Technical SEO Audit: Canonicals, Schema & GSC Setup

Project overview

A new Shopify alt wine brand was days away from launch when the technical audit ran. The site looked clean on the surface: well-structured URLs, complete product catalog, designed and ready. But surface-level reviews miss what Google actually sees when it crawls a new site for the first time.

Technical issues on a new site are categorically more damaging than on an established one. An established site with existing authority can absorb a canonical error. The ranking signal gets split but something was already there. A new site that Google indexes incorrectly from day one has to wait for a complete recrawl cycle before the correction takes effect, costing weeks of compounding ranking time.

The brief was to audit every technical SEO element before indexing began, and fix everything before a single page was submitted to Google Search Console.

What we set out to achieve

A completely clean technical foundation: every issue identified and resolved before indexing began.

• ✓Verify canonical tag configuration across all 16 pages. Ensure every page has a correctly configured self-referencing canonical and no competing canonical signals exist between collection pages and product pages.
• ✓Verify all four redirect domains deliver clean single-hop 301s. Confirm that each vanity domain redirects to the correct destination collection page, not just to the homepage, with no redirect chains.
• ✓Replace the GSC URL-prefix property with a Domain Property. Unify all URL variants (www, non-www, http, https) under a single Domain Property to get a complete, accurate picture of indexing status.
• ✓Deploy six schema types via theme.liquid before first indexing. Implement schema before crawl so new pages are evaluated for rich results eligibility from their first indexation.

The audit: six areas, fixed in priority order

Issues were resolved in order of indexing impact. Anything preventing correct crawl or indexation came first, canonical and redirect issues second, schema third, GSC configuration last.

1. 01

   Canonical tag configuration: every page checked

   All 16 pages verified to have correctly configured self-referencing canonical tags. Shopify’s default canonical behavior is mostly correct but has edge cases: products appearing in multiple collections can generate competing canonical signals, and paginated collection URLs (/collections/*?page=N) need explicit canonical handling pointing to the page-1 URL. Both issues were confirmed and resolved through theme.liquid. The sibling Simplé Blanc and Simplé Noir collection pages were specifically verified: distinct, self-referencing canonicals, not cross-referencing each other despite similar content structure.

2. 02

   Robots.txt review: no important pages blocked

   Shopify’s default robots.txt blocks specific internal URL patterns (sort_by parameters, /search, /checkout) which is correct behavior. The audit verified that no collection page, product page, or hub page was inadvertently blocked. Third-party apps can add URL parameters that occasionally appear in disallow rules, so each installed app was checked individually. All 16 priority SEO pages confirmed crawlable with no blocks.

3. 03

   Redirect chain verification across four vanity domains

   The brand operated four product-specific vanity domains intended to 301 redirect to the main store. HTTP header checks confirmed: status codes, destination URLs, and whether multi-hop redirect chains existed. A 301 status code only tells you the page redirects, not where it goes, or whether it goes through intermediate hops that dilute link equity. All four domains were confirmed delivering clean single-hop 301 redirects to the correct destination collection pages, not the homepage. One domain had an intermediate http to https hop that was collapsed to a single redirect.

4. 04

   GSC Domain Property setup: replacing the URL-prefix property

   The store had a URL-prefix GSC property (https://www.domain.com) rather than a Domain Property. URL-prefix properties only track one URL variant. If the canonical is non-www but the property is www, coverage data is incomplete and potentially misleading. The Domain Property covers all variants (www, non-www, http, https) under a single unified view. Replacement took under 10 minutes and immediately gave a complete, accurate picture of indexing status. A Loom walkthrough was provided explaining the difference and why the Domain Property is the correct setup for all new Shopify stores.

5. 05

   Schema deployment: six types via theme.liquid, validated before launch

   Zero schema existed sitewide at the start of the audit. Six JSON-LD schema types implemented through Shopify’s theme.liquid: Organization and WebSite (homepage, for entity establishment), CollectionPage (six collection pages), Product with Offer including price, availability, and currency (four product pages), FAQPage (collection pages and hub page with FAQ blocks), and BreadcrumbList (sitewide). All six types validated against Google’s Rich Results Test before any page was submitted for indexing. Implementing schema before first crawl means new pages are evaluated for rich results eligibility from day one. Retroactive schema requires a second crawl cycle.

6. 06

   XML sitemap validation and GSC submission

   Shopify automatically generates an XML sitemap at /sitemap.xml. The sitemap was validated to confirm all 16 priority pages were included and no non-canonical URLs were listed. The sitemap was then submitted to the GSC Domain Property after all technical fixes were in place, ensuring Google’s first structured awareness of the site was based on the corrected, canonical URL set.