Shopify powers millions of businesses, and for good reason—it is incredibly easy to use. But if you talk to any Technical SEO expert, they will tell you the same thing: "Shopify creates SEO problems that don't exist on other platforms."
The biggest issue? Duplicate Content.
Out of the box, Shopify creates multiple URLs for the exact same product. This splits your ranking power, confuses Google, and burns your "Crawl Budget." If you want to rank #1, you have to fix the code.
The Shopify SEO Tax
The "Collection URL" Problem
Here is the scenario. You sell a "Red T-Shirt."
Shopify automatically creates these URLs:
/products/red-t-shirt(The "Canonical" or True URL)/collections/mens/products/red-t-shirt(Duplicate 1)/collections/sale/products/red-t-shirt(Duplicate 2)
By default, Shopify links to the Duplicate versions in your collection pages. This means all your internal link equity flows to the wrong pages. Google sees 3 pages with identical content and doesn't know which one to rank.
The Fix: Editing Your Liquid Code
To fix this, you need to tell your theme to link only to the root product URL.
Warning: Back up your theme before touching code.
File to Edit: snippets/product-grid-item.liquid (or similar)
// Find this line (The Problem):
{{ product.url | within: collection }}
// Change it to this (The Fix):
{{ product.url }}
By removing the | within: collection filter, you force Shopify to link directly to the clean /products/ URL. This consolidates 100% of your link equity into one strong page.
Problem 2: Tag Page Bloat
Shopify allows you to tag products (e.g., "Cotton", "Summer", "Vintage"). If you use these tags as filters, Shopify generates a unique URL for every single tag.
/collections/mens/cotton/collections/mens/summer/collections/mens/vintage
If you have 50 tags, you just created 50 "Thin Content" pages that look almost identical. Google hates this.
✅ The "NoIndex" Solution
You cannot stop Shopify from generating these URLs, but you can tell Google to ignore them. You need to add logic to your theme.liquid file that adds a noindex meta tag specifically to tag-filtered pages.
Problem 3: The Locked Sitemap
On WordPress, you can edit your sitemap.xml easily. On Shopify, it is auto-generated and locked. You cannot remove pages from the sitemap manually.
This means if you have thousands of low-quality "Tag Pages," they are being fed directly to Google via your sitemap. The only way to combat this is through aggressive use of canonical tags and meta noindex tags in the header.
| Default Shopify Setup | Optimized Shopify Setup |
|---|---|
| Internal Links: Points to duplicate collection URLs. | Internal Links: Points to root product URLs. |
| Tag Pages: Indexed (leads to bloat). | Tag Pages: NoIndexed (saves crawl budget). |
Blog URL: Forced /blogs/news/ structure. |
Blog URL: Cannot change (Use subfolders wisely). |
| SEO Result: Diluted Authority. | SEO Result: Consolidated Power. |
💡 Action Plan for Store Owners
- Check your URLs. Go to a collection page and click a product. Does the URL contain `/collections/`? If yes, you need the fix above.
- Audit your Tags. Do a `site:yourstore.com` search in Google. Do you see hundreds of junk pages indexed?
- Hire an Expert. Liquid code is sensitive. If you aren't comfortable editing code, hire a Shopify SEO developer.
- Use Canonical Tags. Ensure your theme has self-referencing canonical tags set up correctly.
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