Shopify SEO Mistakes You Don’t Realize You’re Making

Shopify is a user-friendly ecommerce platform, but it can still cause hidden SEO issues if you aren’t careful. As an SEO specialist with experience on countless Shopify projects, I’ll highlight some common oversights—like duplicate content and messy URLs—and show you how to fix them for better search visibility.

Duplicate Content Issues

Duplicate product pages: Shopify often creates multiple URLs for the same product (e.g., “/collections/…” vs. “/products/…”). This can dilute your ranking signals. Resolve it by linking internally to the canonical product URL (ideally “/products/…”) and using the built-in canonical tag feature.

Pagination or tag pages: Some collections generate multiple paginated URLs or create extra URLs through filtering. If these variations have the same or very similar content, consider no-indexing them or blocking them in your robots.txt, depending on your strategy.

Missed Opportunities in Optimizing URLs

• Long or unclear handles: Shopify auto-generates handles from titles. Simplify them to reflect main keywords in a concise way (e.g., “/products/blue-running-shoes”).
• For collections: Use descriptive, keyword-rich handles, such as “/collections/mens-sneakers.” Avoid redundancies or random strings.

The Dangers of Improper Canonicalization and Over-Indexing

If Google indexes the wrong version of a product page, your preferred URL may lose rank. Keep your internal links consistent, pointing to the correct canonical URL. Also, disallow or no-index low-value pages so Google spends crawl time on the right content. By tidying up your store’s URL structures and canonical tags, you ensure stronger, more focused ranking signals.

Takeaways: Shopify can unintentionally create duplicate URLs and poorly optimized handles. Combat this by linking consistently to canonical product URLs, using descriptive handles, blocking unneeded duplicates, and maintaining good site hygiene. These straightforward steps often result in immediate SEO improvements.