Shopify homepage title: where your site name comes from

Someone has heard about your store. They type its name into Google. It is probably the most valuable search you will ever get: this person is already looking for you, all you have to do is not disappoint them. Yet it is often the least polished result of the whole store, because it is set in three different places in Shopify, and one of the three is not a field.

This guide walks through those three places. Nothing to install, no technical knowledge, about fifteen minutes including the check.

What Google shows when someone searches your store

The title and the grey line are fields: you type, the page changes. The site name is not, and it is the one that surprises people most.

The site name: Google picks it, your theme suggests it

Google’s documentation is clear: the site name is chosen entirely automatically. Google looks at the homepage, in particular the structured data describing the site, the og:site_name tag, the title tag and the headings. There is no setting that forces a name, neither at Google nor at Shopify.

What does exist is what your theme writes into those signals. We read the code of Dawn, Shopify’s free reference theme. On the homepage, it declares the site in structured data and names it after your store. It does the same in og:site_name. So the name Google reads first is the one you typed into Shopify, often in a hurry, on the day you signed up.

Hence the results you sometimes come across: an all-lowercase name with hyphens, an internal abbreviation, or a legal suffix nobody ever says out loud.

The move: open Settings, then General, and reread the store name. Write the one your customers use when they talk about you, with its capitals and accents. Shopify notes that this change does not touch your myshopify.com address.

If your theme is not Dawn, the principle is the same but the details may differ. The check at the end of this article tells you, in one minute, which name your theme actually announces.

The homepage title: what your theme already does

The homepage title is set under Online Store, then Preferences, in the Social sharing image and SEO section. Shopify accepts 70 characters and suggests staying under 60 to avoid a truncated title.

Left empty, this title usually comes down to the store name. The blue link then repeats the line above it, and tells someone who does not know you yet nothing at all.

One detail of the Dawn theme changes how to write it: when the title does not already contain the store name, the theme appends it at the end, after a dash. Two ways of writing it therefore work:

• The name first, then what you sell: “Tricots Aurore | Merino wool beanies and mittens”. The name is there, the theme adds nothing.
• What you sell only: “Merino wool beanies and mittens”. The theme appends the name at the end.

The trap sits in between: writing the name with a spelling slightly different from the one in your settings, for example with a hyphen. The theme does not recognise it, and the name shows up twice.

Finally, Google may rewrite a title it finds unhelpful. A clear title that says what the store sells gives it fewer reasons to.

The homepage description

On the same screen, just below the title, sits the meta description. The Dawn theme only writes it into the page if you filled it in. With the field empty, Google builds the grey line itself from whatever text it finds on the homepage: it may be the announcement bar, the newsletter invitation or the first sentence of a banner.

Shopify suggests around 160 characters. In one or two complete sentences, say:

• what you sell, in a shopper’s words;
• what sets you apart in a way anyone can check: material, origin, craft, range;
• where you ship, if that is a selling point.

As with a product page, Google may show a different snippet depending on the search. For a search on your name, your text stands every chance of being the one shown.

Three examples

• A knitwear store. Title: “Tricots Aurore | Merino wool beanies and mittens”. Description: “Beanies, mittens and scarves knitted in Quebec from merino wool. One size, four colours, shipping across Canada.”
• A coffee roaster. Title: “Brûlerie du Quai | Specialty coffee roasted every week”. Description: “Specialty coffee roasted every week in small batches, whole bean or ground. Subscribe every two weeks or order one bag at a time.”
• A jewellery workshop. Title: “Atelier Sterling | Handmade recycled silver jewellery”. Description: “Rings, earrings and necklaces in recycled 925 silver, handmade in our workshop. Free engraving on rings.”

All three stores are made up. What matters is the structure: the name, then what people will find, then a fact a competitor could not copy as is.

After the change: how long it takes

The title and description change when Google next visits your homepage. The site name can take longer: Google talks about a few days to a few weeks.

To avoid waiting for that visit, open Google Search Console, paste your homepage address into the inspection bar at the top, then request indexing. Search Console is free.

Check it in one minute

1. Search Google for the exact name of your store.
2. Read the three lines: the site name, the blue title, the grey line.
3. Open your homepage, view its source (Ctrl+U on a computer), then search for the word WebSite. The “name” line that follows is the name your theme announces to Google.

If all three say the same thing, and it sounds like the way your customers talk about you, you are done.

And your product pages?

The homepage is a single page. Your product pages run into the dozens or hundreds, and each has its own title and description, empty by default. The method is the same, and it is detailed in our guide to the SEO title and meta description of a product page.

That is where PixelUnik helps: the app drafts a title and a description for each product page, from its content, and nothing is written into Shopify until you have reviewed and accepted it. For the homepage, on the other hand, we are of no use to you: five minutes by hand are enough, and you have just read them.