Four common SEO problems with Shopify and how to fix them
30-second summary:
While Shopify is among the most popular platforms for ecommerce organizations, the CMS has a variety of problems that can be problematic for SEO
Best SEO practices typically use to all CMS platforms, however Shopify has several in-built functions that can not be personalized, indicating some products require more special workarounds
Edward Coram-James discusses issues such as limited URL structure and replicate content, providing suggestions on how to combat Shopify's drawbacks in these locations
Shopify is the most widely-used ecommerce platform, making it easier than ever prior to for companies to sell their stock online. Its easy-to-use CMS has actually made it particularly useful for smaller retailers during the pandemic, allowing them to claw back around 94% of what would have otherwise been lost sales.
Just like any new website, a fresh Shopify store will require a lot of effort on the part of its web designer to establish the necessary visibility for users to discover the website, not to mention convert into consumers. And similar to any CMS, there are a few SEO obstacles that save owners will need to clear to make sure that their website finds its audience effectively. Some of these hurdles are more deep-rooted than others, so we've broken down four of the most common SEO issues on Shopify and how you can fix them for your webstore.
1. Restricted URL structure
In similar manner in which WordPress divides material between posts and pages, Shopify's CMS permits you to divide your item listings into 2 primary categories-- products and collections-- along with more basic posts, pages, and blog sites. Creating a new product on Shopify enables you to list the specific items you have for sale, while collections give you the chances to bring your disparate items together and sort them into easily-searched categories.
The problem the majority of people have actually with this enforced system of organizing content is that Shopify likewise enforces a predetermined hierarchical structure with limited customization options. The subfolders/ item and/ collection needs to be included in the URL of every new product or collection you publish.
In spite of it being a big bone of contention with its users, Shopify has yet to resolve https://247creative.com.au/ this and there is no option currently. As a result, you will require to be very careful with the URLs slug (the only part that can be tailored). Ensure you are using the ideal keywords in the slug and classify your posts sensibly to provide your items the best chance of being found.
2. Automatically created replicate content
Another frustrating concern users have with categorizing their content as an item or collection occurs when they add a particular product into a collection. This is because, although there will already be a URL in place for the item page, connecting a product to a collection immediately produces an additional URL for it within that collection. Shopify immediately deals with the collection URL as the canonical one for internal links, rather than the item one, which can make things very challenging when it comes to ensuring that the ideal pages are indexed.
In this instance, nevertheless, Shopify has allowed for repairs, though it does include modifying code in the back end of your store's style. Following these directions will instruct your Shopify website's collections pages to internally link only to the canonical/ item/ URLs.
3. No routing slash redirect
Another of Shopify's duplicate content problems relates to the trailing slash, which is basically a '/' at the end of the URL used to mark a directory. By default, Shopify instantly ends URLs without a trailing slash, but variations of the exact same URL with a tracking slash are accessible to both users and search engines.
Shopify rather advises that webmasters utilize canonical tags to notify Google which variation of each page is chosen for indexing. As the only fix offered so far, it will have to do, however it's far from ideal and frequently leads to information attribution problems in Google Analytics and other tracking software.
4. No control over the website's robots.txt file.
Beyond the CMS forcing users to produce replicate variations of pages versus their will, Shopify likewise avoids web designers from being able to make manual edits to their shop's robots.txt file. Obviously, Shopify sees this as a perk, looking after the pesky technical SEO concerns in your place. When products go out of stock or collections get pulled, you can neither noindex nor nofollow the redundant pages left behind.
In this circumstances, you are able to modify the style of your store, including meta robots tags into the section of each pertinent page. Shopify has produced a detailed guide on how to hide redundant pages from search here.