Opening an online shop is a bit like opening a shop on a street with no signs. People can find you if they know your name, but nobody wanders in by chance. Search engines are how strangers discover you, and SEO (search engine optimisation) is how you help them.
SEO can sound technical, but the basics are mostly about being clear: clear names, clear pages and clear signals about what you sell. Here's where to start.
Name your products the way people search
This is the single biggest win for most small shops, and it costs nothing.
Shoppers search for what a product is, not what you've called it. "Ember No. 3" might be a lovely name, but nobody types it into Google. "Sandalwood soy candle" is what they search for.
You can keep your creative names. Just add the plain description too:
- Weaker: Ember No. 3
- Stronger: Ember No. 3 Sandalwood Soy Candle
To find the right words, think about how a customer would describe your product to a friend, look at the suggestions Google shows as you type, and notice the words customers use in messages and reviews.
Write a unique title and description for every page
Every page on your shop has a page title and a meta description. Together they're what people see in Google's results, so they're your shop window in search.
- Page title: put the product or page name first and your shop name last. Keep it under about 60 characters so it isn't cut off.
- Meta description: one or two sentences, under about 155 characters, saying what the page offers and why someone should click.
For example:
Sandalwood Soy Candle, Hand-Poured | Amber & Oak A slow, clean-burning soy candle with warm sandalwood and amber, hand-poured in small batches. Around 40 hours of burn time.
Every page should have its own. Duplicate titles and descriptions make it hard for search engines to tell your pages apart.
Give every product a description of its own
Search engines reward original, useful content. If you copy a supplier's description, you're competing with every other shop that copied it too.
Write in your own words, answer the questions customers actually ask, and include the details people search for: size, material, colour, scent, use. Our guide to writing product descriptions that sell walks through it step by step.
Use your collection pages
Collection or category pages, such as "Candles" or "Gifts under £30", are often the pages that rank best for a shop, because they match broader searches.
Most shops leave them as a grid of products and nothing else. Add a short introduction at the top, two or three sentences on what's in the collection and who it's for, and you give search engines much more to work with.
Keep your web addresses clean
Your page addresses (URLs) should be short, readable and descriptive:
- Good: `/products/sandalwood-soy-candle`
- Less helpful: `/products/item-48213-v2-final`
Once a page is live and indexed, avoid changing its address. If you must, set up a permanent (301) redirect from the old address to the new one, so visitors and search engines aren't sent to a dead page.
Describe your images
Search engines can't see your photos, so tell them what's in each one with alt text. Describe the image plainly: "amber glass candle with a wooden lid on a stone surface". It helps people using screen readers, helps your products appear in image search, and takes seconds per photo.
Make your shop fast
Shoppers leave slow pages, and search engines notice. You don't need to be technical to help:
- Use photos at a sensible size rather than huge originals, if your platform doesn't resize them for you
- Avoid stacking up add-ons, widgets and pop-ups, as each one adds code that slows the page down
- Test your shop with Google's free PageSpeed Insights tool and look at the mobile score
Tell Google your shop exists
Two free Google tools are worth setting up on day one:
- Google Search Console shows which searches bring people to your shop, which pages are indexed, and any problems Google finds. Verify your site and submit your sitemap (usually at `/sitemap.xml`).
- Google Merchant Center lets your products appear in Google's free shopping listings, with your photo and price, alongside regular search results.
Build trust signals
Search engines and shoppers both look for signs that a shop is real and reliable:
- Clear contact details, delivery information and a returns policy
- Genuine customer reviews on your products
- An "about" page that explains who you are and what you make
These help people feel confident buying from a shop they haven't heard of before.
Be patient
SEO isn't instant. A new shop typically takes months, not days, to build visibility in search, and nobody can guarantee a particular ranking. What you can do is make every page clear, useful and easy to understand, then keep adding to it. Shops that do the basics consistently tend to pull ahead of those chasing shortcuts.
Your SEO starter checklist
- Product names include the words people search for
- Every page has its own title (under about 60 characters) and description (under about 155)
- Every product has an original description
- Collection pages have a short introduction
- URLs are short and readable, with redirects for anything you change
- Every image has alt text
- Your shop scores well on mobile in PageSpeed Insights
- Search Console and Merchant Center are set up, and your sitemap is submitted
- Contact details, policies and reviews are easy to find
Start at the top of the list and work down. Each step is small, and together they give your shop the best chance of being found.
Braevi is built with this in mind: clean URLs, editable page titles and descriptions, automatic sitemaps and fast storefronts come as standard on every plan. See what's included.
