We run link building for ecommerce clients, so I spend a lot of time inside Shopify stores that are not ranking. The problem is rarely the links. It is usually something in the store itself: pages Google cannot index, product titles that repeat across forty variants, images that take five seconds to load, or a redirect that was never set up after a collection got renamed.
Apps fix most of that. There are hundreds of them and a lot of them do the same job, so this is my shortlist and what each one is actually for.
One note before the list. App pricing changes often, and the review counts move every week. Check the current numbers on the Shopify App Store before you commit to anything here.
How I picked these
Four things.
Does it fix a real problem? Plenty of apps just show you a score. A score is not a fix.
Does it touch your theme? Some apps edit theme files to do their work. That is fine until you switch themes or the app is uninstalled and something breaks. I flag the ones that do this.
Is there a free plan that does anything useful? A free plan capped at fifty images a month is a trial, not a plan. Say so.
What happens on a big catalogue? Most of these are fine on 200 products. A lot of them get slow or expensive at 5,000.
The list at a glance
Prices are the starting paid tier at the time of writing and move often. Check the App Store before you buy.
| App | What it’s for | Free plan | Paid from | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AVADA SEO Suite | All-in-one technical SEO | Yes | ~$35/mo | One app instead of five |
| Sherpas Smart SEO | Bulk meta tags, images, schema | Yes | ~$10/mo | Large catalogues, AI meta tags |
| SEO Manager | Sitemaps, JSON-LD, alt text | No | ~$9/mo | Plain-language diagnostics |
| Plug In SEO | Guided audits and fixes | No | ~$30/mo | Stores with budget, no SEO staff |
| Booster SEO | Automated fixes, image compression | Yes | ~$39/mo | Hands-off automation |
| Redirects Pro | 404 detection and bulk redirects | Yes | ~$3/mo | Migrations and renamed collections |
| Bloggle | Blog builder with SEO scoring | No | ~$25/mo | Content-led stores |
| Tapita | Audits, speed, bulk editing, alerts | Yes | ~$10/mo | Catching problems early |
| SearchPie | Keyword and rank tracking in Shopify | Yes | ~$39/mo | Ranking data without a second tool |
| TinyIMG | Image compression and alt text | Yes | ~$14/mo | Slow stores with heavy imagery |
| AltText.ai | Alt text only, pay as you go | No | Per image | One-off pass on a big library |
| Webrex AI SEO Schema | Automatic JSON-LD | Free | Free | Starting point for schema |
| Schema Plus for SEO | Product, review and breadcrumb schema | No | ~$15/mo | Rich results with support |
| JSON-LD for SEO | Advanced structured data | No | ~$42/mo | Unusual product structures |
| StoreSEO | SEO plus AI answer optimisation | Yes | ~$13/mo | Stores already solid on basics |
| Lumos AI SEO | llms.txt and AI search visibility | Yes | ~$13/mo | Early AI search experiments |
Swipe sideways to see every column.
Technical SEO apps
This is the group that fixes indexing, sitemaps, redirects and duplicate pages. If something here is broken, nothing else you do matters much.
AVADA SEO Suite is the one I recommend most often to stores that want one app instead of five. It covers meta tags, sitemaps, Search Console connection and image work, and it gives you a task list rather than a dashboard full of numbers. Free plan is usable. The paid tier sits around $35 to $45 a month depending on the plan. The interface throws a lot at you on day one.
Sherpas Smart SEO does a smaller job and does it cleanly. Meta tags, image compression, structured data, broken links. It uses AI to write meta titles and descriptions in bulk, which saves real hours on a large catalogue. Free plan, then roughly $10 to $39 a month. If your SEO needs are unusual you will hit the limits of what it lets you customise.
SEO Manager has been around longer than most. Sitemap handling, JSON-LD, alt text, keyword suggestions, and it tells you what is wrong in plain language. The interface looks dated now. Pricing runs from about $9 up to $76 depending on store size.
Plug In SEO is built for people who do not want to learn SEO. It scans the store, finds problems, and tells you what to do in order. There is no free plan and it is one of the pricier options, so it suits a store that has budget but no in-house SEO.
Redirects Pro does one thing. It catches 404s and lets you redirect them in bulk. Cheap, starting a few dollars a month. Worth having during a migration and worth keeping afterwards, because collections get renamed more often than anyone plans for.
Booster SEO and Image Optimizer is popular and does a lot: meta tags, bulk image compression, automated fixes. My hesitation is that it makes changes to your theme, and the reviews include people who did not realise what had been changed. Use it, but take a theme backup first and read what its autopilot is doing before you turn it on.
Content and on-page apps
Bloggle replaces the Shopify blog editor, which is the weakest part of the platform. Drag and drop layout, SEO scoring as you write, and you can embed products inside posts. Starts around $25 a month. It only does blogging, so it sits alongside a technical app rather than replacing one.
Tapita SEO and Speed Optimizer combines audits, speed work and bulk meta tag editing, and it will alert you when something breaks rather than waiting for you to check. Free plan, paid from about $10. It does not auto-generate meta tags the way Smart SEO does, and the cost climbs with catalogue size.
SearchPie leans on keyword tracking and position monitoring more than the others. If you want ranking data inside Shopify rather than in a separate tool, this is the one. Free tier, then roughly $39 upward, and the top plans are expensive. Its backlink data is thin compared with a proper backlink tool, which is not a criticism so much as a scope limit. For judging link quality we use a separate process, which I have written up in our guide to checking backlink quality.
Image and speed apps
Images are the biggest cause of slow Shopify stores. Not apps, not themes. Images.
TinyIMG compresses images, writes alt text, and adds some schema. The free plan gives you a limited number of optimisations a month, which is enough to see whether it helps. Paid is around $14 to $24. Compression can soften detail on product photography, so check a few images before you run it across the whole library.
AltText.ai writes alt text and nothing else. It is pay as you go, so a one-off pass across an existing catalogue costs you once rather than monthly. If your problem is 4,000 images with no alt text, this is the cheapest way to fix it.
Most of the all-in-one apps above also compress images. If you already run AVADA or Booster, you probably do not need a separate image app.
Structured data and rich results
Schema is what gets you stars, prices and stock status showing in the search result. It will not move your ranking much on its own. It will change how many people click.
Webrex AI SEO Schema is free and generates JSON-LD automatically. Start here. If it covers what you need, you are done and it cost nothing.
Schema Plus for SEO covers product schema, review markup and breadcrumbs, with support that people rate highly. Around $15 to $19 a month, no free plan. Some users report it slowing the site, so check your speed scores after installing.
JSON-LD for SEO is the advanced option at roughly $42 a month. It is more than most stores need. If you have unusual product structures or you have tried the cheaper ones and hit their limits, it is the one that will handle it.
| App | Cost | Covers | Free plan |
|---|---|---|---|
| Webrex AI SEO Schema | Free | Core JSON-LD, generated automatically | Yes |
| Schema Plus for SEO | ~$15-19/mo | Product, reviews, breadcrumbs | No |
| JSON-LD for SEO | ~$42/mo | Advanced and custom structures | No |
Swipe sideways to see every column.
Start free. Only pay when you hit something the free one cannot output.
Internal linking
Being straight with you: Shopify has no good dedicated internal linking app. This is a real gap. Most teams handle it manually or through whatever blog app they use, and on a big catalogue that means it never gets done.
It matters more than people think. Internal links tell Google which of your pages are important, and a collection page with no links pointing at it will sit there no matter how many external links you build. If you are doing ecommerce link building, the internal structure decides where that authority actually lands.
Practical version if you have no app: link every blog post to two or three relevant collections, link related products to each other, and make sure your money collections are reachable from the homepage in one click. That covers most of the value.
Apps for AI search
Search results are not only Google links any more. Assistants answer directly and cite a handful of sources, so a store can lose clicks even while its rankings hold.
StoreSEO covers ordinary SEO plus what it calls AEO, aimed at getting picked up by AI answers. Free plan, paid around $13. It is a newer app without a long track record.
Lumos AI SEO handles llms.txt and AI search visibility. Free plan, paid around $13.
My honest read on both: the return here is hard to measure right now, and if your basic SEO is broken this is not where to start. If your technical work is already done, they are cheap enough to try.
After the click
Everything above brings people to the store. None of it makes them buy.
This is the part I see ecommerce teams skip. A store can double its organic sessions and see almost nothing in revenue, because most of the traffic reaches checkout and leaves. That is not a traffic problem and no SEO app will fix it.
TxtCart works this end of the funnel. It uses SMS to reopen abandoned checkouts, with AI handling the conversation rather than sending a single generic reminder. It is not an SEO app and it does not belong in the lists above, but it belongs in this article, because paying to acquire traffic that abandons is the most expensive mistake on this page.
Fix it in parallel with your SEO work rather than after it.
What I would actually install
| Store size | What to install | Roughly per month |
|---|---|---|
| Under 50 products | AVADA SEO Suite (free) + Webrex Schema | $0 |
| 50 to 500 products | Sherpas Smart SEO + TinyIMG + Redirects Pro | ~$30 |
| 500 to 5,000 products | AVADA or Booster + Schema Plus + TinyIMG | ~$70 |
| 5,000+ products | AVADA or Booster + Schema Plus + AltText.ai one-off pass, plus a real SEO tool outside Shopify | $100+ |
Swipe sideways to see every column.
Two or three apps is the right number at any size. Every app adds scripts, and several of these overlap enough to conflict with each other.
For every store: nothing on this page replaces links. Apps fix what is wrong inside the store. They do not tell Google your store deserves to rank ahead of a competitor. That comes from other sites linking to you, which is covered in our off-page SEO checklist.
Do I need an SEO app at all?
If you have fewer than fifty products and you write your own titles and descriptions, probably not. Shopify handles sitemaps and canonicals on its own. Apps earn their money on volume and on bulk editing.
Will an SEO app get me ranking?
No. It removes the things stopping you from ranking. Those are different problems. Most stores that install an app and see nothing had a link problem, not a technical one.
How many should I install?
Two or three. Every app adds scripts, and several of these overlap heavily. Running two apps that both compress images and both write meta tags will cause conflicts and slow the store down.
Free or paid?
Start free. AVADA, Smart SEO, Tapita and Webrex all have free plans that do real work. Upgrade when you hit a limit you can name, not before.
What about apps that edit my theme?
Take a backup first, and write down what you installed. The pain arrives six months later when you change themes and something breaks and nobody remembers why.
Getting listed here
We update this list. If you build a Shopify SEO app and think it should be on it, send it over with what it does and who it suits, and we will look at it for the next revision. We do not charge for inclusion.
If you are a store owner and the technical side is handled but rankings have not moved, the problem is almost always off the site rather than on it. That is the part we work on, and our link building packages exist for exactly that.
