E-commerce SEO Masterclass: Part 1 – Assemble Your Toolkit 🔧

Welcome to the first part of our E-commerce SEO Masterclass – The 5-part mini-series designed to get your store’s organic traffic graph looking like this in the next six months 👇

The best time to plant a tree was ten years ago. The next best time is today, so let’s delve in!

But before we dive into strategies, let’s talk tools. SEO is like a craft—even the best strategies fall short without the right tools. You need powerful tools to help you plan, optimize and measure your progress. 

Throughout this course, we aim to give you this level of insight and visibility into exactly what’s keeping our store far from Google’s 1st-page results.  

(Image for illustration only)

So, keeping things simple, here are the four essential tools you need to power your e-commerce store’s organic growth:

1. Google Search Console (Your SEO Compass). How do you measure the impact of your SEO efforts? GSC shows you how your site performs on Google, giving you insight into search queries, crawl errors, mobile usability, etc. Think of it as the foundation of your SEO strategy, showing you what’s working, what’s not, and what to tweak for better visibility.

Cost: Free

2. Google Merchant Center (Your Visibility/Sales Booster).  GMC is a must for all ecommerce merchants. It allows you to upload your product data directly to Google, improving your products’ appearance in Google Shopping results. It also ensures your products are displayed correctly, with optimized listings that get clicks—and sales.

Cost: Free

3. Plug In SEO (Your SEO Detective) Plug In SEO is an easy-to-use Shopify app that highlights SEO issues like broken links, slow page speeds, and missing meta tags. It’s like having your SEO detective running in the background, alerting you to problems before they affect rankings.

Cost: Free 14-day trial. Starts at $29.99

4. Ahrefs/Moz/SEMRush (Competitive Research Powerhouse) Finally, you need a secret weapon for competitor research, backlink analysis, and keyword discovery. These tell you what keywords drive traffic to your competitors and help you identify link-building opportunities to strengthen your store’s authority. 

Cost: From $99, no free trial (Optional)

🔑 Pro Tip: Any competitor research tools work fine, but if you’re keeping costs low, we’ll show you a cost-saving alternative with Plug In SEO.

In the next lesson, we’ll discuss your Google Business Profile and how two small Shopify stores leveraged GBP to outrank Amazon and Adidas in organic search queries! If you haven’t already got your toolkit, get it here:

Read Next Lessons here: Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5

Resources: Google Search Console | Google Merchant Center | Plug In SEO | Google Business Profile | Any keyword research tool of your choice (optional)

Need the heavy lifting done for you? Get 50% off the Quickstart Service using code “dtcdaily50”