Common questions
Questions we hear most
How do online stores rank on Google?
Through category and product pages structured the way Google reads commerce: a clear hierarchy, descriptive product content, clean structured data, and internal links that tell the crawler which pages matter. Most Shopify stores ship with thin product descriptions copied from the supplier and near-identical category text, which is why they rank for their own brand name and almost nothing else. The category page is the one most owners underrate. It is the page that can rank for the search that actually has volume, silver hoop earrings rather than one product name, and it is where the crawler decides how much of your catalogue is worth indexing. Treating it as a real page, with an introduction that answers what buyers ask, sensible filters that do not spawn thousands of duplicate URLs, and links down to the products that deserve the traffic, is most of the work. Product pages then need their own unique copy, real specifications, honest sizing and materials detail, and review markup. Suetables reached number one in North America for silver jewellery on exactly that work. The other half is technical hygiene: one canonical version of every URL, no orphaned pages, and a site that loads fast enough that the crawler gets through the whole catalogue.
Google Shopping or Meta ads: which should I run?
They do different jobs, and mature stores usually run both. Google Shopping captures people already searching for what you sell, so it converts at high intent, and it scales with the same feed and category work that drives your organic rankings. Meta creates demand, putting a product in front of someone who was not looking for it, which is where creative quality decides almost everything. If you can only run one, the answer depends on the product. Something people actively search for, a replacement part, a known category, a gift with a name, starts on Shopping. Something people did not know existed, or that sells on how it looks, starts on Meta. The mistake we see most often is judging both on the same metric. Shopping should be held to a target return on ad spend and trimmed weekly against the search terms report. Meta needs a longer window and a wider view, because a first-touch campaign that looks unprofitable on last-click reporting is often the reason the branded searches went up. Feed quality is the unglamorous part that decides Shopping performance: accurate titles that lead with what the thing is, correct product types, real availability, and images that meet the specification. Most underperforming Shopping accounts have a feed problem rather than a bidding problem.
What return on ad spend should I expect?
It depends on your margins, your price point and how well your store converts, so we set the target from your economics rather than quoting an industry number. A store with 70 per cent margins and a $180 average order can run profitably at a return that would bankrupt a store selling $30 items at 35 per cent, and any agency quoting a universal figure is describing someone else's business. What we can say from experience: our Facebook campaigns for Le Dolci returned 4x over five years of continuous management, and our affiliate work for Sears drove over five million dollars in tracked sales. The number we agree up front is a break-even return, calculated from your margin, and then a target above it that leaves real profit. Everything is judged against those two lines. Three things move the figure faster than bidding does. Average order value, since bundles and thresholds change the maths without needing a single extra visitor. Repeat purchase rate, because a first order bought at break-even is profitable by the third. And the checkout itself, where every unnecessary field costs completed orders. We track return on ad spend monthly alongside contribution margin, and move budget toward whatever is beating the target rather than defending a channel.
How much does site speed matter for a store?
Directly and measurably. Slow product pages lose buyers before the main image has loaded, and Google uses the same speed signals as part of ranking, so the cost is paid twice. Most store slowness comes from app bloat and theme debt rather than from hosting. A store that has collected a dozen apps over three years is usually carrying scripts from two it no longer uses, each one still loading on every page. Uncompressed hero images and a slider nobody scrolls are the other usual suspects. The fix is unglamorous: audit the apps and remove what is not earning its place, serve images in a modern format at the size they are actually displayed, defer the scripts that do not need to run before the page paints, and stop the theme loading assets on pages that never use them. We build and optimise Shopify themes with clean code, compressed imagery and passing Core Web Vitals, because the same work makes the store convert better and rank better. Checkout is the same story with more money attached. Every unnecessary field, every forced account creation, every surprise at the shipping step costs completed orders, and those losses are invisible unless someone is watching the funnel step by step.
Can AI tools recommend my products?
Yes, and it is growing quickly. People ask assistants what to buy, which brand is better, and where to buy it, and the tools answer from structured product data, reviews, and how consistently your brand is described across the web. What gets a product named is specificity: real materials, dimensions, care instructions, sizing that maps to something a person understands, and a clear statement of what the item is for. A description written to sound premium gives an assistant nothing to work with. Product schema matters more here than in any other category, because it states price, availability, ratings and specifications in a form the machine does not have to interpret, and it is the difference between being quoted with a price and being skipped. Reviews carry weight for the same reason they do in search: volume, recency and detail all feed the recommendation. Consistency across your own site, your marketplace listings and any retailer carrying you is the third factor, since conflicting information makes you an unsafe answer. We build that citation potential into the store itself, so every product page is readable by the assistants your customers already use, and so the pages that rank in Google are the same pages the assistants quote.
