SEO ANALYSIS PREPARED FOR

northwind-shoes.example

Prepared July 21, 2026 · Reviewed by an SEO specialist

We found 14 issues and opportunities that may be limiting your visibility in search. Below are the most important ones, with evidence from your pages.

3
Critical
6
Important
5
Opportunities

Critical findings

3 of 14 shown

criticalIndexing & crawling

Category pages tell Google the homepage is the “real” page

A canonical tag says “this is the main version of the page”. When a category names the homepage instead, Google can drop the category from results and show the homepage — or nothing — for searches like “women’s trail running shoes”. Categories are usually a store’s best landing pages for shopping searches.

Evidence · 42 of 42 checked pages

All 14 category pages in the sample, and all 28 of their paginated URLs listed in the sitemap, carry two canonical tags. The second one — which Google may treat as the deciding one — points to the homepage.

northwind-shoes.example/collections/womens-running
northwind-shoes.example/collections/mens-running

criticalSpeed & Core Web Vitals

Product pages take 5.8 s to show the main photo on a phone

Shoe shoppers compare several stores on their phone. A product photo that takes almost 6 seconds to appear makes the page feel broken, and many people go back to the results. Page experience is one of Google’s signals, although speed alone never guarantees rankings.

Evidence · 24 of 24 checked pages

On the product page we measured, the main photo — the largest element on screen — appears after 5.8 s in the median of 3 mobile lab runs (5.5–6.3 s). The same page on desktop: 1.4 s. All 24 sampled product pages use the same template, image size and scripts.

northwind-shoes.example/products/trailpace-gtx-womens
northwind-shoes.example/products/trailpace-gtx-womens-moss

criticalLocal SEO

Your two store pages are blocked from Google by robots.txt

People search for “running shoe store Portland” or “shoe fitting Hawthorne” with the intent to visit today. These are the pages that answer them, and Google is not allowed to read them.

Evidence · 3 of 3 checked pages

robots.txt contains Disallow: /pages/stores. That single rule blocks the store index and both store pages (Pearl District and Hawthorne), including their address, opening hours and the free gait-analysis fitting service.

northwind-shoes.example/pages/stores
northwind-shoes.example/pages/stores/pearl-district

Competitor insight

Two local competitors show price, stock and ratings right in the results

rosecity-runners.example and stride-and-co.example rank above you for “trail running shoes portland”. Both have 300–450 words of fitting advice on their category pages and product markup with price and availability. Yours has neither.

Opportunity

Wide-fit shoes: 46 models in stock, no page that says so

You stock 46 wide-fit models and offer free in-store fitting, but /collections/wide-fit has no text at all. A focused page with fitting advice is one of the quickest content wins in this report.

Sample preview

Ready-made fix: category canonical tags

This is the kind of step-by-step fix every finding gets in the full report. Change one setting, then check three pages:

Page	Canonical now	Should be
/collections/womens-running	https://northwind-shoes.example/	…/collections/womens-running
/collections/trail-running	https://northwind-shoes.example/	…/collections/trail-running
/collections/wide-fit?page=2	https://northwind-shoes.example/	…/collections/wide-fit?page=2

How to check. Open the page, press Ctrl+U and search for rel="canonical": there must be exactly one, with the page’s own address. About an hour of work.

What already works

The foundation is solid: HTTPS and redirects are clean, all 48 pages we analysed open without errors, and your product descriptions are written by people who actually fit shoes — a real advantage over the big retailers.

Your preview ends here

The full analysis covers 11 more findings. Each one includes affected URLs, examples, cause, recommended fix and priority.

Indexing & crawling1 critical · 1 important
Speed & Core Web Vitals1 critical · 1 opportunity
On-page SEO1 important · 1 opportunity
Structured data1 important
Content & competitors1 important · 1 opportunity
Internal links1 important
Mobile & accessibility1 important
Local SEO1 critical · 1 opportunity
AI search (GEO)1 opportunity

Indexing & crawling

1 critical · 1 important

Full analysis contains: affected URLs · examples · cause · recommended fix · priority