Migrating from WooCommerce to Shopify, the main concern is product and collection URL structure and SEO best practices.
Collections: Using short, descriptive, hyphenated paths like /collections/outdoor-wall-lights is fine.
Products: The canonical (primary) URL is /products/product-handle. When a product is reached via a collection, Shopify shows a “collection-aware” path (/collections/collection/products/product), but this is contextual and not a separate indexed page.
SEO implications: Google should index the canonical /products URL. A canonical tag (HTML hint indicating the preferred URL) is important to prevent duplicate-content signals; verify your theme includes it (check code for “canonical”).
Best practices for product URLs:
Keep them short, clean, readable, and hyphenated; include the main keyword or model name only.
Avoid filler words (“buy,” “best”), dates, special characters, and underscores.
Aim for roughly 50–70 characters.
Migration actions: Set up 301 redirects (permanent redirects) from old WooCommerce URLs to new Shopify URLs to preserve SEO equity and maintain consistent naming between titles and handles.
Status: Questions largely answered; no confirmed method to force only /products in all contexts was provided.
Summarized with AI on December 11.
AI used: gpt-5.
I need some advice please we are new to shopify and just in the process of migrating our store from Woocommerce to Shopify but i have a question about URL structure and best practice. I have read a few things about this but seem to get conflicting answers
We have carried out so test migrations of a few products and categories but the store is not live yet.
The collections URL that will show on shopify is collections/outdoor-wall-lights i presume this is ok?
When i look at an individual product on the test store i get the URL /collections/outdoor-wall-lights/products/lwa214-9-watt-led-black-outdoor-wall-light/ - i have read some things that the products should just have this URL /products/lwa214-9-watt-led-black-outdoor-wall-light/ and not the full collection URL in front of it. What is best practice for the product page URL’s. Hopefully this makes sense.
Also URL structure for products what is best practice for this as i have the opprotunity now to create new SEO friendly URL’s with the migration.
So questions are:
How long should the URL be?
and what information should i include in the URL should i use the focus keyphrase for the page in the URL ?
For products, Shopify’s default structure is /products/product-name. If you click a product through a collection, Shopify will temporarily show the full path /collections/…/products/…, but if you visit the product directly, it will only show /products/… that’s expected behaviour, not an SEO issue.
For best practice, keep product URLs short, clean, and descriptive. Aim for the main keyword. Avoid unnecessary words, dates, or very long model names unless they’re important for search.
That is interesting so does that not then generate 2 URL’s for the product if it is showing the full collection URL and shortended product URL for a product page?
So what sort of charachater length would you advise for a product URL?
Good question, but don’t worry, Shopify doesn’t create two separate URLs. The collection version is just a contextual path when you click through a collection. The “real” canonical URL is always /products/your-product, so Google only indexes that one.
For product URL length, there’s no strict rule, but keeping it short, clear, and under 50–60 characters is a good guideline. Focus on the key phrase or model name, and avoid filler words. Clean and readable words always works best.
For Shopify, the best practice is to keep collection URLs like /collections/outdoor-wall-lights — short, descriptive, and hyphenated — and product URLs as /products/product-handle rather than including the collection in the path, because the simpler URL is cleaner, easier to share, and better for SEO. Keep URLs under 60–70 characters, include your main keyword or focus phrase, avoid special characters, underscores, and unnecessary words like “buy” or “best,” and make them easy to read. When migrating from WooCommerce, set up 301 redirects from old URLs to new ones to preserve SEO and maintain consistent naming between product titles and URLs for clarity.
Hope this helps, and good luck with your Shopify store!
Shopify operates Collection Aware URL which means that the canonical URL is /products/product but when you navigate from a specific Collection it will read /collections/collection/product.
So, let’s say Product1 is in Collection1 and Collection2.
When you navigate from Collection1, it will be:
/Collections/Collection1/Product1
When you navigate from Collection2, it will be:
/Collections/Collection2/Product1
But the canonical URL is /Products/Product1
This confuses Google because Google views a URL as a page, so it could be looking at several pages for the same product. This is why a canonical tag is important. It tells Google that no matter how many different collections it’s in the canonical URL is what it should read. I’m not sure if its Shopify standard to include canonical tags or if it’s a theme feature, but it will be worth checking out. Edit code>search canonical