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Was curious what is the repercussions of changing product titles? Does it lead to broken links then and ruins SEO? Wanted to double check before editing anything and the best way to go about it. Thank you.
Hi @mZee,
Your SEO can be affected in positive or negative terms by any changes you make to your site's content, be it your page titles, keywords, or product descriptions. Ultimately, you want to make sure that all of your site's content is strong in terms of SEO, and that might mean making changes across your site. You do not want to be regularly changing your page titles, but it is worth taking the time to try to optimize them from an SEO perspective, and then leaving them be once you are confident in what you have written.
Changing a product title will not automatically break links, as editing the URL for the product link is handled separately within Shopify. When you're editing a product, you'll see the option to edit the URL and meta description at the bottom of the page:
If you press the "Edit website SEO" button, you'll be able to edit the page title, meta description, and URL for the product. Changing the product's URL will then allow you to set up a redirect so that this change doesn't negatively effect your SEO.
I would recommend reading our Help Center guides on improving SEO, as well as taking our free course on SEO available on Shopify Learn. These resources can help you better understand the fundamentals of strong SEO and how you can apply these principles to your Shopify store.
Victor | Social Care @ Shopify
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@Victor Thank you for the response, so its okay for me to edit the title of some products (instead of deleting them and readding the) and then once I am set on the titles to focus on SEO. Again was just afraid of broken links and stuff so I do not need to reroute anything after changing titles?
Hi @mZee,
Yes, you can change your product titles if you feel this is necessary. As mentioned in my last post, I would recommend doing some research on how to format your titles and taking some time to decide how you want them to be titled, so when you do change them you likely won't need to make any adjustments for some time. Changing your product titles will not change the URL for the product unless you choose to edit that too.
Victor | Social Care @ Shopify
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@Victor makes sense! But should I also change the URL to make everything consistent? I would assume it’s a good idea to do that as well so it matches the new title?
Hi @mZee,
Yes, that'd definitely be worth considering. You'll want to judge that your URLs are consistent with your product titles, so if you are changing your titles in a significant way then you'll want to make sure that your URLs relate to the product title and that they make sense together.
As mentioned in my prior post, you can set up a redirect when you edit your product's SEO preview so that your old URL automatically redirects to your new one if somebody attempts to visit the page using the outdated link.
Victor | Social Care @ Shopify
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Hello Victor,
I have been following this thread as i am in the same position of changing Page Title & URL Handle at the same time for SEO improvement.
I have a couple questions and would like to make sure i'm headed in the right direction
(1) The relationship between Sitemap & URL Handle every time i update the URL Handle should the Google Sitemap be updated?
(2) Are re-direct apps necessary anywhere along these lines after Page Title & URL Handle are updated?
Thank You
Hi @Benny56,
Sitemap changes are automatically registered, but if you have made changes for SEO purposes then I would recommend submitting your sitemap to Google so that these changes are reflected in their search engine results. Doing this will ensure that your site is crawled by Google faster and that the changes you've made appear when your site is displayed in search results.
Redirect apps are not strictly necessary but can be useful if you've a significant amount of URL directs to set up. I'd suggest checking out some of the apps on offer to decide if you think this is needed.
In terms of your domain, are you removing the one you currently have or just adding a new one to replace it as your primary domain?
Victor | Social Care @ Shopify
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Hi @mZee ,
Changing product titles in Shopify can affect SEO, but it doesn't automatically lead to broken links, as Shopify uses product IDs to generate URLs, not titles. However, if you've customized URLs to include product titles, then changes could affect the URL structure and potentially SEO. It's important to update any internal links manually and consider using redirects if the URL changes significantly to maintain SEO performance.
SEOPro can assist in managing and optimizing your product titles for SEO without negatively impacting your site's structure. Our app can help identify SEO issues, including checking if your product titles are optimized for keywords, and suggest improvements. Additionally, SEOPro bulk optimization tools make it easier to update titles and other SEO elements across your store efficiently, helping to maintain or even improve your search engine ranking.
Full disclosure: We are the developer of this app.
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