You don’t need a budget to start doing Shopify SEO properly. Some of the most useful tools in the business are free — and most of them come straight from Google. Here’s the free starter kit, and the honest line on where free stops being enough.
“Do I need to pay for SEO tools?” is one of the first questions new Shopify merchants ask. The honest answer: not to start. You can diagnose most of your store’s SEO, track your rankings, and check your speed using free tools — several of them built by Google itself. This is the kit worth setting up before you spend a cent.
A quick note up front: these are free tools you run yourself, not paid apps. They’re brilliant for checking and measuring, but they don’t fix things for you in bulk — we’ll cover where that line falls at the end.
Free tools tell you what’s wrong — fixing it in bulk is the slow part. Plug In SEO scans and fixes across your whole store. Start with a 14-day free trial.
- Google Search Console
- Google Analytics 4
- PageSpeed Insights
- Rich Results Test
- Google Trends
- Ahrefs Webmaster Tools
- Bing Webmaster Tools
- Shopify’s built-in SEO
The 8 free SEO tools every Shopify store should use
1. Google Search Console — your SEO dashboard
What it does: shows which search queries bring you impressions and clicks, which pages rank, and any indexing or mobile problems Google has found. This is the single most important free tool — set it up first, submit your sitemap (/sitemap.xml), and check it monthly. Google Search Console is free for any site you can verify.
— Backlinko, analysis of ~4 million Google search results
2. Google Analytics 4 — what visitors actually do
What it does: tracks where your traffic comes from and how people behave once they land — which pages convert, where they leave. Pair it with Search Console (Console = how they found you; Analytics = what they did next). Google Analytics is free.
3. PageSpeed Insights — your speed score
What it does: grades your store’s loading speed on mobile and desktop and lists exactly what’s slowing it down (usually oversized images). Speed is both a ranking factor and a conversion one.
— Google / SOASTA mobile speed research
Run your store through PageSpeed Insights for free.
4. Rich Results Test — check your structured data
What it does: tells you whether your product and FAQ structured data (JSON-LD) is valid and eligible for rich results like star ratings and prices in search. Paste any URL into the Rich Results Test to see what Google can read.
5. Google Trends — free keyword direction
What it does: shows whether interest in a search term is rising or falling and how it varies by season and region — useful for spotting demand before you commit to a keyword. It won’t give exact volumes, but it’s a free sanity check. (Google Trends.) For the full keyword process, see our guide to finding Shopify keywords.
6. Ahrefs Webmaster Tools — free site audit
What it does: for sites you verify, the free tier runs a technical SEO audit and shows your backlinks and the keywords you rank for. It’s the most generous free offering for backlink and audit data. (Ahrefs Webmaster Tools.)
7. Bing Webmaster Tools — the other search engine
What it does: Bing’s free equivalent of Search Console — worth setting up because it also feeds search experiences beyond Google, and it includes some free keyword and site-scan features. (Bing Webmaster Tools.)
8. Shopify’s own built-in SEO
What it does: Shopify already gives you a fair amount for free — an auto-generated sitemap, editable robots.txt, clean URL structure, and fields to edit your title tags and meta descriptions on every page. It won’t research keywords or tell you what’s broken, but the basics are built in. Start with our Shopify SEO for beginners guide to use them well.
Putting the free kit to work: a simple monthly routine
The bottom line: tools you never open don’t help — the value is in a short, repeatable monthly check, not in installing everything once.
Most merchants set these up, look once, and never return. A 30-minute monthly routine beats that easily. Here’s a simple one using only the free kit:
- Open Google Search Console first. Are impressions and clicks trending up or down? Which queries are rising? Are there new coverage errors (pages Google couldn’t index)? This is your monthly health read in two minutes.
- Spot your “almost there” pages. In the Performance report, sort by position and find pages ranking 5–15 for a term with real impressions. These are your best opportunities — a sharper title or a bit more content often nudges them onto page one, where the clicks are.
- Run one speed check. Drop your homepage and a key product page into PageSpeed Insights. If the score slipped, the report tells you why (usually a new oversized image or app).
- Validate one template. Paste a product URL into the Rich Results Test to confirm your structured data still validates — themes and apps can quietly break it.
That’s the whole loop, and it’s free. The pattern that matters: measure with the free tools, then act. The acting is where time disappears — which is the honest limit of a free-only setup.
Where free tools stop
The bottom line: free tools are superb at telling you what’s wrong — they don’t fix it for you, and that’s where they cost you time instead of money.
Search Console will show you 300 pages with missing or duplicate meta descriptions. It won’t write or fix them — you’ll do that one page at a time. That’s the trade: free tools save money but spend your hours. Once the manual fixing gets painful, an app like Plug In SEO earns its place: it scans the whole store, explains each issue, and fixes meta in bulk with templates — plus keyword research and rank tracking in one place. It’s not free (plans start at $29.99/month after a 14-day trial), but it replaces hours of manual work the free tools leave you to do.
- Just measuring and checking? The 8 free tools above cover it — start there.
- Fixing issues across a big catalogue? That’s where a paid SEO app saves real time.
- Brand new to all this? Read Shopify SEO for beginners first, then come back for the tools.
FAQ: Free Shopify SEO tools
What is the best free SEO tool for Shopify?
Google Search Console. It’s free, made by Google, and shows exactly which queries and pages bring you traffic plus any indexing problems. Set it up before anything else, then add Google Analytics, PageSpeed Insights, and the Rich Results Test.
Can I do Shopify SEO for free?
You can do the measuring and diagnosing for free with tools like Google Search Console, PageSpeed Insights, and Shopify’s built-in SEO fields. The limit is that free tools tell you what’s wrong but don’t fix it in bulk — so as your store grows, you trade money for the hours of manual fixing instead.
Is Google Search Console enough for Shopify SEO?
It’s essential but not complete. Search Console shows performance and flags problems, but it won’t research keywords, write meta, or fix issues. Pair it with PageSpeed Insights, the Rich Results Test, and a keyword tool — and add a paid app when bulk fixing becomes the bottleneck.
Are free SEO tools accurate?
The first-party ones (Google Search Console, Analytics, PageSpeed Insights) use Google’s own data, so they’re as accurate as it gets. Free keyword tools like Google Trends show direction rather than exact volumes, so use them for sanity-checking rather than precise numbers.
Do I still need a paid SEO app if I use free tools?
Not at first. Free tools are enough to measure and diagnose. A paid app becomes worthwhile when you have too many pages to fix by hand — it scans, explains, and fixes issues in bulk and adds keyword research and rank tracking, saving the hours free tools leave you to spend manually.
Free tools find it. Plug In SEO fixes it.
The free starter kit will show you everything that’s holding your store back — missing meta, slow pages, invalid structured data. Acting on all of it by hand is the slow part. Plug In SEO scans your whole store, explains each issue in plain English, and fixes meta in bulk, with keyword research and rank tracking built in. Start with a 14-day free trial and see your list.