YouCan SEO: 7 Mistakes We Found on 9 Moroccan Stores (and How to Fix Them)

Introduction

Of 9 YouCan stores we analyzed, 7 had no canonical tag on their product pages, and none listed their sitemap in their robots.txt file.

Shoppers never see these settings, but Google does. They help explain why so many YouCan stores rely almost entirely on Meta and TikTok ads: their product pages exist, but Google either misreads them or finds them twice.

This guide is built on that audit. For each mistake, you will see what we found, why it matters and where to fix it in YouCan. For the content of your product pages (titles, descriptions, specifications), see our guide to optimizing product pages for Google and AI search.

1. What YouCan Already Does for Your SEO

YouCan's technical base is solid. Without any setup, your store has:

• An automatic sitemap at /sitemap.xml, split into categories, pages and products.
• Product schema (JSON-LD structured data) generated for each product, with the price in MAD.
• SEO fields for each product: slug, meta title, meta description and sharing image.
• An editable robots.txt, once your own domain is the store's primary domain.
• A header code field, useful for verifying your site in Google Search Console.

Most problems come from two places: fields left empty or filled in badly, and themes that do not output certain tags. Both can be fixed.

2. The Audit: What We Checked on 13 Stores

We picked 13 public Moroccan YouCan stores found through Google search. For each one, we read the robots.txt file, the sitemap and one product page, as Google receives it. Nine stores had a product page we could inspect.

Audit limits: the sample is small and was not random. We checked one product page per store on November 1, 2026, without running JavaScript, and results vary by theme. Treat this as a list of things to check on your own store, not as a statistic about all YouCan stores.

3. Mistake 1: Every Page Exists Twice

When you connect your own domain (for example mystore.ma), the old mystore.youcan.store address often keeps working. All 4 stores in the audit that had their own domain also served every product page on the YouCan subdomain, with no redirect and no canonical tag.

To Google, these are two identical pages at two different addresses. It has to guess which one to show, and the links your store earns can be split between the two versions.

How to fix it

1. In Store → Domains, connect your domain and set it as the primary domain.
2. Then open a product page on the .youcan.store address. If it loads instead of sending you to your domain, ask YouCan support to set up a 301 redirect to the primary domain.
3. If your theme is editable (Liquid themes), add a canonical tag to the <head> of the layout file:

<link rel="canonical" href="https://{{ store.domain }}{{ request.path }}">

According to YouCan's theme documentation, store.domain returns the store's primary domain and request.path returns the page path. After adding it, view the source of a product page (right-click, "View page source") to confirm the tag points to your domain.

4. Mistake 2: Empty or Default Meta Titles and Descriptions

In the audit, one product page appeared in Google with the title "First product" and the description "The first product": text from a duplicated template product that was never changed. On another store, the meta title was just the URL slug, hyphens included.

The meta title is the blue clickable text in Google's results. It affects both rankings and how many people click.

Where to edit it

Products → edit a product → SEO section (collapsed by default, at the bottom of the page). It holds the slug, meta title, meta description and sharing images.

• Meta title: product type, main attribute and place, under 60 characters. Example: Culinary Argan Oil 250ml – Cold-Pressed in Taroudant.
• Meta description: about 150 characters that give a reason to buy, including delivery and payment. Example: Cold-pressed culinary argan oil from Taroudant. Delivery across Morocco, cash on delivery available.
• Slug: short, lowercase, with hyphens: culinary-argan-oil-250ml.

For the homepage, the fields are in Settings → General → Details (store title and store description).

5. Mistake 3: Incomplete Product Schema

The good news: when the theme outputs it, YouCan generates product schema with the name, image, category and price in MAD. But in the 3 audited stores that had it, availability, brand, SKU and reviews were always missing. Those are exactly the details Google uses to show stock and star ratings in its results.

Here is the default schema we observed (simplified):

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org/",
  "@type": "Product",
  "name": "…",
  "description": "…",
  "image": "…",
  "category": "Montres Femmes",
  "offers": {
    "@type": "Offer",
    "priceCurrency": "MAD",
    "price": 249,
    "seller": { "@type": "Store", "name": "…" }
  }
}

How to fix it

• Editable theme: in the product template, replace the default schema with a complete version that adds availability, brand, sku and, if you have genuine reviews, aggregateRating. Keep only one Product block per page.
• Old theme: the header code field is shared by every page, so it cannot hold product-specific schema. In that case, focus on mistakes 1, 2 and 4, and consider moving to an editable theme.
• Test each product page with Google's Rich Results Test.

The schema rules (MAD, required fields, full example) are covered in the schema section of our product pages guide.

6. Mistake 4: No H1 on the Product Page

On 7 of the 9 product pages we checked, the product name was not marked up as an H1 in the HTML sent to Google. The H1 tells Google what the page is mainly about. Without it, Google has to work that out from the rest of the content.

Check your theme: view the source of a product page and search for <h1. If there isn't one, the product name should be wrapped in an H1 in the product template. On an editable theme it is a one-line change. Otherwise, report it to YouCan support or the theme developer.

7. Mistake 5: The Store Name as Image Alt Text

In 5 of the 9 stores, most product images used the store name as their alt text. Google Images has no way of knowing the photo shows a gold watch or a black abaya.

Alt text should describe the image: product, color, material or use. For example: Women's watch with green dial and gold strap. Rename your files before uploading as well: womens-watch-green-dial-gold.webp instead of IMG_1581.jpg.

If your theme does not let you set alt text per image, it often falls back to the product or store name, which makes a precise product name even more important.

8. Mistake 6: A Sitemap Google Doesn't Know About

Every store in the audit had a robots.txt that allows everything, but none listed its sitemap there. Google can find the sitemap on its own, but there is no guarantee it will do so quickly. The reliable fix is to submit it yourself in Google Search Console.

Verify your store in Search Console

YouCan has no Search Console integration. Two methods work:

• HTML tag (also works on the .youcan.store address): copy the <meta name="google-site-verification" …> tag Google gives you and paste it into Settings → Online → CSS/JavaScript configs → Additional header code. Then check the homepage source to confirm the tag appears, because this field belongs to the old theme.
• DNS record ("Domain" property, recommended): add the TXT record Google gives you at the company you bought your domain from. It covers every version of your domain but requires a domain of your own.

Once the store is verified, open Sitemaps in Search Console and add sitemap.xml. If your own domain is the primary domain, you can also add the line Sitemap: https://mystore.ma/sitemap.xml to the custom robots.txt (Settings → General).

9. Mistake 7: Turning On the "Cloaking" Option

YouCan product pages include a "cloaking" option that shows different content depending on the visitor. Google treats cloaking as a violation of its spam policies. A page that shows one thing to Google and another to shoppers risks being demoted or removed from search results.

If you want your product pages to bring in organic traffic, leave this option off.

10. Don't Forget Category Pages

A category page such as "Women's watches" targets broader searches than any single product, and it often gets more traffic. YouCan categories support a description and meta information. A category with no text is just a grid of photos to Google.

Give each important category a short paragraph describing the range, uses and delivery, plus its own meta title.

11. Your YouCan Store in ChatGPT and Perplexity

AI assistants recommend products whose pages state specific facts: origin, material, size, use and delivery terms. The fixes in this guide help there too. A clear title, complete schema and a single version of each page make your product page easier to read and to cite.

For the bigger picture, see our product pages guide, which has a full section on AI search optimization.

12. YouCan SEO Checklist

Conclusion

YouCan gives you a sound SEO base: a sitemap, schema in MAD and meta fields. What most stores are missing is the setup around it: a single domain, filled-in titles, complete schema and a store registered in Search Console.

Start with the first three rows of the checklist, then work through your 10 best-selling products. Track their clicks in Search Console before moving on to the rest of the catalog.

Need an SEO Audit for Your YouCan Store?

I'm Othmane Outaghza, a technical SEO consultant based in Morocco. I audit YouCan, Shopify and WooCommerce stores: duplicate domains, schema, product pages, categories and visibility in Google and AI search.