How to Qualify an Ecommerce SEO Prospect Before You Pitch

A list of online stores is easy to build. Deciding which ones deserve an hour of research and a personal pitch is the harder job, and you have to do it before anyone gives you access to their data.

The short version: to qualify an ecommerce SEO prospect, run six checks on public information, score each from 0 to 2, and pitch the stores that reach 8 or more out of 12. The same checks give you a first idea of how large the engagement could be.

The six checks, in the order I would run them:

1. Catalogue size. A good prospect declares more than 250 product URLs in its sitemap.
2. Platform. A good prospect runs on a platform your team already works on.
3. Collections and products. Collections are named the way shoppers search, with gaps you can name.
4. Running ads. Active ads appear under the brand name.
5. Blog or guides. A content section exists and has recent dates.
6. Visible technical problems. Two or more findings you can show on a named URL.

What qualifying a store tells you

Qualifying answers two questions before you write a pitch. Is this store likely to need and afford SEO work? And is the work small, medium or large?

• Size of the work. Catalogue size and structure tell you how many pages are involved.
• Signs of investment. Ads and a maintained blog show the store already spends on growth.
• Something to open with. A visible technical problem gives your pitch a specific first line.

This post assumes you already have a list. If you do not, start with how to find Shopify stores that need SEO, then come back and score each row.

Step 1: Count the catalogue

The sitemap is the fastest public measure of a store's size. Shopify's help page says every store gets an automatic sitemap at /sitemap.xml, which links to separate sitemaps for products, collections, blogs and pages.

1. Enter the domain in the website page counter. It finds the sitemap and counts the declared URLs.
2. Read the section table. On Shopify, /products/, /collections/ and /blogs/ appear as separate rows.
3. For the full list, run the sitemap extractor and download the CSV.
4. Write the product, collection and blog counts in your sheet.

Both tools have limits you should know before you trust the number:

• The page counter reads up to 50 sitemap files. Its section table is calculated from the first 5,000 URLs, and it labels the table as sampled on larger sites.
• If a site has no sitemap, the page counter crawls up to 100 pages and labels the result as crawl-based. Treat that number as a minimum.
• The sitemap extractor returns up to 5,000 URLs per run and tells you when the list is partial.
• Both count what the store declares. The count can differ from the pages that exist and from the pages Google has indexed.

Step 2: Identify the platform

The platform decides which fixes are possible and how long they take. It also tells you whether your team has done this work before.

1. Copy the URL of one collection or category page.
2. Paste it into the collection page SEO checker.
3. Read the Platform row. The tool recognises Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce and Magento from marks in the HTML.
4. If the row says the platform was not recognised, look at the page footer and the page source by hand.

For Shopify stores, our Shopify SEO guide lists what the platform handles by default and what it leaves to the store owner.

Step 3: Read how collections and products are structured

Collection pages are where a store competes for category searches. The counts from step 1 show the shape of the store, and two pages opened by hand show the quality.

• Compare the two counts. A store with many products and very few collections has few pages that can rank for a category search.
• Read the collection names. Check whether they use the words a shopper would type.
• Open two collections. Look for a description, a clear heading and links to related collections.
• Open two products. Look for a written description, reviews and a link back to the collection.

Our guides to category page SEO and product page SEO describe what a complete page of each type contains.

Step 4: Check whether the store is running ads

A store that pays for ads already has a budget for winning customers. That makes a conversation about organic search easier to start.

1. Open the Meta Ad Library.
2. Set the location and choose an ad category.
3. Search for the brand name as an advertiser.
4. Note whether any ads are active.

Meta's Ad Library page says you can search all the ads currently running across Meta technologies, by keyword or by advertiser. It also says an ad appears in the library within 24 hours of its first impression.

Treat the result as a yes or no signal. An empty result tells you the brand has no active ads on Meta under that name. The store may still advertise elsewhere.

Step 5: Look for a blog or guides section

A blog or guides section shows whether the store already invests in content, and whether anyone maintains it.

• Does one exist? Look for a /blogs/ row in the page counter, or a blog link in the footer.
• Is it maintained? The sitemap extractor returns the lastmod date for each URL when the sitemap provides one.
• What is it about? Buying guides and product comparisons relate to sales. Company news does less for search.

A store with no content section is still a prospect. It scores lower here because you have no evidence that the owner values content yet. Our post on ecommerce content marketing covers what a store blog should contain.

Step 6: Look for visible technical problems

Two free checkers find problems you can show the owner on a named URL.

1. For a Shopify store, run the Shopify duplicate URL checker. It samples 20 products and checks that each collection-path URL and ?variant= URL has a canonical tag pointing to the plain product URL.
2. For any platform, paste one collection URL into the collection page SEO checker. It runs 13 checks, including title, H1, canonical, pagination, category copy, schema and image alt text.
3. Write each fail or warning in the sheet with its URL.

The limits matter here too:

• The duplicate URL checker works on Shopify stores only, and 20 products is a sample. A clean sample tells you the theme prints the right canonical on those pages.
• The collection checker reads one URL per run and does not render JavaScript, so content added by scripts is not seen.

For the reasons behind these problems, see Shopify canonicals and duplicate content and technical SEO for ecommerce.

Step 7: Score the store

This scoring sheet is a suggested method. The bands and thresholds are my starting point, so change them to suit the clients your agency serves. Each check is worth 0, 1 or 2 points.

Add the six scores for a total out of 12, then sort the sheet:

• 8 or more: pitch now.
• 5 to 7: keep on the list and look again later.
• Under 5: pass for now.

The catalogue score also gives a first idea of engagement size. A store with more than 250 products has more templates, more collections and more duplicate URL risk to manage than a store with 25. For price ranges, see how much ecommerce SEO costs.

A worked example with three placeholder stores

The stores and numbers above are an illustration with placeholder names. The scores are listed in the order catalogue, platform, structure, ads, content and technical.

• Store A: 1,200 products on Shopify. Scores of 2, 2, 2, 2, 1 and 2 give 11 out of 12. Pitch now.
• Store B: 140 products on WooCommerce. Scores of 1, 2, 1, 0, 1 and 1 give 6 out of 12. Keep on the list.
• Store C: 14 products on a platform the checker did not recognise. Scores of 0, 1, 0, 2, 0 and 0 give 3 out of 12. Pass for now.

What public checks cannot tell you

Everything above comes from pages anyone can load. The numbers that decide whether SEO pays for a store are private.

• Visible from outside: the sitemap URL count, the platform, how collections and products are organised, ads on Meta, a blog or guides section, and canonical, title and schema problems on public pages.
• Known only to the owner: revenue, margins, organic traffic, conversion rate, average order value, and which products they most want to sell.

Third-party tools publish traffic figures for any domain. Those figures are estimates, so I would keep them out of a pitch. Ask the owner for the real numbers on the first call.

Reasons to pass on a store

A low score describes fit between the store and your agency today. It says nothing about the quality of the business. These are the common cases where I would pass:

• The catalogue is very small. A store with a handful of products may have too few pages to justify a monthly retainer. A one-time project can suit it better.
• The platform is outside your experience. Learning a platform on a client's time is a risk for both sides.
• The store needs a rebuild first. If the site is about to move platform or change theme, SEO work is better timed after the move.
• The product category is new to you. Writing useful collection and product copy takes knowledge of the products.
• You found nothing to fix. A store that passes every check may already have good help.

Keep passed stores in the sheet with the date and the reason. A store that adds products or changes platform can be scored again later.

What to do after the score

For stores that reach 8 or more, the work moves from sorting to evidence.

1. Crawl the store before you quote. CrawlRaven's crawl gives page counts by type and the technical findings, which covers every page where the free tools cover a sample. See the ecommerce SEO audit.
2. Build the pitch from three findings. The method is in the store teardown pitch.
3. Ask for access after they sign. CrawlRaven then joins Search Console, GA4 and the crawl. That shows which collections and products get clicks and revenue, and it replaces the public guesswork with measured data.

When you describe a finding to the owner, keep the tone neutral. Some owners are offended when an agency criticises their site heavily.

We are also launching an AI SEO tool soon. Join the waitlist to hear when it opens.

Sources used in this post

• Meta – Ad Library: search of all ads currently running across Meta technologies, by keyword or advertiser, and the 24-hour listing time.
• Shopify Help Center – Finding and submitting your sitemap: the automatic sitemap.xml and its separate sitemaps for products, collections, blogs and pages.

Related reading on CrawlRaven

• How to find Shopify stores that need SEO, for building the list you score here.
• The store teardown pitch, for the message you send to stores that qualify.
• Technical SEO for ecommerce, for the full list of problems a crawl can find.