SEO for retail: get found by shoppers near you and online

Two shopper journeys

The first shopper types "running shoes near me open now" and wants a map pin, opening hours and a yes or no on stock. The second types "waterproof trail shoes women" and compares four sites before buying. A store with a few shelves and a web shop usually needs to win both.

These need different pages. Local intent is served by store pages and a well-kept Google Business Profile. Product intent is served by category pages that explain choices and product pages with real detail. Mixing them on one page makes both weaker.

Retail SEO workload by page type

Stock, feeds and point-of-sale data

Retail SEO is only as good as the data behind it. If your point-of-sale system, for example Square, Lightspeed or Shopify POS, sends a different price or stock level from your site, shoppers notice. We check how products flow from your system to the site and to product feeds that go to Google Merchant Center, where you list products free in the shopping tabs.

Product structured data should show price, availability and reviews only when those are real and visible on the page. Marking up invented ratings breaks Google's guidelines and can remove rich results.

If your catalogue is large, we prioritize. Fifty top sellers and ten key categories usually matter more than five thousand thin product pages. Our ecommerce SEO service goes deeper on catalogue work.

Store locations and local visibility

Each store needs a consistent name, address and phone number on its page, its Google Business Profile and a few trusted directories. Hours need updating for holidays before the holiday, not after. Photos of the entrance and parking save wrong-turn calls.

Where the shop offers click and collect, say so on the product page and the store page, and use local inventory information only if your systems can keep it accurate. Our local SEO service covers the profile work.

• Add a seasonal posts rhythm to the profile: arrivals, sales dates, events.
• Answer questions on the profile that customers actually ask, like returns and parking.
• Keep returns, shipping and contact pages easy to find, since they affect trust.

A retail year

Most retailers earn a large part of their year in a few weeks. Search work for the holiday period starts in summer, because new pages take months to gain traction. We build a calendar: gift guides and category refreshes by September, sale and delivery-cutoff pages ready in October, and a January review of what to keep.

Delivery cut-off dates, returns windows and price promises must match what you actually do. Check with your lawyer or trading standards body about price comparison and sale claims in your country.

Price guidance

Projects start at $1,500 and our rate is $30 an hour. A single-store shop with a small catalogue sits near the minimum. Multiple stores, large catalogues and feed clean-up add scope. See what SEO costs for the general approach and ecommerce SEO pricing for catalogue-heavy work. The parent SEO service page explains how we report.