When used naturally in your page titles, descriptions, URL handles, alt texts, and content, it can help search engines and customers discover your products more easily.

Effective keyword optimization starts with thorough research. Analyze competitors, understand your target audience, and use external tools like Google Keyword Planner or Semrush to get relevant keyword ideas.

If you decide to automate keyword optimization on Shopify, I suggest using apps like TinyIMG. It gives you on-page SEO audits, automates metadata and alt text creation, and can even generate keyword suggestions for any topic.

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About the author

Kristina Jaruseviciute

Kristina is a Senior Writer at TinyIMG responsible for informing and educating readers on all things Shopify-related. In her writings, she covers a broad range of topics, from the best apps and themes for Shopify merchants to tips on how to optimize your website for SEO, performance, and higher conversion rates.