The Shopify blog SEO checklist that is short enough to finish

Most SEO checklists are either too vague to act on or two hundred items long, which means nobody finishes them. This one is short enough to actually work through, ordered the way you'd do it rather than the way it's usually written.

Run it on your next post. After two or three, most of it becomes reflex and the whole thing takes about ten minutes.

Before you write a word

This is the step people skip, and the only one you can't correct later. A beautifully written post aimed at a phrase nobody searches is wasted regardless of how good it is.

• Pick one primary keyword. Not three. One phrase the post is unambiguously about.
• Google it. If page one is entirely Amazon, Wikipedia and major publishers, choose something narrower.
• Look at what kind of pages rank: guides, comparisons, or product pages? That tells you what the query wants. Fighting it loses.
• Prefer the long-tail phrase. Fewer searches, far better odds, and the searcher is closer to buying.
• Search your own site first. If an existing post already targets this, improve that one instead of competing with yourself.

While writing

• Answer the question inside the first hundred words. No warm-up.
• Primary keyword in the title, once, ideally near the front.
• Primary keyword in one H2. One, not all of them.
• At least two headings phrased the way a person would type them.
• An id on every main heading, so sections can be linked to directly.
• Break the page up: a comparison table where there's something to compare, a numbered sequence where order matters, lists where they're genuinely lists.
• No invented numbers. If you can't source a statistic, leave it out. A made-up figure outlives the post and takes your credibility with it.

Before you hit publish

These are the ones most often missed, and each has a specific cost attached.

• Meta description written. Skip it and Google writes its own from stray page text.
• Title unique across your whole site. Two pages with one title compete with each other.
• Alt text on every image. Describe what's in the picture; don't stuff keywords into it.
• Images compressed to well under 200KB. Uncompressed hero images are the usual reason a post feels slow on a phone.
• One link to a relevant product or collection. Without it the post entertains and sells nothing.
• Two or three links to your related posts. New pages have no inbound links until you make them.
• A readable URL slug. Short, words, no dates you'll regret.
• Headings in order. H2 then H3, not H2 then H4 because it looked better.

On meta descriptions specifically: around 150 to 160 characters, active voice, keyword once, and finish with a reason to click. It's advertising copy, not a summary. It's also the only line here that directly decides whether a ranking becomes a visit.

After it's live

• Confirm the page is actually indexable. A post nothing can crawl ranks for nothing.
• Add links to it from your older related posts. This is the step everyone forgets and it's free.
• Then leave it alone for a few weeks. Rewriting on day four tells you nothing except that you're anxious.
• Diary a review for three months out. Add what's missing, refresh what's dated, fix links to pages you've since moved.

If you only do four things

Pick one realistic keyword. Answer the question in the opening. Write the meta description. Link to a product.

Those four are the difference between a post that can work and one that can't. Everything else on this page moves a post from workable to competitive, which matters, but no amount of alt text rescues a post aimed at a phrase you were never going to rank for. That's why the keyword decision sits at the top and not, as in most checklists, somewhere in the middle.

Frequently asked questions

How long should a meta description be?

Roughly 150 to 160 characters. Longer gets cut off, so put the reason to click early enough to survive truncation.

Does keyword density matter?

Not as a target. Place the keyword in a few meaningful positions and write normally everywhere else. If a keyword forces an awkward sentence, drop the keyword.

Do I need to submit new posts to Google?

Usually not. Posts get found through your sitemap and your internal links, which is one more argument for linking to new posts from old ones. Manual submission can speed up a first crawl but doesn't replace being linked to.

Is alt text a ranking factor?

Its clear value is image search and accessibility, both worth having regardless. Describe the image; if your keyword fits one of them naturally, that's plenty.

Should I use schema markup?

FAQ and article markup are worth adding if your platform makes it straightforward, because they give answer engines clean structured facts to quote. Only mark up questions that genuinely appear on the page; describing content a visitor can't see is a penalty rather than a shortcut.

Keep it somewhere

Paste this list into whatever you write in. The value isn't in reading it once, it's in having it open on the day you're tired and about to publish something without a meta description.