International SEO for Shopify Stores: Markets, Hreflang and Translation

Who it is for

Stores selling, or about to sell, in more than one country

Time needed

A day to set up, then ongoing translation

What you need

Admin access, Translate & Adapt and Search Console

International SEO on Shopify is mostly a handful of decisions you make once in the Markets admin, followed by a lot of careful translation and localization work. The technical layer, the part that used to need a developer and a spreadsheet of hreflang tags, is now generated by Shopify. The risk has moved to the choices: which URL structure, which languages, which products in which market, and whether anyone has checked the translations.

This guide walks through what Shopify does by default, how to choose a structure, the setup steps with real admin paths, and the mistakes that stop market versions from ranking. Shopify and Google guidance is as I checked it on 7 November 2026.

What Shopify does for international SEO by default

Once a market has its own subfolder, subdomain or domain, Shopify handles these automatically:

The automatic hreflang tags are on by default. The setting lives in Online Store > Preferences, in the "Social sharing image and SEO" section. Shopify warns that turning it off can hurt your SEO unless you add your own tags to the theme, and I leave it on for every store I work on.

Choose your URL structure

Google lists the same options Shopify offers, and both point most stores towards subdirectories, which Shopify calls subfolders.

My rule: start with subfolders. They inherit everything your main domain has earned, there's nothing extra to register, and they're the simplest to manage in one admin. I only recommend country domains when a brand already owns and uses them, or when local trust in a country domain is a real factor for that audience. If you're deciding between one store with Markets and separate stores per country, my comparison of Shopify Markets and multiple stores covers that choice.

One warning on structure: subfolder URLs are built from your primary domain. Change the primary domain later and every subfolder URL changes with it, so settle the domain before you launch markets.

Set up a market for search, step by step

1. Add the language. Go to Settings > Languages, click Add language, choose it and click Save. A language has to exist here before you can assign it to a market.
2. Translate before you publish. Install Shopify's free Translate & Adapt app and translate products, collections, pages, navigation, SEO titles and meta descriptions. The app offers automatic translation by Shopify for up to 2 languages, or 8 in select countries, and unlimited manual translation.
3. Translate URL handles. Shopify lets you translate slugs, and Shopify's own example turns /products/chair into /produkte/stuhl for German. It's optional, but a translated handle reads better in search results and matches local queries.
4. Give the market its URL. Go to Markets, click the market, then click the plus icon next to Domain / language. Choose Subfolder, Subdomain or Separate domain, select the language, click Done and Save. A separate domain must be connected first in Settings > Domains.
5. Publish the language. In the Languages settings, open the menu next to the language and click Publish.
6. Check the tags. Open a product page in each market, view the source and find the hreflang link tags. Each version should list itself and every other version, plus an x-default.
7. Submit sitemaps. Subfolders are covered by your primary domain's sitemap.xml. Each separate domain has its own sitemap and needs its own Search Console property and submission.

Localization is the part that ranks

Hreflang only tells Google which version to show to whom. It doesn't make a thin version worth showing. Google is explicit that translating only the boilerplate, such as menus and buttons, while the main content stays in another language creates a bad experience. A French market whose product descriptions are still in English is a French page in name only.

For each market, I localize in this order:

1. SEO titles and meta descriptions for collections and top products, written around local search terms, not translated word for word.
2. Product titles and descriptions, including sizes, units and materials in local conventions.
3. Collection names, handles and intro text, because collections usually carry the broadest local keywords.
4. Navigation, policies and shipping information, so shoppers can trust the page enough to buy.
5. Blog posts, only where the topic matters in that market.

Machine translation is a fair first draft. Every translation still needs a human check before it goes live, for wrong terms, odd phrasing and product names that shouldn't be translated at all. Translate & Adapt also lets you adapt content per market, for example a different product description or legal text for one region, without touching the others.

Hreflang rules worth knowing

Shopify generates the tags, but you should still recognize when something has gone wrong, especially if a theme or app adds its own.

• Every version must list itself and all the others. Google ignores hreflang between two pages that don't point to each other.
• Codes are language first, then optional region. Language uses ISO 639-1 and region uses ISO 3166-1 Alpha 2. The UK is en-GB, not en-UK. Google says "UK" in hreflang has no effect.
• x-default is the fallback for shoppers whose language matches none of your versions. Shopify points it at your backup region's market.
• One source of tags only. If a theme or translation app adds hreflang tags on top of Shopify's, you get duplicates or conflicts. Use Shopify's or your own, not both.
• Hreflang doesn't set the language. Google detects a page's language from its content, not from hreflang or the lang attribute, which is one more reason translation quality matters.

Same language, different countries

US, UK and Australian English, or Dutch for the Netherlands and Belgium, are where stores most often worry about duplicate content. Google's guidance is to pick a preferred version with a canonical and connect the versions with hreflang. Shopify does exactly that: each market version canonicalizes to itself and the hreflang tags tell Google which country each one is for.

The versions still need to be different in the ways that matter to the shopper. Google lists local currency, local addresses and phone numbers as signals of who a page is for. In practice:

Don't run two domains for the same market in the same language. Shopify warns that two domains serving one market should target different languages, or search engines may treat them as duplicates.

Redirects, country selectors and crawlers

Google advises against automatically redirecting visitors based on where it thinks they are, and against using IP analysis to change content. Shopify's Markets redirect shoppers based on IP address and browser language, but known search engine crawlers are excluded and get the URL they asked for. That's the setup Google needs: crawlers see every version, shoppers land on their own.

Always keep a visible country and language selector in the header or footer. Google recommends links to other language versions so people can choose, and Shopify remembers a shopper's choice for future visits.

Products that only sell in some markets

If you limit products by market with catalogs, a product's URL returns a 404 in markets that don't include it. Shopify also only adds region-specific hreflang tags for the markets that include the product, and each market's sitemap lists only its available products.

Two things to watch. First, the seo.hidden metafield hides a product in all markets, not just one, so it isn't a tool for market-specific hiding. Second, check navigation, collections and blog posts in each market for links to products that 404 there. Those are broken internal links Google will find.

Common mistakes

• Turning off automatic hreflang without a tested replacement, or running an app that duplicates it.
• Publishing a language with only machine-translated menus and English product content.
• Same-language duplicates on separate domains with nothing localized between them.
• Changing the primary domain after markets are live, which changes every subfolder URL.
• Submitting only the main sitemap when markets use separate domains.
• Hiding the country selector because geolocation "handles it".
• Using seo.hidden to hide a product in one market, which hides it everywhere.

International SEO checklist

• Primary domain settled before markets go live.
• Subfolders chosen unless there's a clear reason for domains.
• Languages added in Settings > Languages and translated before publishing.
• SEO titles, meta descriptions and handles translated for top collections and products.
• Translations checked by a person.
• Automatic hreflang on in Online Store > Preferences, with no duplicate tags from apps.
• Backup region set to the market you want as x-default.
• Each separate domain verified and its sitemap submitted in Search Console.
• Country and language selector visible on every page.
• No internal links to products that 404 in a market.

What to do next

Pick one new market, set it up as a subfolder, and localize your top collections and products properly before adding the next one. Check the hreflang tags in the source, submit the sitemaps, and watch the market's pages in Search Console's Pages report over the following weeks. If you're budgeting for it, my guide to what an international Shopify store costs breaks down the spend.

If you'd like help, my Shopify SEO work starts from $200 and covers Markets setup, hreflang checks and translated SEO fields. Or send me your store for a free review first.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

1. SEO for international markets, Shopify Help Center
2. Domains and languages for markets, Shopify Help Center
3. Managing languages, Shopify Help Center
4. Translate & Adapt, Shopify App Store
5. Managing multi-regional and multilingual sites, Google Search Central
6. Tell Google about localized versions of your page, Google Search Central

Related services and work

Written by Ashraf Siddik

I'm a Shopify developer and CRO specialist. I have built and improved Shopify stores since 2018, completed more than 1,000 projects, and hold a 4.96 average rating across 719 client reviews.

About me · Client reviews