How (or if) to apply re canonical tags to Shopify?
-
Anyone familiar with Shopify will understand the problems of their directory structure. Every time you add a product to a 'collection' it essentially creates a duplicate. For example...
- https://www.domain.com/products/product-slim-regular-bikini
may also appear as:
- https://www.domain.com/collections/all/products/product-slim-regular-bikini
- https://www.domain.com/collections/new-arrivals/products/product-slim-regular-bikini
- https://www.domain.com/collections/bikinis/products/product-slim-regular-bikini
- etc, etc
It's not uncommon to have up to six duplicates of each product.
So my question is twofold:
- Firstly, should I worry about this from an SEO point of view? I understand the desire to minimise potential duplicate content issues and also in focussing the 'juice' on just one page per product. But I also planned on trying to build the authority of the collection pages. If I request Google not to index the product pages which link off the collections, does this not devalue these collections pages?
- Secondly, I understand the correct way to fix these is using 'rel canonical' tags, but I'm not clear about HOW to actually do this. Shopify support has not been very helpful. They have provided two different instructions, so just added to the confusion (see below).
Shopify instruction #1: Add the following to the theme.liquid file...
<title><br />{{ page_title }}{% if current_tags %} – tagged "{{ current_tags | join: ', ' }}"{% endif %}{% if current_page != 1 %} – Page {{ current_page }}{% endif %}{% unless page_title contains shop.name %} – {{ shop.name }}{% endunless %}<br /></title>
{% if page_description %}{% endif %}
Shopify instruction #2: Add the following to each individual product page...
So, can anyone help clarify:
- The best strategic approach to this inherent SEO issue with Shopify (besides moving to another platform!)? and
- If 'rel canonical' tags is the way to go, exactly where and how to apply them?
Regards,
Murray
-
Howdy,
I assume that in your case it doesn't happen automatically. In this case you'll need to use an IF statements in the head/header file. Basically, it would be this:
IF current page url = url you want THEN display canonical tag with wanted url
Repeat that for all needed url and you are good.
If there are many of those, CASE might be better.
-
Good answer!
I have a question! If I just wanna add one or two canoncial tags on specific page(s), how I can do it on shopify coding?
-
How can I fix this problem with Shopify? Shopify does not seem like it is a problem. One of their solutions is to no index the other pages, but I want all the google juice and google love going to the main page.
Current Setup:
https://wrestlinggear.com/collections/wrestling-shoes rel canonical - https://wrestlinggear.com/collections/wrestling-shoes
https://wrestlinggear.com/collections/wrestling-shoes/accessory rel - https://wrestlinggear.com/collections/wrestling-shoes/accessory
https://wrestlinggear.com/collections/wrestling-shoes/adidas rel canonical - https://wrestlinggear.com/collections/wrestling-shoes/adidas
I want it like this:
https://wrestlinggear.com/collections/wrestling-shoes - rel canonical - https://wrestlinggear.com/collections/wrestling-shoes
https://wrestlinggear.com/collections/wrestling-shoes/accessory - rel canonical - https://wrestlinggear.com/collections/wrestling-shoes
https://wrestlinggear.com/collections/wrestling-shoes/adidas- rel canonical - https://wrestlinggear.com/collections/wrestling-shoes
Of course there are a lot more pages like this that I would like to rel cannoical back to the main collections pages.
-
Use tools like SEO Frog
-
Well, if it automatically doesn't work, then you gotta do it manually, right
-
I don't believe this is the answer. I have several other clients on Shopify who do not have goals for macro conversions, but we are seeing conversion data in GA.
Besides, I was always under the impression that if you have ecommerce enabled, it's better not to use goals for transactions as it might duplicate. Is this not the case?
-
I know how to check whether the code is there. But how do you check whether or not specific pages have been indexed by Google?
As far as I can see Google Search Console only reports on the number of pages indexed, not which pages have been indexed. Is there any way to get an actual list of indexed pages?
I know running a site: query will show up all the results, but I just want a list (eg CSV) of the URLs indexed.
-
Yes, I am. Here is a link with answers to your troubles: https://help.shopify.com/manual/reports-and-analytics/google-analytics/google-analytics-goals-and-funnels
-
Yes, it is supposed to. Try it, check it - it's pretty easy
-
Are you familiar with Shopify?
I have another issue where GA tracking code is not firing on the Thank_You page. I have double checked GA config with the GA implementation twice! But the problem seems to be with Shopify, since this page sites on their site (checkout.shopify.com) and they seem unable to fix it.
-
Thanks Dmitrii,
So will that one line of code fix the issue for ALL products and ALL collections?
-
Howdy.
Shopify does canonicals automatically. Basically all the collections products urls will have canonical to product url. Like this: https://www.domain.com/collections/all/products/product-slim-regular-bikini will have canonical to
https://www.domain.com/products/product-slim-regular-bikiniIf it doesn't happen for you automatically, simply insert this:
In the main theme.liquid file in the head section.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Should I add no-follow tags to my widget links?
Matt Cutts recommended in a video in 2013 to add rel="nofollow" on widget links that link back to your website. Some background of my company: We're a software company for website chat. There's a 'powered by' link in our widgets that links back from our users' websites to our website. Currently these are all follow links. I checked out the links of our competitors, and it seems none of them have no follow on their widget backlinks. This, together with the fact that the video is quite old and information on this issue rather scarce, makes me doubt whether we should change our widget backlinks to no follow. Does anyone have thoughts on this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Maximuxxx0 -
Canonical code set up correctly?
Please let me know if this makes sense. I have a very limited knowledge of technical SEO but I am almost positive that my web developer did something wrong. I have a wordpress blog and he did add canonical code to some of the pages. However he directs the site to the same URL! Does this mean that the canonical code is setup incorrectly and actually harming my SEO performance. Also if I have one webpage with just the first paragraph of a blog post I wrote and a completely seperate page for the blog post itself, could this be considered duplicate content? Thanks!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DR700950 -
Using Canonical Attribute
Hi All, I am hoping you can help me? We have recently migrated to the Umbraco CMS and now have duplicate versions of the same page showing on different URLs. My understanding is that this is one of the major reasons for the rel=canonical tag. So am I right in saying that if I add the following to the page that I want to rank then this will work? I'm just a little worried as I have read some horror stories of people implementing this attribute incorrectly and getting into trouble. Thank you in advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Creditsafe0 -
Defining Canonical First and Later No Indexing
We found some repetitive pages on site which has mostly sort or filter parameters, tried lot to remove them but nothing much improvement Is it correct way that:- a) We are creating new pages altogther of that section and putting up rel canonical tag from old ones to new ones b) Now, after canonical declared, we will noindex the old pages Is it a correct way to let new pages supercede the old pages with new pages.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Modi0 -
Canonical Tag for Pages with Less Content
I am considering using a cross-domain canonical tag for pages that are very similar but one has less content than the other. The domains are geo specific, so for example. www.page.com - with content xxx, yyy, zzz, and www.page.fr with content xxx is this a problem because while there is clearly duplicate content here the pages are not actually significantly similar since there is so much less content on one page than the other?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | theLotter0 -
Do links script tags pass value?
Hi I was wondering if there was any consensus over whether links in script tags pass any value - such as the link code below? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | James770 -
Cross Sub Domain Canonical Links
I currently have 1 website, but am planning on dividing it into sub-domains specific to geographic locations such as xxx.co.uk, xxx.it, xxx.es, etc... We are working on creating original content for the sub-sites, however upon launch many will be duplicate pages. Is there a problem with cross sub-domain canonical links? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | theLotter0 -
Is there a FastTrack to re-index? a site?
Hello... i just started with a new client this week, before working with us his last domain-hosting-webdev provider cancel their account and took off the entire site and left them with a nice "under construction page" (NOT) and added the noindex, nofollow tags. 4 weeks after that, we come into the scene and of course our client it's expecting us to reinsert at least for branded terms the site, and he wants it done on a matter of hours... I tried my best to explain that it's not possible and we are doing everything we can't.... now i ask you guys.. I already created de GWT account, Created a well structured Sitemap and submitted it to google and bing, did the onpage optimizitation at least the basics... there is a way to speed up the process? kind of like "hey you! google bot, forget about the noindex nonsense a come crawl again?" Any help would be great Daniel
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | daniel.alvarez0