I ran a details SEO extension and found out that all of my products (under a collection) have canonical tags that do not match the URL.
canonical: products-product name
URL: collections-collection name-products-product name
I asked the theme developer and they basically said that this is not an issue. “All Shopify themes worked like this for over 10 years, and all product pages have a ‘canonical’ tag to the basic product URL, which should prevent Google from indexing any product links with ‘/collections/name’ in. Thousands of stores have used our themes in this way and have not reported this issue”
Is that true? Do those URLs and canonicals have to be the same, these problems were found for all of my products. Should they be the same?
The canonical tag is an important element in SEO that helps search engines determine the preferred version of a webpage when there are multiple URLs with similar content. In general, it is recommended for the canonical URL and the URL in the canonical tag to match for optimal SEO practices. However, there can be exceptions to this rule, and it depends on your specific website setup and requirements.
It is true that the default behaviour of Shopify themes includes using a canonical tag that points to the basic product URL, without including the collection name. This approach aims to prevent Google from indexing duplicate content across different collection pages.
While this implementation might work for many stores without causing issues, it’s important to consider a few factors:
Duplicate content: If you have the same product listed in multiple collections, having a canonical tag that points to the basic product URL may lead to duplicate content issues. This can potentially affect your search engine rankings.
User experience: If you want to provide a consistent and clear browsing experience for your visitors, having the canonical URL match the actual URL they are on can be beneficial. It helps users understand the context of the page they are viewing.
If you are concerned about the potential impact on your SEO and user experience, you may want to consider modifying the canonical tags to include the collection name in the URL. This can be done by using SEO apps available on the Shopify App Store.
It’s great that you’re digging into your store’s SEO setup, especially around canonical tags. They play a big role in how search engines understand your site!
To answer your question, Shopify’s behavior with canonical tags is actually intentional and pretty standard. When you see that the canonical tag for a product points to something like products/product-name, while the actual URL is something like collections/collection-name/products/product-name, this is completely normal.
Why is it done this way?
Canonical tags help Google and other search engines know which URL is the “main” version of a page, especially when there are multiple ways to reach the same content. In your case, you might have several different URLs that lead to the same product through different collections. Without the canonical tag, Google might treat these different URLs as separate pages, which could cause duplicate content issues and hurt your SEO.
To answer your next question, “Do the URLs and canonicals have to match?”
No, they don’t have to match exactly. The canonical tag is there to guide search engines to the primary URL for the product. This is actually considered best practice in SEO. Shopify has been doing this for years, and thousands of stores have this exact setup without any issues.
So, is this an issue for your SEO?
Not at all!
Having the canonical tag point to the main product URL (instead of the collection URL) is exactly what should be happening. It ensures search engines don’t get confused by the multiple URLs pointing to the same product.
All my main pages and product pages are indexed correctly (156). All the pages that are not indexed (2.69K) are product variations (and other pages that shouldn’t be indexed). As long as the main URL of a product page is indexed, like https://jophermans.com/products/scheveningen-mood, then all is fine?
