Shopify Advanced SEO: Markets and hreflang, Metadata Not Updating, Alt Text, Metafields, Pagination and Headless

Shopify says Markets handles hreflang tags, canonical URLs, international sitemaps and crawler access automatically once you assign domains, subfolders or subdomains and languages to markets.

This guide covers that setup and the other Shopify questions that come up once the basics in the Shopify SEO checklist are done.

Shopify Markets and international SEO

Option	Example	Shopify’s view
Subfolders	yourstore.com/fr/	Easiest; shares the primary domain’s strength; recommended for most stores
Subdomains	fr.yourstore.com	Clear separation; needs DNS per subdomain
Country domains	yourstore.fr	Strongest local signal; separate domains to manage

• Hreflang tags are generated only for markets with a distinct domain, subdomain or subfolder, and include an x-default pointing to the primary domain.
• You can turn off automatic hreflang (Online Store > Preferences) only if you add your own; don’t run both.
• Each market version has a self-referencing canonical; sitemaps include every market URL with hreflang annotations.
• Automatic redirection applies to shoppers but not known search crawlers. Google also advises against redirecting by IP for crawlers and recommends visible links to other versions.
• Translate and adapt content per market rather than copying it (localizing content, expanding from the US).

Meta descriptions not updating in Google

1. Open the page, view source and confirm the title and meta description tags match what you entered.
2. If they match, Google is choosing different text; Shopify notes search engines can rewrite titles and descriptions.
3. Request recrawling with URL Inspection (URL Inspection).
4. Make the description a better summary of the page (meta descriptions).
5. If source doesn’t match, check theme code or apps overriding the SEO fields.

Alt text at scale

• Shopify lets you set alt text per product image, collection image and blog featured image.
• Describe what the image shows; use the product’s real attributes (color, angle, material).
• For large catalogs, use bulk editing via export and import, the Admin API or a reputable app, and review a sample by hand.
• See image SEO best practices.

Metafields for SEO content

Metafields store custom data such as care instructions, materials, dimensions or recommended ages, and your theme can show each in its own section. That gives every product unique, structured detail instead of a generic description, and the same data can feed structured data and product highlights.

Pagination, tags and blogs

• Collections paginate with ?page= URLs; keep them crawlable with normal links and self-canonicals (pagination).
• Collection filter and tag URLs can multiply; keep important ones linked and avoid indexing thin combinations.
• Shopify’s blog handles normal articles well. A WordPress blog on a subdomain or reverse proxy adds flexibility but also maintenance; keep the blog on the main domain path if you can.

Shopify Plus and headless

• Shopify Plus mainly adds scale, checkout and operational features; the core SEO controls are the same.
• Headless storefronts replace Shopify’s theme layer, so you must handle server-side rendering, titles, canonicals, hreflang, sitemaps, redirects and structured data yourself (JavaScript SEO).
• Plan redirects and URL parity before switching to headless.

For stores expanding internationally or moving to headless, our Shopify SEO team can review Markets, hreflang and theme setup before changes go live.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

• Shopify Help Center: International SEO for markets
• Shopify Help Center: Adding keywords for SEO to your Shopify store
• Shopify Help Center: Metafields
• Google Search Central: Tell Google about localized versions of your page
• Google Search Central: Managing multi-regional and multilingual sites
• Google Search Central: Pagination, incremental page loading and Google Search

Last reviewed October 19, 2026.