Technical SEO is the migration component most likely to cause lasting damage if not handled correctly. A store that migrates product content, design, and functionality perfectly but fails to set up 301 redirects correctly can lose 50–80% of organic traffic within weeks. This checklist covers every technical SEO consideration for a WooCommerce to Shopify migration — from pre-migration audit to post-migration monitoring.

Pre-migration: crawl and audit

Crawl the WooCommerce site: Use Screaming Frog (free up to 500 URLs) or Sitebulb to crawl your entire WooCommerce site. Export all URLs, status codes, titles, meta descriptions, H1s, and canonical tags.
Export Search Console data: Download the top 1000 pages by organic clicks from Google Search Console (Performance report, Pages tab, last 12 months). These are your most valuable URLs — each must have a working 301 redirect post-migration.
Keyword rankings baseline: Export current keyword rankings from Ahrefs, SEMrush, or Google Search Console. You'll compare post-migration rankings against this baseline.
Backlink profile: Export all backlinks pointing to your domain (Ahrefs → Backlinks export). Ensure the pages they link to have 301 redirects to equivalent Shopify pages.
Indexed pages count: Check Google Search Console → Index Coverage for total indexed pages. Track this through migration.

URL structure changes: WooCommerce vs Shopify

Page type	WooCommerce URL	Shopify URL
Product	/product/product-slug/	/products/product-handle
Category	/product-category/category-slug/	/collections/collection-handle
Tag archive	/product-tag/tag-slug/	/collections/tag-handle or /collections/all?tag=tag-handle
Blog post	/year/month/post-slug/ or /blog/post-slug/	/blogs/news/blog-post-handle
Page	/page-slug/	/pages/page-slug
Cart	/cart/	/cart
Checkout	/checkout/	/checkouts/...

301 redirect mapping

Every WooCommerce URL that has organic traffic or backlinks must have a 301 redirect to the equivalent Shopify URL
Create redirect map: Spreadsheet with two columns: WooCommerce URL → Shopify URL. Use your crawl data and Search Console exports.
Shopify URL redirects: Online Store → Navigation → URL Redirects → Add redirect. Or bulk import via CSV.
Redirect patterns:
- /product/product-slug/ → /products/product-handle
- /product-category/clothing/ → /collections/clothing
- /blog/2024/03/post-title/ → /blogs/news/post-title-handle
Priority redirects: Implement the top 100 organic traffic pages first (from Search Console data). These have the most SEO value to preserve.
Paginated category redirects: WooCommerce /product-category/shoes/page/2/ should redirect to /collections/shoes — Shopify's URL structure for collection pagination is different
Filter URLs: WooCommerce filter URLs (?pa_colour=red, ?min_price=50) should redirect to the base collection URL. These are low-value SEO URLs that may be indexed.

Canonical tags

Shopify automatically adds canonical tags to product pages, collection pages, and blog posts
Product variant URLs: /products/handle?variant=123 — Shopify canonicalizes all variant URLs to the base product URL (/products/handle) by default. Correct behaviour.
Collections with handles: if the same product appears in multiple collections (/collections/men/products/handle and /collections/sale/products/handle), Shopify's canonical will point to /products/handle — the canonical product URL. Correct.
Verify canonical tags: after migration, crawl Shopify store and confirm canonical tags are present and correct on all key pages.

XML sitemap

Shopify auto-generates XML sitemap at /sitemap.xml
Sitemap includes: all published products, collections, pages, and blog posts in all locales
Submit to Search Console: remove old WooCommerce sitemap submission; add new Shopify sitemap
Image sitemap: Shopify's sitemap includes image URLs (Shopify CDN URLs). Confirm images are indexable.
Excluded pages: Shopify's sitemap automatically excludes checkout, cart, account pages — correct. Drafts and hidden pages are also excluded.

robots.txt

Shopify generates a default robots.txt that blocks checkout, cart, account, and internal admin paths
Shopify Plus: can customize robots.txt via the robots.txt.liquid file
Non-Plus: robots.txt is managed by Shopify and cannot be edited. If you need to block specific URLs, Shopify's default is generally appropriate.
Check: after migration, verify robots.txt doesn't inadvertently block product or collection pages

Structured data

Shopify themes (Dawn and others) include Product schema by default with name, price, availability, and image
Verify structured data: use Google's Rich Results Test on several product pages post-migration
Missing fields in Product schema: add via metafields and theme liquid:
- aggregateRating: if using Shopify Product Reviews or Judge.me, add review schema
- brand: add via Product type or vendor field
- gtin: barcode field maps to GTIN in structured data
BreadcrumbList schema: add via theme customization — search Shopify community for breadcrumb schema implementation
Article schema for blog posts: Dawn includes basic Article schema. Verify it includes datePublished, author, and description.

Meta titles and descriptions

Shopify: Edit meta title/description per product, collection, and page via Online Store → SEO fields
If your WooCommerce store used Yoast SEO or RankMath, export SEO metadata and re-import to Shopify. See the dedicated Yoast/RankMath to Shopify migration guide.
Default meta title format: Shopify uses "{Product name} | {Store name}" if no custom title is set. Configure this in Settings → General → Store name.

Google Search Console setup

Add Shopify domain as a new property in Search Console (or verify the same domain if already added)
Remove old WooCommerce sitemap submission
Submit new Shopify sitemap: https://yourstore.com/sitemap.xml
URL Inspection: use URL Inspection for your most important product pages post-migration to confirm Google can crawl and index them
Indexing delay: after 301 redirects are in place, Google typically re-crawls and updates rankings within 2–4 weeks. Organic traffic may dip and recover within this window.
Coverage report: monitor Index Coverage in Search Console for "Excluded" or "Error" spikes post-migration

Post-migration monitoring

Week 1: check Search Console daily for crawl errors, 404 spikes, dramatic index coverage changes
Week 2–4: compare organic traffic (GA4 Organic Search sessions) week-over-week and year-over-year
Month 2: compare keyword rankings against pre-migration baseline. Expected: 10–20% temporary ranking movement during Google re-indexing, fully recovered within 30–60 days if redirects are correct.
Redirect audit: run Screaming Frog again 2 weeks post-migration to confirm all 301 redirects are working (returning 301, not 404)

Technical SEO migration checklist

Crawl WooCommerce site; export all URLs and status codes
Download top 1000 pages by organic clicks from Search Console
Export keyword rankings baseline
Create WooCommerce URL → Shopify URL redirect map for all traffic pages
Implement 301 redirects in Shopify URL Redirects (or bulk CSV import)
Verify canonical tags on product and collection pages post-migration
Submit new Shopify sitemap to Search Console
Check robots.txt: no important pages blocked
Verify structured data on product pages (Rich Results Test)
Migrate SEO meta titles and descriptions from Yoast/RankMath to Shopify
Test 20 most-trafficked old URLs: confirm they 301 redirect to correct Shopify equivalents
Set up weekly organic traffic monitoring (GA4 + Search Console)

The 301 redirect from /product-category/ to /collections/ is the most important redirect in any WooCommerce to Shopify migration. Category pages accumulate link equity and ranking signals over years — a site that has ranked #2 for "running shoes" on its category page for 3 years will lose that ranking entirely if the category URL returns 404 after migration. A 301 redirect transfers approximately 90–99% of that ranking signal to the new Shopify collection URL. Most stores that "lost all their rankings" after a WooCommerce to Shopify migration either didn't set up redirects at all or only set up product-level redirects while forgetting category pages. Check your Search Console top landing pages: if category/collection pages feature prominently (as they should), those redirects are your highest priority.

Shopify SEO technical migration checklist 2026 (woocommerce to Shopify)