E-Commerce Video Series
As e-commerce booms across the globe, we could all use some tips and tricks to ensure a better user experience, a stronger ranking in SERPS, and a deeper understanding into the role SEO plays in the overall e-commerce landscape. NetElixir’s SEO Team is here to help you improve your e-commerce platform and retail marketing strategy with a new video series on SEO hacks.
How to Fix Duplicate Content in Shopify
Shopify is one of the most popular e-commerce platforms out there. While Shopify is easy to use and allows for a lot of customized content to make your e-commerce store stand out, it is not entirely without some small issues that can negatively impact your SEO and SERP rankings. But don’t worry; NetElixir’s SEO experts are always here to help!
If you use Shopify as your e-commerce platform, you may run into the issue of duplicate content with multiple URLs appearing for the same product page. Learn a quick trick for fixing canonical tags in the backend of Shopify’s admin to always point users, crawlers, and rank authority to the correct product URL by watching this simple instructional video. Shopify’s default fix is to add a canonical tag directly from the product collection slug variation to the actual product page.
Some development glitches give you multiple URLs for the same product page, and every single product is categorized as a duplicate page. That is an issue, since the crawlers are distributed across these pages equally in an effort to index them. Or Google will use only one URL to rank, and how will you make sure that you link only to the URL that Google uses?
Shopify adds a canonical tag from the collected slug variation of the product to the actual product page. But is this effective? Is adding canonical to the actual product page the best solution?
The answer is no. Since canonical tags are only hints and not directives, Google often ignores the canonical tag. So, is there a better solution?
Yes. NetElixir is going to teach you a simple hack that solves this problem.
Please seek the help of a developer to implement this. Or, like any other coding change, test in a staging environment before you make it live.
You can fix this common issue by simply modifying a single line of code, and all you have to do is adjust your Shopify theme files.
Steps to fix duplicate content in Shopify:
- First, go to the ‘Themes’ listed under the ‘Online Store.’
- Then, you should pick ‘Actions’ and proceed to ‘Edit Code.’ After this, locate the ‘Snippets’ folder and pick ‘product-grid-item.liquid’ from the list.
- Next, you need to adjust the code.
- Change this: <a href=”{{ product.url | within: current_collection }}” class=”product-grid-item”>
- To this: <a href=”{{ product.url }}” class=”product-grid-item”>
This way, all the product pages will link to the right URL path (the one that can be ranked by search engines).
And that’s it! Now all your internal links and image links will point directly to the actual product page.
SEO Hacks from the Archives
- Mobile-Only Index & Active Authorship
- App Store Optimization Tips
- Solving for X: Maximize Your Google My Business Impact With Photos
- The Changing Landscape of SEO
Stay tuned for more SEO Hacks to optimize the reach of your e-commerce business. Like and subscribe to NetElixir’s YouTube channel to catch more helpful SEO Hacks for your e-commerce site in the future.
