Track B — SEO
SEO foundation that started ranking on a brand-new Shopify store
PeptideShopUK is a UK Shopify store selling research peptides. We engaged for a Phase 1 SEO overhaul on what was effectively a fresh domain — DR 0, no backlink profile, no existing organic visibility. The store had products and a theme. It didn’t yet have an SEO foundation that could rank.A few months in, the foundation is showing. The site is now picking up impressions in Google Search Console for relevant commercial and informational queries, before third-party tools like Ahrefs have even indexed it as a meaningful domain. That gap between “Google sees us” and “third-party SEO tools see us” is the early signal that the technical and on-page work has landed.The honest scope of this case study: this is foundation work, not a finished SEO project. Backlinks and topical authority are the next phase, and they take time. But the foundation is doing what foundations are supposed to do.The client and the situation
PeptideShopUK is in the research peptides niche — a regulated, competitive UK ecommerce vertical where SEO matters disproportionately. Paid acquisition has restrictions in this space, which makes organic the highest-leverage acquisition channel.When we engaged, the situation was a common one for a relatively new store:- Theme installed, products listed, basic Shopify SEO defaults in place
- Almost zero unique meta tags — every page was effectively inheriting the homepage title
- Limited content on collection pages (just product grids)
- Product pages using vendor-supplied descriptions, duplicated across the niche
- No structured data beyond what the theme provided by default
- DR 0 — meaning no significant external link signals
- No GSC submission, no sitemap configured, no indexation strategy
In other words: a Shopify store with the doors open, no signs on the windows, and Google not yet sure what the shop sells.Why the starting position matters
Two things make the starting position worth noting before getting to the work.One — DR 0 is not a death sentence for ranking. The keyword research we did at the start showed several target keywords with KD under 15 in the niche. Difficulty that low means a well-built page with proper schema and on-page optimisation can rank without a fortress of backlinks behind it. Most “we can’t rank without authority” pessimism comes from agencies who haven’t actually tried building good pages on a low-DR site.Two — fresh sites have an advantage agencies often forget. No legacy bad decisions to undo. No stale content cluttering the index. No old redirects, no canonical chains, no 404s from a previous regime. Building the foundation on a fresh site is faster than rehabilitating a tired one. The trade-off is patience — Google needs time to trust a new domain.Both of these shaped the approach.Phase 1 — what we did
Phase 1 was the technical and on-page foundation. Roughly 6–8 weeks of focused work covering four areas.Technical SEO foundation
The boring but essential layer:- Sitemap configured and submitted to GSC
- Robots.txt audited and corrected (Shopify defaults block more than they should for SEO purposes)
- Canonical tags reviewed across the entire URL space — variants, filtered collection views, sort orders
- Crawl budget protection on faceted navigation (preventing thousands of duplicate URLs from being crawled)
- Mobile usability check, viewport configuration, render-blocking resources audited
- HTTPS and security headers
- Core Web Vitals baseline established and the obvious wins shipped
This is the work covered by our technical SEO service.On-page optimisation across the catalogue
This was the largest workstream:- Unique meta titles and descriptions written for every collection and product page (no inherited duplicates)
- H1s set per page, matching keyword intent for each commercial target
- Internal linking structure built between sibling collections and complementary product categories
- Image alt text written across the catalogue
- URL structure reviewed and adjusted where Shopify defaults were creating SEO problems
Content depth on commercial pages
Generic product listings don’t rank. Adding above-grid intro content (50-150 words) and below-grid buying guides (200-400 words) to collection pages was a substantial uplift across the catalogue. FAQ blocks were added to collections and high-value product pages, both for user value and for FAQPage rich-result eligibility.Product page content was rewritten where vendor-supplied copy was duplicated across the niche — proprietary descriptions, structured spec lists, usage notes, related-product linking.Schema and rich-result eligibility
Product schema (with offers, brand, aggregateRating where available), Organization schema, BreadcrumbList, FAQPage where FAQs existed, and CollectionPage / ItemList for collection pages. Validated against Google Rich Results Test before deploying.Results so far
The honest read at the time of writing:Google Search Console impressions are climbing month-on-month from the launch of the Phase 1 work.[Billy to fill: GSC impressions number — latest 28-day total + comparison to Phase 1 launch month]Indexation coverage is healthy.[Billy to fill: GSC indexation count — pages indexed vs submitted, plus any noindex exclusions that are intentional]Keyword visibility in GSC is broadening — the site is appearing for both commercial keywords (target keywords from the Phase 1 keyword map) and adjacent informational queries that the FAQ blocks pick up.[Billy to fill: approximate count of distinct keywords with impressions in the last 28 days, or top 5 ranking queries]Ahrefs / third-party SEO tools still show DR 0 and minimal indexed keywords. This is normal — Ahrefs lags GSC by weeks-to-months for new sites because their crawler prioritises domains with link signals. The fact that GSC shows real impressions before Ahrefs does is itself a sign that Google is processing the site faster than the third-party tools — usually a good signal for a foundation that’s working.Conversion and revenue impact at this stage is small in absolute terms (the impressions are modest because the foundation is new), but the trajectory is what matters. The site is now in a position where Phase 2 (backlinks and topical authority) will compound on top of foundation work that already ranks.[Billy to fill: anything else worth showcasing — top-performing collection page, biggest keyword movement, any rich-result wins]What’s next
Phase 2 work, when scoped, will focus on:Backlinks. DR 0 → DR 10-20 in 6-12 months is a realistic target with focused link-building (digital PR, supplier partnerships, niche-relevant content placements). Backlinks are the slowest layer of SEO and the most expensive — but on a foundation this clean, modest link gains compound quickly.Content depth. The Phase 1 collection content was the minimum to compete. Phase 2 looks at long-form content — buying guides, niche-specific educational content, comparisons — that captures top-of-funnel informational traffic and routes it to the commercial pages.Brand and entity signals. Knowledge-graph-flavoured signals matter more in the AI Overview era. Real reviews, third-party citations, schema linking the entity to its founders and operating company — all of it adds up.What this means for prospects
The reason this case study is on the site is to be honest about what an SEO foundation looks like at this stage of work.If you’ve got a fresh Shopify store and you’re being told by another agency that you “can’t rank without authority”, the answer is: foundation work first, then authority work, and the foundation needs to be done by someone who knows Shopify’s specific gotchas. Generic “SEO retainers” applied to a fresh store usually produce three months of monthly reports and very little visibility.If you’ve got an existing Shopify store that’s plateaued, the same logic in reverse applies — the foundation might already be flawed, and rehabilitating it is the prerequisite for any link-building to actually compound.Our Shopify SEO service is the package this case study covers. The technical SEO audit service is the right starting point if you don’t yet know which layer is broken on your store. And the ecommerce SEO service covers broader catalogues across platforms beyond Shopify.