21phi builds search visibility into the storefront itself: technical SEO on Shopify Hydrogen, structured data an AI assistant can read, and a team that stays after launch to keep both working.
21phi is a Shopify SEO agency for direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands on Shopify and Shopify Plus that want to rank on Google and be recommended by AI assistants. It is for brands rebuilding their storefront or already running headless, who want search handled by the team that owns the code.
SEO is search engine optimization for Google and Bing. Most of it is decided in the storefront: how pages render, how fast they load, which URLs exist, what structured data describes each product. We build Shopify Hydrogen storefronts, so we do that work in the code.
Generative engine optimization (GEO), also called AI search optimization, is making a brand and its products show up in answers from AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Siri; it is built on structured data, crawlable content and consistent entity information. A page Google indexes well and a product an assistant describes correctly are the same page, done properly.
We are a small senior team, led on the engineering side by Sergey Gridin, and a Shopify Partner with Shopify Plus experience. The Shopify SEO services below start with what we run on our own site: server-rendered pages, JSON-LD, canonical handling, an llms.txt file and RSS.
An SEO vendor that cannot touch the storefront ends up writing tickets for someone else. Hydrogen pages are server-rendered, so Google and AI crawlers receive full HTML, not a loading state. Titles, canonicals, structured data and internal links are part of the component library, so every new collection, product or article inherits them without anyone remembering to add them.
The audit comes first and is specific: which URLs exist and which should not, where canonicals point, how Core Web Vitals look on real product pages, what the schema says about each product. Then the fixes ship in the same codebase the storefront runs on. For a brand moving from a Liquid theme to Hydrogen, or from another platform to Shopify, the redirect map and metadata are part of the migration plan, with indexation checks after the switch. See Shopify migration services.
AI assistants answer shopping questions from what they can crawl and verify: product pages with complete structured data, consistent brand information across the web, and content that states plainly what a product is and who it is for. Agentic commerce goes one step further: products described with structured data so AI agents can recommend them and complete a purchase on the shopper's behalf (for example through ChatGPT's shopping features).
Our work is to make the catalog legible: product, offer and availability data in JSON-LD, one canonical description of the brand repeated the same way everywhere, FAQ answers that stand on their own, and an llms.txt file, a plain-text summary of a site for AI assistants published at /llms.txt, kept as a mirror of indexable HTML rather than treated as a ranking lever.
We are honest about the limits. No agency controls which products an assistant recommends, and we will not promise inclusion. What we can do is remove every reason an assistant has to skip a product.
We work inside your channels. Search questions arrive from wherever they come from: a founder who saw a competitor in an AI answer, a marketer launching a landing page, customer care asking why a page is not found. They land with people who know the codebase and can answer in the same thread.
We run a weekly review of the funnel: product views, add to cart, checkout and repeat purchase, read by segment. SEO decisions are judged against those numbers, not in isolation. The stack is Shopify Hydrogen on Oxygen with React Router, the Storefront API and Sanity for editorial content; measurement runs through Amplitude and pixels implemented in code rather than a tag manager, and indexation is checked after every structural change. Measurement runs the same way on a Shopify Plus apparel storefront we run. See Shopify analytics and attribution.
Search is never finished. Google changes, assistants change, the catalog changes every drop. Most agencies deliver an audit and leave, and the storefront drifts. We stay. 21phi works as an embedded partner on a monthly retainer: the same senior people who built the storefront keep it indexable, keep the schema current, and close any request from any department, whether that is an integration, a broken app, a visual for a launch, an analytics question or an urgent fix, with a named senior person on the other end.
This costs more than a body shop, and it should. A body shop sells hours and forgets your store between tickets. An embedded team carries the context: which redirects exist and why, which product systems need their own schema, what the last migration touched. That context keeps rankings through redesigns. Framework, package and Shopify API upkeep is a standing monthly item, so nothing breaks quietly. See Shopify support and maintenance.
Ask whether the agency can change the storefront code or only recommend changes. Ask to see their structured data on a store they built. Ask how they handle a migration and what they monitor after it. Ask who answers when a page breaks on launch day, and whether that person has seen your codebase before.
A generative engine optimization agency that publishes articles and sends monthly PDFs leaves the storefront as the bottleneck. 21phi treats SEO and AI search optimization as part of building and running the store. If that is the partner you are looking for, send us the store.
A Shopify Hydrogen storefront for a men's performance apparel brand, built around product systems and run by 21phi as the embedded storefront, analytics and growth team.
Shopify Plus · Shopify Hydrogen on Remix / React Router · Oxygen edge hosting · Storefront API and Customer Account API · Shopify Markets · Shopify web pixels and ad pixels, implemented in code · Amplitude for funnels, retention and session replay · Mux for video
A Shopify SEO agency improves how a Shopify or Shopify Plus store appears in Google and Bing: technical audits, speed and Core Web Vitals, structured data, URL and redirect hygiene, content and internal linking. 21phi does this inside the storefront code of Shopify Hydrogen builds, so fixes ship as part of the store rather than as recommendations handed to another developer, and extends the work to AI search optimization.
No, provided it is built properly. Shopify Hydrogen renders pages on the server, so Google and AI crawlers receive complete HTML with titles, structured data and links in place. Problems appear when a headless build renders only in the browser or skips canonicals, sitemaps and redirects. 21phi builds those into the Hydrogen component library, so every route returns a fully rendered page.
Generative engine optimization, or AI search optimization, is the practice of making a brand and its products appear in answers from AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Siri. It rests on structured data, crawlable content and consistent brand information across the web, and overlaps heavily with technical SEO: a product page an assistant can describe accurately is the same page Google indexes well.
Agentic commerce means products are described with structured data so AI agents can recommend them and complete a purchase on the shopper's behalf, for example through ChatGPT's shopping features. On Shopify this depends on complete product, offer and availability data, consistent brand entity information and a storefront that renders without a browser. 21phi prepares Shopify and Shopify Plus catalogs for this as part of its SEO work.
An SEO-safe Shopify migration protects rankings through disciplined work: a full URL map with 301 redirects, metadata and structured data carried over, an audit of ad and link destinations before the switch, and indexation monitored afterwards. 21phi approaches every migration this way, whether from a Liquid theme to Hydrogen or from another platform to Shopify. No agency can promise that nothing moves, and we do not, but the method is well understood.
21phi plans and runs Shopify migrations, from a Liquid theme to Hydrogen, from Shopify to Shopify Plus, or from another platform onto Shopify, and stays on as the team that runs the store afterwards.
21phi designs, builds and keeps running headless storefronts on Hydrogen, Oxygen and the Storefront API for Shopify Plus brands, and stays embedded with your team as the people who own the store after launch.
21phi builds and runs the analytics layer for Shopify Plus and Hydrogen storefronts, from pixels and event taxonomy to attribution, cohorts and a weekly review, and stays embedded as the team that answers the next question.
