Ecommerce SEO tools: the right one for each job on your store

What are ecommerce SEO tools?

Ecommerce SEO tools are software that help an online store’s category and product pages show up when shoppers search Google. They find the words shoppers use, check that Google can read and index each product page, test product markup and page speed, and report the clicks each page gets. Most stores need a few, not one.

SEO means search engine optimisation: making pages easy for Google to find, understand and show. A store makes this harder than most sites. It has hundreds or thousands of pages, products that come and go, filter pages that create copies of the same list, and a theme or app that writes much of the code.

So the tools fall into four jobs:

• Research: which words shoppers type, and which page on your store should answer each one.
• Technical checks: whether Google can crawl and index every product, how fast pages load on phones, and whether the product markup is valid.
• Page settings: titles, descriptions, markup and sitemaps, set inside the store.
• Measuring: clicks from Google to each page, and the sales that follow.

Search for SEO tools for e-commerce and you will find lists of ten or fifteen suites. You do not need that many. The table below shows one free tool for each job, and what to add if you outgrow it.

Which ecommerce SEO tools do you need?

Match each job to one tool. Start with the free column; add the second column only when the free tool stops being enough.

Free ecommerce SEO tools from Google

Start with Google’s own tools. They cost nothing, and their data comes from Google itself, so they show what Google actually sees on your store.

Google Search Console

Google Search Console is a free service from Google that shows how your site does in Google Search. For a store, it answers the questions that matter most: which searches bring shoppers in, and which category and product pages get the clicks.

• Search results data: the searches that show your pages, with clicks, impressions (how often a page was shown) and average position.
• URL Inspection: tells you whether one product page is indexed, and lets you ask Google to crawl it.
• Sitemaps and indexing: submit your sitemap and see which pages Google has and has not added to its index.
• Core Web Vitals and rich results reports: flag slow page groups and errors in your product markup.

Tip: in the search results report, filter by page and compare your top category pages month by month. A drop on one category is easier to fix than a drop you notice across the whole store.

Google Merchant Center

Google Merchant Center is a free tool where you upload your product data, so your products can appear on Google. Products can show for free in Google Search, Maps and YouTube, and taking part in Merchant Center is required for the Shopping tab.

Google’s guide to sharing product data recommends doing two things together: structured data (code that labels the name, price and stock on each product page) and a Merchant Center feed (a list of your products sent to Google). A feed can be built from your pages, uploaded as a file, or sent through an API for quick updates.

Rich Results Test

The Rich Results Test checks whether the structured data on one page is valid and which rich results it can get, such as a product snippet. You can test a live address or paste in code, as a phone (the default) or a desktop, and it lists errors and warnings.

Google describes two kinds of product markup: product snippets, for pages where people cannot buy directly, and merchant listings, for pages where customers can buy from you. A store’s product pages are the second kind. Test one product page of each template after any theme or plugin update.

PageSpeed Insights

PageSpeed Insights shows two kinds of data. Lab data comes from Lighthouse, which loads the page in a test setting. Field data comes from real Chrome users over the previous 28 days. It reports the three Core Web Vitals: LCP (how fast the main content loads), INP (how fast the page responds to a tap) and CLS (how much the layout jumps).

Test your busiest category page and a typical product page on mobile. Large product photos and extra apps are common reasons a store page loads slowly.

Google Keyword Planner

Keyword Planner sits inside Google Ads. It gives keyword ideas and estimates of how often each keyword is searched each month. You need a Google Ads account with billing information added to use its basic features, but you do not have to run ads to research keywords.

For ecommerce keyword research, look past single products. Shoppers also search by type, brand, use and price, and those searches usually belong on a category page, not a product page. When we researched keywords for our own site in October 2026, the monthly searches came from Keyword Planner.

Google Analytics 4

Search Console stops at the click. Google Analytics 4 shows what happens next. Its ecommerce purchases report lists the products you sell, but the data only appears if your store sends events such as add_to_cart and purchase. Check that these events are set up before you judge SEO by sales.

Crawlers that check every product page

A crawler visits your store the way Google does, page by page, and lists what is wrong. On a store, it finds the problems you cannot see by browsing: product pages that return errors, chains of redirects, copies of the same page under different addresses, and missing titles.

Screaming Frog SEO Spider

Screaming Frog SEO Spider is a crawler you install on your computer. The free version crawls up to 500 addresses. Screaming Frog’s own page also says the free version leaves out some features, such as saving crawls and JavaScript rendering.

• Finds broken links, errors and redirects.
• Finds exact duplicate pages and near-duplicate content, common when filters or product variants create new addresses.
• Checks page titles and meta descriptions, and validates structured data.
• Audits hreflang tags, for stores that sell in more than one country or language.
• Creates XML sitemaps, and connects to Google Analytics, Search Console and PageSpeed Insights.

Before you move your store to a new platform, crawl the old store and save every product and category address. Each one needs a redirect to its new address, or the old links and their Google traffic lead to error pages.

Ahrefs Webmaster Tools

Ahrefs Webmaster Tools is free for websites you verify as yours. Its Site Audit checks for more than 170 technical and on-page issues, and its Site Explorer shows which pages and keywords bring your site traffic from search and which sites link to you. The free limits are 5,000 Site Audit crawl credits per project each month, and up to 1,000 backlinks and keywords shown at once.

Store platform settings and plugins

Your store’s platform decides much of what Google reads: the page titles, the product markup, the sitemap and which pages Google may index. These settings live in an SEO plugin (on WooCommerce) or in the platform itself (on Shopify).

WooCommerce: Yoast SEO and Yoast WooCommerce SEO

Yoast WooCommerce SEO is an add-on that works with Yoast SEO or Yoast SEO Premium, which must be installed first. For a store it adds:

• Product markup with price, stock, availability and product identifiers.
• Breadcrumbs for product and category pages.
• Product sitemaps that leave out cart, checkout and filter pages.
• Canonical controls for duplicate addresses, and redirects for old addresses.
• Templates to apply SEO settings across many products, and AI-written titles, descriptions and image alt text that you review before saving.

WooCommerce: Rank Math

Rank Math is the other common SEO plugin for WooCommerce. Its WooCommerce feature comparison marks the GTIN setting (the barcode number in product markup) and a separate offer for each product variation as PRO features. It also lists options such as removing the product and category base from addresses and keeping hidden products out of Google; check that page for which plan includes each one.

Use one SEO plugin, not two. Two plugins can both write titles and markup on the same page. If you run a WooCommerce store, our WooCommerce SEO service page explains how we set the plugin up.

Shopify: the built-in settings

Shopify lets you edit the page title, meta description and image alt text for products, collections, pages and blog posts. The H1 heading comes from the title you give each product or collection. Shopify’s help suggests titles of about 60 characters and descriptions of about 160.

Every Shopify store also creates a sitemap.xml file automatically, linking products (with each product’s main image), collections, pages and blog posts. Use the built-in settings well before you add apps.

Custom-built stores

A store built in custom code has no plugin. Its developers build the titles, markup and sitemap into the code, and you check the result with the same Google tools. Zero Dimensions builds stores on WooCommerce, Shopify and custom code, so we add these when we design and develop an ecommerce website.

Paid SEO suites: Semrush and Ahrefs

A paid suite is worth it when you need data the free tools do not give: your competitors’ keywords and links, how hard each keyword is to rank for, and daily tracking of many keywords. Semrush and Ahrefs are the two most store owners compare, and most lists of SEO tools for e-commerce lead with them.

Semrush

Semrush sells its tools as toolkits. The SEO Toolkit has more than 20 tools, including the Keyword Magic Tool, Keyword Gap (keywords your competitors rank for and you don’t), Site Audit and Position Tracking, plus backlink analysis. Other toolkits cover AI visibility, local listings and content. Its help pages offer a seven-day free trial. In our own keyword research we used Semrush for keyword difficulty scores.

Ahrefs

Ahrefs includes Site Explorer (any site’s pages, keywords and links), Keywords Explorer, Site Audit, Rank Tracker and Content Explorer, plus Brand Radar for visibility in AI answers. It also offers free tools and the free Webmaster Tools above.

Which one should you pick?

Both cover keyword research, site audits, rank tracking and backlinks. Run the same competitor and the same ten product keywords through each during a trial, and keep the one whose figures and screens your team will actually use. Check current plans on each site; prices change, so we don’t quote them here.

There is no single list of the best ecommerce SEO tools for every store. A store with 200 products and a free crawler can do well without a suite; a store with 20,000 products and five competitors will likely need one.

Two tools we built

We built these two tools at Zero Dimensions, so weigh our view of them with that in mind.

SEO keyword clustering tool

Our keyword clustering tool groups SEO keywords by the Google results they share. You upload keywords; it fetches missing search volumes and Google results through DataForSEO, groups keywords whose results overlap, and uses AI to decide the borderline cases. It exports the groups, ranked by priority, to CSV, Excel or ZIP.

For a store, each group is a hint for one page. If two keywords show the same results, one category page can target both; if their results differ, they may need separate pages.

GBP Manager

GBP Manager manages many Google Business Profiles from one dashboard. AI drafts posts and review replies in each business’s voice, a person approves them, and the tool publishes them through the Business Profile API. It suits stores that also have a shop counter or several outlets, where the Google listing brings walk-ins and calls. For help with the listing itself, see our Google Business Profile optimisation page.

How to choose the best SEO tools for ecommerce

Choose by your platform, the size of your catalogue and who will make the fixes, not by the longest feature list.

1. Start with your platform. On WooCommerce, pick one SEO plugin. On Shopify, use the built-in settings first. On a custom store, ask your developers what is already built in.
2. Count your addresses. If your store has fewer than 500 addresses, including filter and variant pages, Screaming Frog’s free version can crawl all of it. Bigger stores need the paid licence or a suite’s site audit.
3. Decide who fixes what the tools find. A report of 300 issues helps only if someone can change the theme, the plugin or the code.
4. Check the data covers your market. If you sell in India, make sure the tool shows search figures for India, not only the US.
5. Try before you pay. Use the free tools for a month first; then trial one paid suite against your real competitors.
6. Use fewer tools well. One crawler, one suite and Google’s free tools, checked every month, beat six tools nobody opens.

A monthly check with ecommerce SEO tools

Check once a month, and again after any theme change, platform move or big product upload. This order takes about an hour on a small store:

1. Search Console, search results: clicks by page against last month. Note category pages that dropped.
2. Search Console, indexing: confirm new products are indexed; inspect any that are not.
3. Merchant Center: fix products with issues so they keep showing in Google’s shopping results.
4. Crawler: look for broken links, redirect chains and duplicate titles on new products.
5. Rich Results Test: test one product page of each template after any update.
6. PageSpeed Insights: check your top category page and one product page on mobile.
7. Google Analytics 4: compare sales from Google search with last month.

Questions

Which tool is best for ecommerce SEO?

Google Search Console is the one every store should use first: it is free and shows the searches and clicks for each page. No single product is the best SEO ecommerce software for every store. Add a crawler such as Screaming Frog, your platform’s SEO settings, and a paid suite only when you need competitor data.

Are there free ecommerce SEO tools?

Yes. Google Search Console, Google Merchant Center, the Rich Results Test, PageSpeed Insights and Google Analytics 4 are free. Screaming Frog’s free version crawls up to 500 addresses, and Ahrefs Webmaster Tools is free for sites you verify as yours.

What does SEO stand for in ecommerce?

SEO stands for search engine optimisation. In ecommerce it means getting a store’s category and product pages found when shoppers search Google for what the store sells.

Do I need a paid SEO tool for a small online store?

Usually not at first. Google’s free tools, a free crawl and your platform’s SEO settings cover the checks a small store needs. Pay for a suite when you want your competitors’ keywords and links, or to track many keywords every day.

Which keyword tool is best for ecommerce keyword research?

Google Keyword Planner gives free monthly search estimates. Semrush and Ahrefs add keyword difficulty and the keywords your competitors rank for. Then group the keywords so each category or product page targets its own searches.

Can SEO tools fix my store’s problems?

No. Tools find and report problems; a person has to fix them in the theme, the plugin settings, the product pages or the code. Plan who will make the changes before you buy a tool.

How often should I check my store with SEO tools?

Once a month, and again after a theme change, a platform move or a large product upload. Problems caught in a week are cheaper than problems found after a season of lost clicks.