Search Engine Optimisation: Practical Techniques and Tools for Growing Brands

Oct 4, 2026 Lionheart Marketing
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Search Engine Optimisation: Practical Techniques and Tools for Growing Brands

Your customers are searching for products, services and advice every day. Search engine optimisation helps your business appear when those searches are relevant to what you offer.

But where should you start? More blog posts? Better product pages? A technical website audit?

The right approach depends on your website, your customers and your business goals. In this guide, we explore practical SEO techniques, useful tools and an example of how we applied these principles for All About Party Bags.

What is search engine optimisation?

Search engine optimisation, or SEO, is the process of helping search engines understand your website and helping potential customers discover it through organic search.

An effective strategy combines keyword research, technical SEO, on-page optimisation, helpful content and relevant links.

For brands, success means attracting visitors who have a reason to buy, enquire or explore your products. That starts with understanding what your audience needs and building pages that meet those needs.

Our search engine optimisation services bring these elements together through an audit, a tailored strategy and ongoing improvements.

1. Start with your customers’ search intent

Keyword research should uncover how customers describe what they need—and what they expect to find.

Someone searching for “party bag ideas” may want inspiration. Someone searching for “buy pre-filled party bags” is more likely to be comparing products before purchasing.

These searches need different content. A helpful guide can answer the first, while a well-organised product collection can serve the second.

Group your keyword opportunities by intent:

  • Informational searches: questions, advice and explanations.

  • Commercial research: comparisons and help choosing between options.

  • Transactional searches: people looking to buy, book or enquire.

Review the search results before deciding what to create. Look at the types of pages appearing and consider how your business could provide a more useful answer.

Try this: choose one priority service or product category and list the questions customers ask before purchasing. Use those questions to guide your research.

2. Improve your most important landing pages

Existing pages often deserve attention before you add more content.

Your service pages, product collections and product descriptions should explain what you offer clearly and help visitors make a decision.

Review each priority page:

  • Does it answer the customer’s main question?

  • Does the title describe the page accurately?

  • Are headings clear and easy to follow?

  • Is important product or service information available?

  • Is there evidence to support your claims?

  • Can visitors easily take the next step?

Use related language naturally. A page about children’s party bags might discuss party themes, fillers, age suitability and pre-filled options because those details help shoppers.

The aim is to cover the subject properly, with useful information and clear wording.

SEO in practice: All About Party Bags

All About Party Bags operates in a competitive ecommerce market alongside major retailers such as Amazon and Temu.

Our SEO strategy focused on strengthening visibility for the products its customers were actively searching for. The work included keyword targeting, category page optimisation, content improvements and technical SEO support.

Our published case study records page-one rankings including:

  • “Party bag supplies” - position 3

  • “Party bags” - position 4

  • “Pre-filled party bags” - position 6

These are the results documented in the case study; search positions can change over time.

The practical lesson for other ecommerce brands is to prioritise commercially important categories. Understand how customers search, improve the information on those pages and address technical issues that could affect visibility.

Explore the All About Party Bags SEO case study for more detail.

3. Check your technical SEO foundations

Technical SEO helps you identify whether search engines can access and understand your website.

A review should consider:

  • Whether important pages can be crawled and indexed.

  • Broken internal links.

  • Redirects and their destinations.

  • Duplicate URLs and canonical tags.

  • XML sitemaps.

  • Website performance on mobile and desktop.

Prioritise issues according to their impact. An important landing page accidentally excluded from indexing needs attention before minor improvements elsewhere.

Platform migrations require particular care. When URLs change, old pages should redirect to relevant replacements, and internal links should point to the correct destinations.

Google’s website migration guidance provides a useful checklist. For businesses moving platforms, our Shopify migration services include SEO migration support.

Try this: check your homepage, key service pages and highest-priority product collections first.

4. Create content around real customer questions

Useful content begins with the questions your customers already ask.

Sales conversations, support enquiries and product feedback can reveal topics that deserve a clear explanation.

A clothing brand could explain how to choose the right fit. A fabric retailer could help beginners select materials for a sewing project. A service business could explain its process and what customers should expect.

Bring your experience into the article through practical examples, original photographs, clear instructions or lessons from completed work.

Google’s guidance on helpful content is a useful reference when reviewing your articles.

Try this: ask your team for five recurring customer questions. Choose one and write an answer that helps the reader take a practical next step.

5. Use internal links to connect relevant pages

Internal links help visitors discover related information and move towards products or services that meet their needs.

For example, a party planning guide could link to relevant party bag collections. An article about website migrations could link to a migration service page.

Use descriptive link text so readers know what to expect. Place each link where the destination adds value.

Review existing content as well as new posts. An older article may already attract relevant visitors but give them no clear route to the next useful page.

Try this: review five existing blog posts and check whether each links to an appropriate service, category or supporting resource.

6. Earn links by sharing useful expertise

Relevant websites may reference your business when you publish something worth sharing.

Original research, detailed case studies, practical resources and expert contributions can create reasons for others to link to your work.

Start with the knowledge your business already has. What questions can you answer particularly well? What experience could help others in your industry?

Avoid buying links to manipulate rankings or taking part in excessive link exchanges. Google explains these practices in its search spam policies.

Useful SEO tools for brands

A small set of tools can help you understand your website and identify priorities.

Google Search Console

Google Search Console helps you review your visibility in Google Search.

It reports search queries, impressions, clicks and average positions. You can also inspect individual URLs and investigate indexing issues.

How to use it: review an important landing page and identify relevant searches generating impressions. Check whether the page answers those searches clearly.

Screaming Frog SEO Spider

Screaming Frog SEO Spider crawls your website to identify issues such as broken links, redirect chains and missing or duplicated page titles.

Its free version can crawl up to 500 URLs.

How to use it: review broken internal links and redirects, starting with pages that matter most to your customers.

PageSpeed Insights

PageSpeed Insights analyses page performance on mobile and desktop.

How to use it: test representative pages, such as your homepage, a product collection and a product page. Discuss the findings with your developer to agree useful improvements.

Google Search Central

Google’s SEO Starter Guide explains the fundamentals of helping search engines discover and understand your content.

How to use it: refer to the guidance when reviewing recommendations or planning changes to your website.

How to prioritise your SEO work

An SEO audit can produce a long list of recommendations. Turn those findings into a manageable plan based on business importance, likely impact and effort.

A practical starting sequence is:

  1. Check that your most important pages are accessible and indexed.

  2. Review the searches bringing visitors to those pages.

  3. Improve one priority service page or product collection.

  4. Create useful content answering a related customer question.

  5. Add relevant internal links.

  6. Record the changes and review performance over time.

Each task should have a clear purpose and someone responsible for completing it.

Measure results beyond rankings

Keyword positions help you understand visibility, but they should sit alongside business outcomes.

For service businesses, that could mean qualified enquiries, calls or bookings. For ecommerce brands, it could mean organic sales and the performance of important product categories.

Make sure your tracking can measure those actions. Review trends over time and account for seasonal demand, website changes and other marketing activity.

The aim is to understand whether your SEO work is helping the right customers find your business and take action.

Build an SEO strategy around your business

At Lionheart Marketing, we help brands understand their current search performance and identify where improvements can make a difference.

Our approach combines website audits, keyword and competitor research, technical SEO, on-page optimisation and content planning.

Explore our SEO services, or contact our team to discuss your website and growth goals.

 

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Shopify Return Window Overrides: What Ecommerce Brands Need to Know
Shopify Return Window Overrides: What Ecommerce Brands Need to Know
  • Lionheart Marketing
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Returns policies need to work for your customers, your products and your business. But applying the same return period across an entire catalogue can be restrictive, particularly when you sell a mix of seasonal items, everyday products and higher-value purchases. Shopify’s latest update gives merchants more flexibility. Announced on 29 September 2026, return window overrides let you set different return periods for specific collections, products or variants within market rules. For ecommerce teams, this creates an opportunity to review how returns fit into the wider customer experience. What Are Shopify Return Window Overrides? A return window is the period customers have to request a return. An override allows selected items to use a different period from your standard settings. For example, a store could offer a 90 day standard return window while applying a 14 day window to a seasonal collection. Shopify applies these rules in the following order: Final sale takes priority: items marked as final sale remain ineligible within Shopify’s return and cancellation rules. The shortest matching override applies: if a product falls into multiple overrides, Shopify uses the shortest period. An override replaces the standard window: matching items use the override instead of the default or market specific period. Other items follow your existing settings: the market-specific window applies where configured, otherwise the store default applies. Why This Matters for Ecommerce Brands Different product ranges can create different operational challenges. Seasonal stock, for example, may lose its relevance quickly, while customers purchasing higher-value items may appreciate a more generous returns policy. Our view is that this update gives merchants a useful reason to review their approach. The right decision should reflect customer expectations, product characteristics and the practical cost of handling returns. Before making changes, ask: Which products generate the most return enquiries? Are customers clear about the current policy? Does your team regularly handle exceptions manually? Would different windows make the process easier to understand or more complicated? A more detailed policy only helps if your customers and team can follow it. How to Set Up Return Window Overrides In Shopify admin: Go to Settings → Policies. Open Return and cancellation rules. Select the relevant market rule. Under the return window settings, add a Return window override. Enter the number of days and select the relevant collections, products or variants. Save your changes. Shopify’s help documentation currently describes market specific return and cancellation rules as an early access feature available to certain merchants. Changes to return rules apply to future orders, rather than orders already placed. Keep Your Customer Messaging Consistent Before introducing overrides, review the information customers see across your store. Your returns policy, product page messaging, FAQs and customer support responses should all explain the same conditions. Shopify notes that its generated written policy does not automatically include the return rules configured in admin. We recommend checking collection membership carefully too. A product added to several collections could match more than one override, so your merchandising team should understand how those decisions affect returns. If you need to improve how your store presents this information, our ad hoc Shopify design and development support can help you plan and implement clearer customer journeys. Make Shopify Updates Part of Your Growth Roadmap Every new feature deserves a commercial question: will this improve how our store works? For return window overrides, the answer may involve clearer communication, more consistent handling of exceptions or a policy better suited to your catalogue. Decide what you want to improve, then review customer enquiries and return patterns after implementation. At Lionheart Marketing, our Shopify agency, we help brands connect store improvements with their wider business priorities. Our Shopify Priority Support gives your team ongoing design, development and strategic support to assess updates, prioritise improvements and keep your store moving forward. Want help reviewing your Shopify store and deciding which updates deserve your attention? Contact Lionheart Marketing to discuss how we can help.  
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Shopify’s September 2026 analytics update: what eCommerce managers need to know
Shopify’s September 2026 analytics update: what eCommerce managers need to know
  • Lionheart Marketing
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If your Shopify conversion rate has moved recently, it is tempting to credit a new campaign or worry that something on the site has broken. Before making that call, check the date. Shopify changed how it measures sessions and filters bot traffic between 21 and 23 September 2026. That can change your reported sessions and conversion rate even when customer behaviour has not changed. For eCommerce managers preparing reports or planning the next round of site improvements, this matters because it affects the baseline used to judge performance. What has Shopify changed? According to Shopify’s announcement, the update changes session reporting in three ways: Sessions follow continued customer activity. A visit that continues past midnight UTC is no longer split into two sessions solely because the date changed. Some journeys without a standard pageview now count. For example, someone going directly to checkout from a cart link may now be included as a session. Identified bot sessions are excluded by default from session-related reports. In reports that support the Human or bot session filter, you can change the filter to inspect them. One change may reduce your session count while another may increase it. Shopify says the update does not change orders, sales or customer counts. Why might conversion rate change without more sales? Shopify calculates online store conversion rate using sessions. If the number of reported sessions changes, the conversion rate can change even when order volume stays the same. Imagine a store with 100 orders and 5,000 reported sessions. Its conversion rate is 2%. If revised reporting shows 4,000 sessions for the same 100 orders, the reported rate becomes 2.5%. That looks like an improvement, but the store has not gained any additional orders. The reverse can happen if newly counted journeys increase the session total. Shopify says other session-based measures, including add-to-cart rate and checkout conversion rate, may also look different. What should eCommerce managers do now? 1. Mark the update on your reports. Add a note around 21–23 September so anyone reviewing performance knows that Shopify changed its measurement. 2. Check orders and sales alongside sessions. If conversion rate changes but orders and revenue remain steady, investigate the reporting change before treating it as a commercial result. 3. Establish a new baseline. Use data from after the update to assess future trends in sessions, conversion rate and other session-based metrics. 4. Keep bot filters consistent. In reports that support it, check the Human or bot session setting when comparing periods. Shopify notes that using the same filter does not make sessions measured before and after the update directly comparable. 5. Review custom reports and connected apps. If they use session data from Shopify Analytics, their figures may change too. Check how each report defines its metrics before comparing results with historical targets. You can start in Shopify Admin → Analytics → Reports, then open a sessions report such as Sessions by landing page or Sessions by device. Shopify’s help guide walks through the available comparisons. What does this mean for marketing decisions? A dashboard metric needs context. If conversion rate rises but orders and revenue do not, it is too early to say that a new design or campaign worked. Equally, a lower rate does not automatically mean your checkout has worsened. Look at the full customer journey: the quality of traffic reaching key pages, product engagement, basket activity, checkout behaviour, orders and revenue. If paid traffic is growing without corresponding sales, the next step may be to review targeting and landing pages. Our PPC approach considers the page customers reach as well as campaign performance. For organic traffic, our SEO work focuses on attracting relevant visitors, not simply increasing visits. The takeaway Shopify’s September update is a measurement change, not a trading result in itself. Annotate your reporting, establish a new baseline and check commercial outcomes before drawing conclusions. If the data then points to a genuine customer journey problem, turn that finding into a specific improvement to test. If your team needs help interpreting store performance and prioritising the next steps, explore our Shopify Priority Support or get in touch.
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Need Help Improving Your Shopify Store? Ad Hoc Design and Development Support Could Be the Answer
Need Help Improving Your Shopify Store? Ad Hoc Design and Development Support Could Be the Answer
  • Lionheart Marketing
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Running a Shopify store rarely stands still. New campaigns need landing pages, customer feedback highlights usability issues, apps need integrating and small technical problems can quickly become barriers to growth. However, not every business needs a complete website redesign or a large development project. Sometimes, you simply need an experienced Shopify team that can step in, understand what needs to be done and help you move forward. That is where ad hoc Shopify design and development support can make a real difference. We support Shopify and Shopify Plus merchants with flexible design, development and ecommerce expertise. Whether you have a list of improvements ready to go or need help deciding what to prioritise, we can work alongside your team to keep your store moving forward. What Is Ad Hoc Shopify Support? Ad hoc Shopify support gives merchants access to specialist design and development help without commissioning a full website build every time an improvement is needed. It can be useful when you: Have a specific issue that needs resolving Need extra development capacity during a busy period Want to improve an existing page or customer journey Have an internal ecommerce or marketing team but need specialist Shopify expertise Need several smaller improvements completed in priority order Want ongoing access to design and development support as your store evolves Rather than allowing a backlog of changes to grow, flexible Shopify support enables your business to make improvements in a structured and commercially focused way. What Can a Shopify Design and Development Team Help With? Every Shopify store is different, so the work should be shaped around the specific challenges and opportunities within your website. Support may include a mixture of design, development, user experience and technical improvements. Shopify design and UX improvements A website can be technically functional while still making it difficult for customers to browse, compare products or complete a purchase. Our Shopify designers can help improve areas such as: Homepage layouts and promotional sections Navigation and collection journeys Product page layouts Collection page design and merchandising Landing pages for campaigns and product launches Mobile usability Calls to action Basket and customer journey improvements Trust signals and product information Visual consistency across the store The purpose is not simply to make the website look better. Good ecommerce design should make the customer journey clearer, reduce friction and help users take the next step with confidence. For larger design projects, you can learn more about our Shopify website design service. Shopify development support Development requirements can range from small theme adjustments to entirely new features. Having access to Shopify development support means changes can be planned, built and tested properly before they are released. This may include: Shopify theme updates and customisation New sections and page templates Product and collection page functionality App installation and configuration Third-party integrations Subscription, loyalty or review functionality Improvements to filtering, search and product discovery Bug fixes and technical troubleshooting Site-speed and performance improvements Tracking and analytics updates Support with Shopify Markets or international storefront requirements The right approach will depend on the issue, theme, existing technology and commercial value of the proposed change. Sometimes custom development is appropriate. In other cases, native Shopify functionality or a carefully selected app may provide a more efficient solution. Why Flexible Shopify Support Is Valuable 1. Deal with priorities as they arise Ecommerce priorities can change quickly. A new campaign, seasonal collection, operational requirement or customer issue may create work that was not part of the original roadmap. Flexible support gives your team a way to respond without needing to scope a new standalone project every time. 2. Access several areas of expertise What appears to be a simple design request may also involve theme development, mobile testing, analytics or SEO considerations. Working with a Shopify ecommerce agency gives you access to a wider range of skills, helping ensure that changes work visually, technically and commercially. 3. Help your internal team move faster Many merchants already have capable ecommerce and marketing teams. The challenge is often capacity rather than ideas. An external Shopify partner can provide additional resources when needed, helping your team launch campaigns, resolve issues and deliver improvements without placing every task into an already busy internal queue. 4. Prioritise improvements by impact Not every requested change carries the same value. A long list of website tasks should be reviewed and prioritised according to customer impact, commercial importance, effort and urgency. This helps ensure the available time is used on the improvements most likely to support the customer experience and your wider business goals. 5. Allow your store to evolve continuously A Shopify store should not remain unchanged after launch. Customer expectations, products, campaigns and technology all continue to develop. Regular design and development improvements allow your website to evolve alongside the business instead of relying on occasional large redesigns. Ad Hoc Project or Ongoing Shopify Support? The best support model depends on what your business needs. An ad hoc project may be suitable when you have one clearly defined requirement, such as creating a new landing page, resolving a theme issue or adding a specific piece of functionality. Ongoing Shopify support may be more appropriate when: You have a growing backlog of design and development tasks Your store changes regularly You want to improve conversion and customer experience over time You need dependable access to Shopify specialists You want help building and delivering a prioritised roadmap Your internal team needs ongoing additional capacity Our Shopify Priority Support service gives growing ecommerce businesses access to ongoing design, development and strategic support. We work collaboratively with your team to plan priorities, deliver improvements and keep your Shopify store aligned with your wider commercial goals. How Our Shopify Support Process Works The exact process depends on the size and nature of the work, but it always begins with understanding your store, the problem you are trying to solve and the outcome you want to achieve. Reviewing your requirements We start by reviewing your current Shopify setup and the work you would like us to complete. If you already have a task list, we can assess it with you. If not, we can help identify the areas that may need attention. Agreeing priorities We organise the work around urgency, expected impact and the available budget or hours. This gives everyone a clear understanding of what will be addressed first. Design and approval Where design is required, we create the proposed solution around your brand, customer journey and commercial objectives before it moves into development. Development and testing Approved changes are developed and tested across the relevant devices and customer journeys. We work safely within the existing store and avoid unnecessary disruption. Launch and review Once the work has been approved, the updates are released. Where appropriate, we can review performance and use what we learn to shape the next set of priorities. You can also view examples of our work in the Lionheart Marketing Shopify portfolio. Choosing the Right Shopify Support Partner Before appointing an agency or developer, it is worth asking: Do they have relevant Shopify experience? Can they support both design and development? Will they take the time to understand the commercial reason behind each task? How are requests prioritised and scoped? How will time and progress be communicated? Is the work properly tested before it goes live? Can they consider UX, conversion, SEO and site performance as part of the wider picture? Can the relationship scale if your support requirements grow? The right partner should do more than complete a list of tickets. They should help you make informed decisions about what to change, why it matters and how it supports the wider growth of your Shopify store. Need Design or Development Help With Your Shopify Store? Whether you have one specific Shopify task, a backlog of improvements or need ongoing support from an experienced ecommerce team, Lionheart Marketing can help. We support merchants with Shopify design, development, UX improvements, technical updates, new functionality and structured growth roadmaps. Our team can work alongside your existing resources or become the Shopify support team you do not currently have in-house. Speak to our team of Shopify experts  about the changes you would like to make to your Shopify store, and we will help you identify the most practical next step.  
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