Shopify SEO for Australian Sunscreen Brands

Quick answer: In Australia, a sunscreen sold mainly for sun protection is a therapeutic good regulated by the TGA, so the words on your product and collection pages are likely to count as advertising and carry their own rules. Build your Shopify SEO around that: a collection for each way buyers shop that has the products and demand to earn one (face, kids, sport, tinted, body), product copy that sticks to the label and your AUST number, and every page live and linked before summer starts on 1 December. This is general information as at 31 October 2026, not legal advice.

Most Shopify SEO advice assumes you can write whatever helps a page rank. Sunscreen is the category where that can cost you more than a ranking: the regulator can ask what your website says, and the selling season is short enough that page timing matters too.

This post is for founders of Australian sunscreen and sun care brands on Shopify. It covers which of your products the TGA’s rules reach, how they should shape product and collection copy, how to structure face, kids, sport and tinted collections, and what to have live before summer. More guides are in our Shopify SEO and CRO hub. For the wider work of getting an Australian store found in search, see Shopify SEO for Australian online stores.

It does not cover United States rules and does not sign off wording: the TGA assesses advertising case by case, so final wording belongs with your regulatory adviser or the product’s sponsor (the TGA’s term for the product owner).

First, which kind of sunscreen are you selling?

The TGA sorts sunscreens into two types. A primary sunscreen is represented as being primarily to protect the skin from UV radiation. A secondary sunscreen is represented as having another main purpose, such as a moisturiser, while still giving some UV protection. All primary sunscreens are therapeutic goods, and so are some secondary ones. Many other secondary products, cosmetic sunscreens among them, are excluded from therapeutic goods rules if they meet certain criteria.

That split decides which rules your copy has to follow. The TGA’s breakdown, simplified:

Two details matter for SEO.

Most regulated sunscreens carry an AUST L number. The TGA says the majority are listed medicines with an AUST L number, and that every sunscreen it regulates must be on the Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods (ARTG) and show an AUST number on the front label. Listed sunscreens are not assessed by the TGA before sale; the sponsor certifies that the product meets the requirements.

The line follows how a product is presented. An excluded moisturiser stops being excluded if it is presented as water resistant or makes therapeutic claims, and the TGA’s wording covers products “advertised” in those ways, not only what is in the tube. Your page copy can affect which side of the line a product sits on. The TGA says the Advertising Code and its labelling order do not apply to excluded sunscreens.

Which row each product sits in is not an SEO decision. Ask your manufacturer or sponsor for the ARTG entry, and look the AUST number up on the TGA’s public ARTG database. Below, “sunscreen” means the first two rows and “cosmetic SPF product” the last two.

Your pages are advertising

The TGA’s guidance on what counts as advertising is broad: any statement intended, directly or indirectly, to promote the use or supply of a therapeutic good. It lists websites, emails, blogs, social posts, user-generated content and product reviews among the forms, and says online retailers are responsible for what they publish, even where they copied it from the packaging or another website.

Context matters. In the TGA’s example, a site selling medical devices publishes health articles that never name a product; because the site sells the devices the articles describe, the articles are likely part of the advertising. A buyer’s guide on your store may be in the same position. The TGA lists price, offers and discounts as signs of promotion and decides case by case, so the careful approach is to treat everything about a sunscreen on your store as if it could be advertising. My working rule, not a TGA statement, is to give page titles, meta descriptions, H1s, collection intros and FAQs the same care as the product description.

The TGA says it monitors compliance and can take action if requirements are not met; at least one of its published sunscreen compliance reports lists the sponsor’s website among the information reviewed.

Claims that trip up sunscreen pages

These are claim types the TGA and the ACCC address directly, what their pages say, and a safer direction. It is not a compliance check and not legal advice; it shows where the rules are so you can ask your adviser the right questions.

Skin cancer wording is tightly controlled. Listed sunscreens can only carry indications from a fixed list, and the ones on skin cancer, solar keratoses and sunspots are limited to broad-spectrum products with an SPF of 30 or higher. In the August 2025 version of the guidance (Appendix 1, Table 7) the skin cancer wordings are “May assist in preventing some skin cancers” and “May reduce the risk of some skin cancers”; a flat “prevents skin cancer” is not on that list. Non-therapeutic claims such as “moisturising” or a content claim are allowed if truthful, not misleading and substantiated. The TGA tells sponsors to check the current determination, so copy from there and from your ARTG entry, not from a competitor’s page.

“Reef-safe” and “non-nano” need evidence. The word “reef” does not appear in the TGA’s 56-page guidance, so I treat “reef-safe” as an environmental claim under the ACCC’s principles, where independent, scientific evidence is the most credible. The TGA also says sunscreen labels are not required to declare particle size, so the label alone will not back a “non-nano” claim.

Write SPF the way the label does. The TGA’s label guide groups SPF 30, 40 and 50 as high protection and SPF 50+ as very high. The plus sign can only be used on SPF 50 products that provide an SPF of 60 or more. Broad spectrum means protection against UVA and UVB. Use those terms exactly as printed on the pack, in titles, collection names and filters.

The sun-safety block: build it once

For medicines, the Code’s mandatory statement is “ALWAYS READ THE LABEL AND FOLLOW THE DIRECTIONS FOR USE” (TGA guidance on mandatory statements), alongside the correct medicine name and at least one accepted indication from the ARTG. The statement must be prominently displayed: easily read from a reasonable viewing distance and repeated as often as needed to be noticed. The TGA says written ads must show it on the same page or screen as the advertisement, and warns that techniques that obscure required information may mean it is not prominently displayed.

On Shopify, the practical answer is one reusable block. Build a section or snippet holding the mandatory statement and the sunscreen statements from the table, and render it on every sunscreen product and collection template. When your adviser changes the wording, you change it once. Keep it visible; I would not hide it in a closed accordion tab, given what the TGA says about obscuring information.

One wrinkle for your adviser: the TGA says these rules do not cover an ad with no therapeutic claim that is only a product’s name, picture, price and point of sale, but such an ad must not also carry a buy-now button. Whether an add-to-cart button on a collection grid changes that, I will not guess.

A reform to plan around

The TGA’s sunscreen reforms page, last updated 27 October 2026, lists what it is progressing: stronger SPF testing (on the finished product, periodically while listed, with data supplied at listing), ingredient quality requirements, a review of manufacturing guidance, further consultation on how SPF appears on labels, and a consistent limit on the SPF that all secondary (cosmetic) sunscreens can claim. It says each reform will take time and may need legislation. As at 31 October 2026 the page gave no start dates.

Two habits follow. Drive SPF from one place, such as a product metafield, so a rule change is a quick edit. And if SPF is the headline of a cosmetic product’s page, a tinted foundation for example, be ready to revisit that page when the cosmetic limit is set. Sponsors should also keep SPF test reports on file: the TGA says it may request pre-market SPF, broad-spectrum, water-resistance and stability results at any time while a listed product is in the ARTG.

Collection structure: face, kids, sport, tinted

Google matches a query such as “kids sunscreen” to the page that answers it best. A collection earns its own page when three things are true:

1. Buyers use a distinct phrase for it. Check your own Search Console queries first (more below).
2. It has a distinct set of products that you would show in a different order from the main range.
3. You can write something useful on the page, not just a heading over a grid.

If all three hold, build a collection. If only the first two hold, write more. If fewer, make it a filter. A starting structure I would test for a typical Australian range:

Use filters for attributes such as SPF level, format, size, fragrance-free or mineral, and read our guide to filter URLs and index bloat before letting Google crawl filter combinations. A product can sit in several collections; give each collection its own intro so they are not thin copies of each other.

What goes on each collection page

• A title that matches the shopping phrase. Shopify generates the H1 from the collection title you enter. For the page title shown in search results, Shopify lets you enter up to 70 characters and suggests staying within 60 to avoid shortening, and it recommends about 160 characters for the meta description. An illustrative page title: “Kids Sunscreen SPF 50+ | Example Sun Co”.
• A short intro that helps someone choose: who the range is for, what the label terms mean, and links to neighbouring collections.
• The sun-safety block.
• Links from your home page and main menu, so crawlers and shoppers can find it. Our collection page SEO guide goes deeper on layout.

Product pages: label facts first

• Keep the product title identical to the label name. The TGA says the ARTG name must match the name on the label. Put extra search words in the intro line or page title, subject to the claims table.
• Show the AUST number in the form the TGA suggests, with the number, never a bare “registered”.
• Put label facts in text: SPF, broad spectrum, water resistance if the label says so, size, ingredients, directions and warnings, copied from your approved packaging file, not another site. The TGA says an online ad that lets people buy a medicine without inspecting it must also carry items such as the health warnings, quantity and each active ingredient, and that an image of the label alone is not enough.
• Keep structured data honest. Google’s guidelines say not to mark up content readers cannot see and to provide up-to-date information, so markup for price, availability and ratings must match the page. See the product page SEO checklist and schema markup and AI citations.
• Watch recalls. The TGA publishes recalls and alerts, including sunscreens recalled for being unlikely to meet their labelled SPF. If a product of yours is recalled, follow the recall instructions and say so on the page.

Reviews, influencers and customer content

If your review requests offer a discount code or free product in return for a review (check how your review app and email flows are set up), that is where the TGA’s testimonial rule can bite.

The TGA says testimonials induced by payment of any kind are prohibited in ads for therapeutic goods, and its list of “valuable consideration” includes cash, gifts, discounts on product and free product. A sale open to all customers and not tied to a testimonial does not count. If you republish a review from another site, you must verify the author’s identity and the content first, and an advertiser on social media must monitor comments and remove non-compliant ones.

For influencers, the TGA says a paid brand ambassador’s testimonial cannot be used, while an endorsement can be if the person is not in a barred group (health practitioners, for instance) and the payment is disclosed.

Until an adviser says otherwise, I would switch off “discount for a review” automations for sunscreens, moderate reviews that claim things you could not claim yourself (protection “all day”, for example), and keep star-rating markup matched to the reviews shoppers can see. Our guide to reviews and star ratings covers the SEO side.

Seasonality: publish before the season, not into it

According to the Bureau of Meteorology, Australian summer is December, January and February, and it suggests 1 December as the start of summer. In the northern tropics it uses a wet season (generally October to April) and a dry season (May to September) instead. Sun protection is not only a summer matter either: Cancer Council Australia says it is recommended whenever UV levels reach 3 or higher. Keep collections as year-round pages, not summer landing pages you build and delete.

Now the timing problem. Google’s SEO starter guide says changes can take effect in a few hours or take several months, and suggests waiting a few weeks before judging them. From 20 November to 1 December is 11 days, with Black Friday on 27 November 2026 (the day after the fourth Thursday) in the middle. Collections you plan to “get to in December” will not get a fair run.

Do not schedule collections to go live on 1 December. Shopify lets you set a future publish date for a collection. That suits a product drop, but the collection is not published to your online store until the date, so the clock starts late. Publish now, link it, and let it settle.

Find your own seasonality instead of guessing. In Search Console, set the date filter to the last 16 months. Google recommends this view for seeing yearly patterns and telling a seasonal dip from a real problem. Google Trends figures are relative (scaled 0 to 100), not search counts, and Google says to treat them as one data point among others.

The plan I would use this year:

Do not delete anything in March. If a hero product sells out, keep the page live and point to a similar product; in autumn, update dates in titles and keep the URLs. For how long results take, see how long Shopify SEO takes.

Short on time before summer? Tell us about your store.

Key takeaways

• A sunscreen sold mainly for sun protection is a TGA-regulated therapeutic good; many cosmetic SPF products are excluded. Know which of your products is which before writing copy.
• Product pages, collection intros, blogs and reviews can all count as advertising, and you are responsible for copy taken from the packaging.
• Avoid “TGA approved”, “all day”, health-professional endorsements and “safe for” wording; use the indications on your ARTG entry and the label’s directions.
• Build one sun-safety block and reuse it on every sunscreen product and collection page.
• Build collections by how buyers shop (face, kids, sport, tinted, body) where there is demand and range, and use filters for the rest.
• Do not incentivise reviews of therapeutic sunscreens with discounts or free product.
• Summer starts 1 December and Google says to wait a few weeks to assess changes, so publish and link before the season. The TGA’s reforms had no start dates as at 31 October 2026, so keep SPF in one place.

FAQs

Do I need an AUST L number to sell sunscreen on Shopify?

Generally yes for therapeutic sunscreens: the TGA says they must be in the ARTG before they can be legally supplied, with an AUST number on the front label, and the majority carry an AUST L number. Some cosmetic secondary sunscreens are excluded and do not need to be in the ARTG. Which applies depends on how a product is presented and what it contains, so ask your sponsor or adviser. This is not legal advice.

Can I say my sunscreen prevents skin cancer?

Only within what the TGA permits. Listed sunscreens can carry skin cancer indications only if they are broad spectrum with an SPF of 30 or higher, and the TGA’s August 2025 guidance words them as “May assist in preventing some skin cancers” and “May reduce the risk of some skin cancers”. An ad that claims or implies prevention must also include the sun-safety statements the Code requires. Use the exact indications on your ARTG entry and have them checked first. This is not legal advice.

Can I use “TGA approved” on my product page?

No. The TGA says advertisers must not use terms such as “TGA approved” or “TGA registered”, and that ARTG inclusion is not an endorsement. You can say the product is listed in the ARTG and give its AUST L number.

Can I show customer reviews on sunscreen product pages?

The TGA lists product reviews among the forms of content that can be advertising, so handle them with care. Do not pay for them with discounts, free product or any other incentive, and moderate reviews that make claims you could not make yourself. Ask your adviser about your review app’s settings.

How early should I publish sunscreen collections before summer?

Before it starts. Summer begins on 1 December, and Google says changes can take hours to months to show and suggests waiting a few weeks before assessing them. Publish and link collections weeks ahead where you can.

Should kids sunscreen be its own collection?

If shoppers search for it and you stock enough kids’ products to fill a page, yes. I found no separate category for children’s sunscreen in the TGA’s sunscreen guidance, so write the page to the same claim rules as the rest of your range.

Want a second pair of eyes on your sunscreen collections before summer?

Collection structure, product pages and the technical groundwork are part of our Shopify SEO service, and we do not promise rankings. We do not check your wording against the TGA’s rules; that is a question for your regulatory adviser. If you want to talk it through, tell us about your store or book a free 30-minute diagnostic. We look at your store before we recommend anything, and we tell you honestly if SEO isn’t the right move. No pitch.