Shopify SEO in Japan – fix what is specific to your store

How Shopify SEO works out of the box

Shopify gives you a solid base: an automatic sitemap.xml, canonical tags, SSL and clean mobile themes. Some parts, however, are fixed. Good Shopify SEO begins by separating what the platform handles from what you need to set up yourself.

• Fixed URL prefixes: products live under /products/, categories under /collections/, pages under /pages/ and articles under /blogs/ – these cannot be changed
• Editable handles: the end of each URL is yours to set; Japanese product names turn into long encoded strings when shared, so short romaji or English handles work better
• Per-page titles and descriptions: set them in the search engine listing section of each product and collection
• Custom robots.txt: add robots.txt.liquid to your theme to keep low-value URLs out of the crawl

A quick first step: export your main products and collections and check that each has a sensible handle, title and description. That alone changes how your store looks in search results.

Duplicate URLs and collection structure

On Shopify, one product can be reached through several URLs. Open it from a collection and you land on /collections/name/products/item, which duplicates /products/item. The canonical tag normally points to the /products/ version, but some themes send every internal link to the duplicate instead.

• Internal product links: make sure collection grids link to the canonical /products/ URL
• Tag filter pages: check that /collections/name/tag pages are not being indexed by the hundred
• Variant URLs: look in Search Console for ?variant= addresses showing up in results
• Thin collections: merge or expand collections with one or two products and no description

Collections are your strongest landing pages. Build them around the words customers really search, such as "cast iron skillet" or "engraved gifts", and add a short buying guide at the top. For the wider picture, see SEO for e-commerce sites.

Structured data and product pages

Whether price and stock appear in search results affects how often people click. That depends on structured data. Most Shopify themes output Product markup, but the fields vary by theme, and review apps or custom code can leave duplicates or gaps.

• Product: name, images, price, currency, availability and brand are all present and correct
• BreadcrumbList: breadcrumbs are marked up as well as displayed
• Organization: store name, logo and official social profiles on the home page
• Product copy: write your own text on materials, sizes, use and care
• Image alt text: a short, accurate description for each product image

Paste a product URL into Google's Rich Results Test to see what Google reads. Our guide to structured data covers the markup in more detail.

Multilingual markets and migrating to Shopify

Shopify Markets lets you publish language versions in subfolders such as /en/, with hreflang tags added automatically. Untranslated pages and raw machine translation rarely rank abroad, though, so give the English version titles and descriptions built on what overseas shoppers actually type.

Japanese content has its own detail: one product can have several common names. Put the most searched term in the title and the alternative in the body copy so you catch both.

• Before migration: list every old URL and the pages that bring the most search visits
• During migration: map old URLs to new ones and add them as 301 redirects in Shopify's URL redirects
• At launch: submit the new sitemap in Search Console and check for 404 errors
• One to two months later: compare impressions and clicks with the old site and revisit pages that dropped

Moving from BASE, MakeShop or WordPress always changes your URLs, so have the redirects ready on launch day. If visitors arrive but do not buy, read why a Shopify store is not selling as well.

How UNANOBO handles Shopify SEO: a free demo first

Before you commit, UNANOBO reviews your store and builds a free demo of the improvements. We check duplicate URLs, structured data and titles, then show you rebuilt collection and product pages around your target keywords – working pages you can click through. You decide whether to go ahead after seeing them.

The process is simple: free demo, feedback, launch, growth. The founder handles every project personally, so theme fixes and content work stay with one contact. Everything runs by message, in Japanese or English, and your Search Console and GA4 accounts stay in your name.