Improving Your Score
Specific, actionable steps to raise your Cassian Score™ across each layer.
Improving Your Score
The fastest path to a higher Cassian Score™ is simple: open the Issues page, sort by severity, and work from the top. Cassian has already done the prioritisation for you.
This guide goes deeper — it explains the highest-impact fixes in each layer and gives you a clear sequence to follow.
After making changes to your store, trigger a manual scan from Sites → your store → Scan Now (available on paid plans, limited to one per minute per site). Your updated score will appear once the scan completes. On the free Inspector plan, the next scheduled scan will pick up your changes.
Start here: the Issues page
Every issue Cassian surfaces is listed on the Issues page. By default, issues are sorted by severity:
- Critical — Fix these first. They have the largest score impact and often affect customers directly.
- High — Important fixes. Meaningful score impact.
- Medium — Worth addressing but not urgent.
- Low — Minor improvements and suggestions.
- Info — Advisory only. No score impact.
Use the filter controls to narrow by category (Technical, Content, Translation, Platform, LLM Readiness) if you want to focus on one layer at a time.
Layer 1: Technical Health (30% of score)
Technical Health has the highest weight, so fixes here move the needle fastest. A single Critical technical issue can account for several points on its own.
Highest-impact fixes:
Fix broken links — Go to the Issues page and filter by "Technical", then look for broken link issues. Each issue links directly to the affected page. In Shopify, broken internal links can usually be fixed by updating the link in your theme editor or page content, or by setting up a URL redirect in Online Store → Navigation → URL Redirects.
Add missing meta titles and descriptions — If Cassian has flagged pages with missing or very short meta tags, add them via your Shopify admin (Online Store → Pages or Products → SEO section on each page). For bulk fixes on product pages, consider a Shopify SEO app.
Add canonical tags — If Cassian flags pages with no canonical link tag, check your theme — most Shopify themes emit one automatically, but some custom themes or landing page builders don't.
Fix heading structure — Every page should have exactly one H1 (usually the page or product title). In Shopify's rich text editor, ensure your description headings use H2 and H3, not additional H1 tags. Most Shopify themes assign the product title as H1 automatically — avoid using H1 in your description body.
Ensure all images have alt text — In Shopify, add alt text to product images via the product edit page (click the image → Edit alt text). For collection and page images, edit alt text via the file or content editor.
Resolve mixed content — If any images or scripts load over plain HTTP on an HTTPS page, update those URLs to HTTPS.
Layer 2: Content Quality (25% of score)
Expand thin product descriptions — Filter the Issues page by "Content" and look for thin content warnings. Product pages with fewer than 50 words of content are flagged (other pages are held to a 30-word minimum). Write at least a short paragraph introducing the product and its key benefits. Products with thin descriptions consistently underperform in both search and conversion.
Fix spelling and grammar errors — Each flagged page is listed in the Issues panel. Fix errors directly in your Shopify admin (Products → your product → Description). For bulk errors across many products, consider exporting your product CSV and spell-checking it externally.
Remove or differentiate duplicate descriptions — If multiple products share identical descriptions, either write unique descriptions for each or use canonical tags to indicate the primary version. Shopify doesn't automatically generate unique descriptions — each product needs its own.
Add product imagery where it's missing — Product pages with no images are flagged. Every product should have at least one image.
Layer 3: Translation Quality (20% of score)
Review machine-translated product pages — Filter the Issues page by "Translation". Pages flagged for machine translation artifacts are usually your highest-traffic translated pages. Review them manually and edit via Shopify Translate & Adapt (or your translation app).
Complete missing variant translations — In Shopify, product variants can be translated via Translate & Adapt or your translation metafields. Cassian flags variants where the translated metafields are absent. Work through these methodically, starting with your best-selling products.
Fill in missing page translations — Pages with no translation at all are the lowest-hanging fruit. Even a basic translation is better than none — Cassian's analysis will show whether it needs quality improvement.
If your store is genuinely monolingual, Translation Quality is excluded from your score automatically — its 20% weight is redistributed to the other active layers, so an empty layer never drags your score down.
Layer 4: Platform Consistency (15% of score)
Keep your platform connection active — Platform Consistency only runs on paid plans with an active connection (Shopify, WooCommerce, or BigCommerce). If Cassian is flagging "Platform connection inactive", reconnect via Sites → your store → Settings → Platform.
Resolve product data mismatches — If Cassian has found prices or availability displayed differently on your storefront vs your platform backend, the fix is usually a theme caching issue. Try clearing your theme cache (via your CDN or theme editor), or check if your theme overrides product data in a non-standard way.
Add images to all product variants — In Shopify, assign images to each variant via Products → your product → Variants. Select a variant and assign the relevant image. Cassian flags any variant without an assigned image.
Fix inventory vs display mismatches — If products are showing as purchasable when they're out of stock, check your theme's "Continue selling when out of stock" setting on affected products (Products → your product → Variants → Inventory).
Layer 5: LLM Readiness (10% of score)
LLM Readiness carries the lowest weight, but it's often where the fastest wins are — many issues here can be resolved in under an hour.
Implement Product schema markup — Every product page should have Product structured data; missing Product schema is one of the highest-severity findings in this layer. Most Shopify themes include it by default, but some custom themes don't. Check your theme's JSON-LD output by viewing page source and searching for "@type": "Product". If it's missing, add it via your theme's schema or a structured data app. Organisation and Breadcrumb schema are also checked.
Rewrite pure bullet-point descriptions — If your product descriptions consist entirely of spec bullets (Weight: 2kg, Dimensions: 30×15×10cm), add at least one introductory paragraph in plain prose. AI assistants extract meaning from natural language far better than from attribute lists.
Audit brand naming consistency — Search your store for variations of your brand name (capitalization differences, abbreviations, tagline inconsistencies). Inconsistent naming is confusing to AI systems trying to build a coherent representation of your store.
Sequence to follow for maximum score improvement
Open the Issues page and filter by Critical severity. Address everything in this list first, regardless of which layer it belongs to. Critical issues have the largest individual score impact.
Fix Technical Health issues (High severity). After Critical, focus on High severity Technical issues. This layer carries 30% weight — High Technical issues are your next most valuable target.
Trigger a manual scan (paid plans). After resolving Critical and High Technical issues, scan to see your updated score. This gives you a new baseline and reveals whether any cascading issues have been resolved automatically.
Work through Content Quality issues. Filter Issues by Content. Focus on thin descriptions and duplicate content — these tend to cluster and fixing one product often applies to others in the same collection.
Address Translation issues (if active). Filter by Translation. Start with missing translations on high-traffic pages, then move to variant coverage.
Complete the LLM Readiness quick wins. Ensure Product schema is present on product pages and product descriptions have prose content.
Run a final scan and review your new score. Check the Issues page for any remaining items and review the Score History page to see your progress over time.
Common questions
My score is 78 — what should I focus on to get to 80? Open the Issues page and look at your highest-severity unfixed issues. Two or three High severity Technical fixes will likely get you across the threshold. Before normalisation, each Critical issue deducts 15 points, High 8, Medium 4, and Low 2 — so severity tells you exactly where the leverage is.
I fixed all the issues but my score didn't reach 100. There may be issues on pages Cassian didn't crawl in the most recent scan (some plans have a crawl page limit). Trigger a fresh scan to ensure the latest state of your store is captured. Also check the Issues page for any Low severity items that may still be accumulating small deductions.
Can I dismiss issues I've intentionally accepted? Yes. Issues can be dismissed from both the Issues page and directly from scan detail pages. Dismissed issues are removed from the active count and no longer appear in your lists. Note that dismissing an issue does not change your score — the score reflects what each scan finds. Use dismissal for cases where a flagged pattern is deliberate — for example, if you intentionally use a non-standard heading structure.
My Translation Quality score is low but the issues look minor. Translation Quality is weighted at 20% — a significant number of minor translation gaps can add up to a meaningful score impact. Work through them by page priority (highest traffic first) rather than trying to fix everything simultaneously.
How long does a scan take after I make changes? Scan time depends on store size and your plan tier. Your score and issue list update when the scan completes — check the Scans page for its status.