Can we exclude /pages/ from URLs in Dawn theme?

[CollagenQueen]

Is it possible to organise Shopify websites so that /pages/ does not appear in urls? We're using Dawn theme. 

url: www.collagenstickz.com

[claricelin]

Unfortunately, not. Many people have been asking for this for ages but to date, /pages/ is still here to stay.

What you can do for SEO instead - focus on naming the rest of the URL based on the title/content of the page as closely as possible.

[Ablestar_Sophie · Accepted solution]

Unfortunately, it is not possible to remove this prefix from the URLs of your store pages, as it is a fixed setting in Shopify.

If you want the URL to look nicer when you link to it you can create redirects though, for example redirecting https://collagenstickz.com/faq to https://collagenstickz.com/pages/faq, this can be done through the use of Shopify's built-in redirect feature or by using a third-party app.

Best regards,
Sophie

[CollagenQueen]

That's disappointing to hear. Google does not like repetitious or superfluous identifiers in urls and is most likely penalising ALL shopify stores for having /pages/ in their urls.

SHOPIFY: get with the program!

[Gabe]

Hey @CollagenQueen 

That's not 100% correct. There is no concrete evidence or official statement from Google indicating that it penalizes Shopify stores simply for having certain slugs and subdirectories like /pages/ or /collections/ in their URLs. Google’s algorithms are sophisticated enough today and focus more on the overall quality, relevance, and UX of a website rather than penalizing specific URL structures. Google’s crawlers are designed to understand URL structures, like the Shopify URLs. The use of /pages/ or /collections/ is a common practice across many e-commerce sites and helps to organize content in a logical and user-friendly manner. Google's ranking algorithms are more interested in how well the content is structured, the relevance to the search queries, and the user engagement metrics, rather than penalizing standard URL paths, for example, like relevance to the user's search intent, page loading speed, mobile-friendliness, and overall UX. As long as the content in the store, the meta-descriptions and titles etc. are valuable and meaningful, the shop will be optimized for SEO, while helping to maintain a positive UX, and therefore the presence of slugs like /pages/ or /collections/ in URLs is unlikely to negatively impact rankings.

Just make sure your URLS are descriptive, use a good SSL and HTTPS, are optimized for mobile, have a good internal linking structure, and avoid issues like duplicate content, and you will be cruising! 😉

[MRamzan]

We can remove /pages from shopify URLs