Technical SEO basics, the AI-native way
Before writing a word of content, make sure Google can crawl, index, and quickly load your store. Three free tools tell you what's broken; AI's job is to read their exports, separate real problems from noise, and hand you a prioritized fix list. Most small sites leak rankings on fixable basics.
Fastest path: one prompt, end to end
Run Search Console (or a Screaming Frog crawl) first, export the data, then paste:
🤖 AI prompt — paste into ChatGPT / Claude
You are a technical SEO fixer for a small e-commerce store on [platform: Shopify / WooCommerce / other].
Below is my real data: the URL list from Search Console's Indexing → Pages report (with each URL's status), and/or issues exported from a Screaming Frog crawl.
[paste the export or URL list here]
1. Classify every line into: (a) money page wrongly not indexed — must fix, (b) correctly excluded (cart, checkout, filtered/variant URLs with canonicals — leave alone), (c) duplicate title/meta, (d) broken 404, (e) redirect chain.
2. Rank only the real problems by revenue impact for an e-commerce store, most important first: indexability of product/collection pages → sitemap → robots.txt blocks → duplicate titles → broken links.
3. For the top 5 fixes, give exact where-to-click instructions for [platform] (menu names, setting names).
4. Return ONE markdown table: URL or issue | Category | Impact (High/Med/Low) | Exact fix | Where to click.
Never assume what a URL contains — if you can't tell from the data I pasted, mark it "check manually". Do not guess or estimate any number. Every figure must come from a tool you opened or a source you can cite — give the source next to it. If you cannot get a real number, leave it blank and ask me to fill it in. If you can't browse, work only from what I pasted and tell me which tool (search.google.com/search-console, pagespeed.web.dev, screamingfrog.co.uk) to pull anything missing from.
Or do it in 5 steps
- Google Search Console (search.google.com/search-console, free): verify your domain, open Indexing → Pages. The "indexed" count should be close to your real page count; investigate any money page listed under "Excluded by 'noindex' tag", "Blocked by robots.txt", or "Not found (404)".
- PageSpeed Insights (pagespeed.web.dev, free): test your homepage and one product page on the Mobile tab. Google's Core Web Vitals pass line: LCP ≤ 2.5 s, INP ≤ 200 ms, CLS ≤ 0.1. The usual e-commerce fix is compressing hero images (WebP, ideally under ~200 KB) and removing unused apps/scripts.
- Crawl with Screaming Frog (screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider — free up to 500 URLs per crawl, no signup): enter your domain, then export Page Titles → Duplicate, Meta Description → Missing, and Response Codes → Client Error (4xx).
- Fix the big five in order: (1) remove noindex from real product/collection pages, (2) submit a clean sitemap in GSC → Sitemaps (Shopify auto-generates /sitemap.xml), (3) delete robots.txt rules that block collections, (4) rewrite duplicate template titles page by page — one canonical URL per product, variants canonicalized to it, (5) 301 every dead URL to the closest live product or collection.
- Re-request indexing. GSC → URL Inspection → paste each fixed money page → Request indexing. Done looks like: indexed count ≈ real page count, mobile Core Web Vitals pass, zero 4xx in the crawl.
The big five, mapped to where you see them
| Issue | Where it shows up | Typical cause on a store | Fix |
|---|
| Money page not indexed | GSC Pages: "Excluded by noindex" | theme/app added noindex; hidden collection | remove tag, request indexing |
| Sitemap missing or stale | GSC Sitemaps: "Couldn't fetch" | wrong URL submitted | submit /sitemap.xml |
| robots.txt blocking | GSC Pages: "Blocked by robots.txt" | blanket Disallow on /collections/ | edit robots.txt; block only cart/checkout |
| Duplicate titles | Screaming Frog: Page Titles → Duplicate | same template title on every variant | unique titles; canonical variants to the main product |
| Broken links | Screaming Frog: Response Codes → 4xx | deleted or renamed products | 301 to the nearest live page |
My rule: earn the free traffic you already qualify for before chasing new keywords. Re-run the 500-URL crawl monthly; glance at GSC's Pages report weekly.