> A premium fly fishing store moved from Squarespace to Shopify and left 3,400 404s and duplicate URLs behind: a four part audit and theme schema work.
>
> Source: https://gerriscorp.com/case-studies/shopify-migration/ · Updated 2026-10-05 · By Chris Abraham, Gerris Corp

# Specialty retailer: cleaning up after Squarespace to Shopify

A family-owned specialty store moved from Squarespace to Shopify. The new store looked good, but search visibility was slipping and the indexed page count was shrinking.

## My role

A four-part audit, then hands-on product optimization and structured data work in the store's theme.

## What the audit found
- Duplicate product URLs: old Squarespace-style paths and Shopify's own paths competing in Google for the same products.
- More than 3,400 404 errors left over from the migration.
- A duplicate FAQ page.
- Organic traffic dominated by misspellings of the brand name, a sign the store wasn't being found for what it sells.
- Broken product meta descriptions and default metadata inherited from the theme.
- A spammy backlink profile, poor mobile speed, and weak visibility in AI assistants.

## What I did

A product optimization pass across titles, descriptions, metadata, and categories. Then structured data work in a duplicated copy of the live theme, so the store was never at risk: Organization schema added, and a new Product schema block that turned out to duplicate an existing, more complete block from the theme. I traced the duplication so only one valid block remains, and identified that the review rating data depended on confirming the right metafield namespace from the reviews app.

## How it was checked

Structured data validated on product pages, crawls compared before and after, and every change made in the duplicate theme first and previewed before publishing.

## Status

The audit and a product pass were delivered; remaining items, such as thin descriptions and missing categories, are being reconciled with the owner before further edits. See [e-commerce SEO](https://gerriscorp.com/services/ecommerce/).

Written by [Chris Abraham](https://gerriscorp.com/about/), founder of Gerris Corp in Arlington, Virginia, from his own client engagements, with every technical claim checked against the documentation listed. Websites since 1994, digital marketing since 2002. [Editorial standards](https://gerriscorp.com/standards/) · [Upwork profile](https://www.upwork.com/freelancers/chrisjabraham)

Updated October 5, 2026