Choosing an ecommerce platform is one of the most important decisions an online retailer makes. It affects design, operations, scalability, and, critically, how well your store can rank in search engines. BigCommerce and Shopify are two leading platforms, and both market themselves as SEO friendly. Store owners frequently ask whether BigCommerce has better SEO than Shopify. The answer depends on your priorities, technical needs, and growth plans. Each platform has distinct advantages and limitations that can influence organic visibility.
How AAMAX.CO Optimizes Ecommerce Stores on Any Platform
AAMAX.CO is a full-service digital marketing company offering web development, digital marketing, and SEO services worldwide. They have experience optimizing ecommerce stores built on platforms like BigCommerce and Shopify, and they understand the unique SEO strengths and constraints of each. Their team improves product and category page optimization, fixes duplicate content, implements structured data, enhances site speed, and develops content strategies that attract buyers. With their search engine optimization expertise, retailers can maximize visibility regardless of which platform they choose, or successfully manage a migration between them.
URL Structure and Customization
URL control is one of the most frequently discussed differences. BigCommerce allows users to fully customize URL structures, including removing forced prefixes. Store owners can create clean URLs for products, categories, and pages that align with their keyword strategy.
Shopify, by contrast, enforces certain URL patterns, such as including "/products/" for product pages and "/collections/" for category pages. While these structures do not prevent rankings, they limit flexibility. Shopify can also generate multiple URLs for the same product when it appears within collections, although it uses canonical tags to point search engines to the primary version.
Technical SEO Features
Both platforms handle essential technical SEO elements automatically, including SSL certificates, XML sitemaps, mobile-responsive themes, and canonical tags. BigCommerce includes more built-in features natively, such as robust faceted search controls, customizable robots.txt settings, and built-in support for structured data in many themes.
Shopify has improved significantly over time, now allowing robots.txt editing and offering strong structured data support through themes and apps. However, many advanced SEO capabilities on Shopify rely on third-party apps, which can add cost and sometimes affect performance.
Site Speed and Performance
Page speed influences both user experience and rankings. Shopify is known for strong hosting infrastructure and a global content delivery network, which helps stores load quickly worldwide. BigCommerce also offers fast hosting and CDN support. In practice, speed differences depend more on theme choice, image optimization, and the number of installed apps or scripts than on the platform itself.
Content and Blogging Capabilities
Content marketing is a powerful way for ecommerce stores to attract organic traffic. Both platforms include built-in blogging features, although neither is as robust as a dedicated content management system like WordPress. Shopify's blog is simple and easy to use, with many themes supporting attractive layouts. BigCommerce's blog is similarly basic. Retailers with ambitious content strategies sometimes integrate external CMS solutions or headless setups for more control.
Faceted Navigation and Large Catalogs
For stores with large inventories, faceted navigation can create thousands of filtered URLs, leading to duplicate content and crawl budget issues. BigCommerce offers native tools that help manage faceted search and filtering, which can be advantageous for large catalogs. Shopify relies more on theme configuration and apps to manage filters, which may require additional technical attention.
App Ecosystems and Flexibility
Shopify has one of the largest app ecosystems in ecommerce, offering countless SEO, review, and marketing apps. This flexibility is valuable but can lead to bloated code if too many apps are installed. BigCommerce includes more features natively, reducing reliance on apps, which some merchants find simpler and more cost-effective for SEO-related functions.
International SEO
Both platforms support multi-currency and multi-language stores. Shopify Markets offers tools for managing international domains or subfolders and automatically handles hreflang tags. BigCommerce supports multi-storefront setups that can be configured for international targeting. Your choice may depend on how complex your international strategy is.
So Which Platform Is Better for SEO
BigCommerce offers more native SEO control, especially regarding URL structure and faceted navigation, making it appealing for retailers who want flexibility without relying on apps. Shopify offers ease of use, strong performance, and a massive ecosystem, making it ideal for brands that prioritize simplicity and scalability. Both platforms can rank exceptionally well when properly optimized.
What Matters More Than the Platform
In reality, platform choice is only one factor. Product descriptions, category content, internal linking, site architecture, backlinks, page speed, reviews, and user experience typically have a larger impact on rankings than the platform itself. A well-optimized Shopify store will outperform a neglected BigCommerce store, and vice versa.
Conclusion
BigCommerce does have some SEO advantages over Shopify, particularly in URL flexibility and built-in technical features. However, Shopify remains a highly capable SEO platform with strong performance and extensive app support. The best choice depends on your catalog size, technical needs, and growth plans. Ultimately, consistent optimization and quality content will determine your success more than the platform you choose.
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