Shopify themes, liquid, logos, and UX
Hi,
Is there any way to remove /Pages from URL.Currently, my page URL is ".com/pages/about-us" i want to change to ".com/about-us".I tried URL redirect method Navigation settings and edit the code from theme.liquid to like this,
{% if template contains 'collection' and current_tags %}
<meta name="robots" content="noindex" />
<link rel="canonical" href="{{ shop.url }}{{ collection.url }}" />
{% else %}
<link rel="canonical" href="{{ canonical_url }}" />
{% endif %}
Still it did not work. Please help me.Thank you.
Hi, there!
Lisa here from the Social Care Team. The navigation redirect will not help with what you're trying to achieve by removing 'pages' in your URL. Please try the instructions in this document here to update the path to the target URL.
When you provide a full URL as the value of the path property, it will be saved as an absolute path without the domain. For example, "path": "http://www.johns-apparel.com/springwear" will be saved as "path": "springwear".
You then need to create a manual redirect by allocating this path to its target:
POST /admin/redirects.json
{
"redirect": {
"path": "/about-us",
"target": "/pages/about-us"
}
}
Hopefully, this will help mask the 'pages' and allow you to just show .com/about-us when sharing your page.
Best of luck!
- Lisa
Lisa | Social Care @ Shopify
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Hi Lisa,
Is there a way to add/edit the manual redirect to a current theme redirect.json file?
Usually I am in the code backend of our theme and make additions/mods there.
I would be looking to add:
{
"redirect": {
"path": "/returns",
"target": "/pages/returns"
}
}
Thanks!
Hey, Mike!
Lizzy here, I’m a Shopify support Guru.
The redirects that Lisa has explained here work as a back end alternative to creating a URL redirect under Admin -> Online Store -> Navigation -> URL Redirect. The steps for the latter are explained in this guide here.
How these redirects work is that if the URL leading to storename.com/returns was broken, you could use these steps to set up a redirect that sent storename.com/returns to storename.com/pages/returns, where the page is currently hosted. This is useful if you're migrating to Shopify from another platform and need to use redirects to make sure any old links to your site still direct to the correct information. While you can set up redirects without "pages" in the path, you cannot alter the actual URL of the page to remove "pages."
I hope this helps with what you're looking to set up! Please feel free to let me know if you have any further questions about this.
Thank you,
Lizzy
Lizzy | Social Care @ Shopify
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Hi Lizzy,
We are trying to do the same with our Shopify sites. Our SEO gurus are not happy /pages, /blog, /collections, /products etc has to be within the URL. I can't say we're too happy either (as I can see is a theme across multiple forums).
Are you saying there is no way at all to remove this is you are hosted with Shopify?
Are you saying there is no way at all to remove this is you are hosted with Shopify?
Correct. The resource makers like /pages, /collections, etc can't be removed.
Hi Jason,
Thank you for your reply.
On the back of a lot of research on this, we have found this article. Can you confirm this could work and shouldn't harm the Shopify setup?
https://paulnrogers.com/how-to-change-the-product-url-structure-in-shopify/
Cheers
Did you try it and see if it works?
I just did but it didn't work 😞
To me it seems crazy that this has been an issue/request from Shopify users for quite some time now (I've noticed in multiple other Shopify forum chats), but there seems to be no word on ever changing it. Disappointing to say the least.
Don't get me wrong - I love Shopify, but there are a fair few SEO related issues that can't be changed, which is ultimately frustrating when trying to up search rankings.
I also find it crazy that this is an unfixable issue. I was on with chat support asking about this issue and found this thread while I was awaiting a reply. I just started my store on Shopify so I'm definitely going to cancel and request a refund. It is unquestionably sub-optimal to have a longer URL like the ones forced upon Shopify stores - if they won't prioritize my company's success, I'm not staying on the platform.
Hi @MarkZanghi.
At this time, there is not a way to remove the /pages, /products, etc. sections of your URL. This section of the URL path is used to access the different areas of your store.
I understand that this is a feature that would be useful to many of you, which is why I have made sure to pass along a feature request to our development team. I also wanted to thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts and feedback on this with us, so that we can keep working on ways to improve Shopify!
Thank you again,
Lizzy.
Lizzy | Social Care @ Shopify
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Hi Shopify Team,
I'm an SEO and just wanted to help a friend optimising his shop, when I stumbled across this issue.
Not giving customers a solution out of this suboptimal (to say the least) url structure is a clear flaw in your product. Please do yourselves + customers a favour and fix it soon.
Sincerely,
Felix
@Lizzy You mentioned you have passed this on to your devs in June. Can you give us an update regarding the issue, please?
Seems as if no one gives a crap... Seriously though it makes everyone's shop almost seem sketchy due to other Shopify users rep... Why is this such a big issue to fix? Why was this implemented in the first place? We pay for a service, therefore we deserve to have our requests acted upon! We haven't even got an explanation to say the least...
Hello everyone! I just switched from shopware to shopify. Are there any news for better SEO urls? I worry that there are no news for us since the post of b2 is just a few days old.. nevertheless this is a another comment to hopefully hit shopifys customer service radar..
I'm no SEO expert, can someone elaborate on why this is such a big issue for you concerning SEO? I personally think it adds readability to the url, but I'd like to know why the concern.
I'll try to put it simple:
A. The shorter and
B. the more clear a url,
C. while still revealing the hierachy (correct URL path) of the given page
D. and while using the main keyword,
the more likely it will rank and get a better CTR.
Hello.
I wanted to post here to let you all know that I have shared this thread and feedback with our team. While I don't have a timeline or guarantee that this will be adjusted, I wanted to thank you for taking the time to share all of these thoughts with us.
Without your input, we wouldn't be able to continue improving Shopify as a platform.
I completely understand how the ability to adjust URL structures is in important feature to our business owners and will make sure to relay that importance to our developers. In the meantime, I wanted to share this page which highlights some of the built in features we have to help with SEO already within the admin.
I also wanted to share this link to the Shopify Changelog. Here, you can keep up to date with all of the updates we make to the platform as they roll out.
Thank you again for contributing to the community.
Lizzy.
Lizzy | Social Care @ Shopify
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Hi @Lizzy ,
what a great an fun example...
Shopify itself is not using its own "URL ruleset":
I would love to have the same URL structure, just like shopify mothership www.shopify.ca/online and not www.shopify.ca/pages/online
instead the only option i get is:
Please help us get traction on this functional change!
How many customers / requests does it take to get attention?
Hello @Lizzy ,
Please let me explain why is so important for us.
Google ranks pages based on the keywords used but also on the type of page / link optimized (homepage, category, subcategory, product).
A page will have a higher indexing force on a keyword depending on the type of page that word is targeted to, as follows:
1-Homepage - the most powerful
2-Page of category - second most poweful
3-Page of subcategory - 3 rd most powerful
4-Product page - 4th most powerful
By example: If i target the keyword "business suits" in category page (link,meta title and meta description), google will rank me better than other site who target same keyword in subcategory page (link, meta title, meta description).
My link in google search will look like www.myshop.com/business-suits and the other shop link will look like www.othershop.com/suits/business-suits.
In the real life, on Shopify, if i want to target same keyword in category page, my link will look like www.myshop.com/collections/business-suits , and that means you've just downgraded me into a subcategory page and the other shop can rank better than me and outperform me in the position of google search.
All other SEO techniques that are permited by Shopify (meta titles, Meta description) will not work without the link optimization and the site will remain mediocre.
I hope I made myself clear and this issue will be soon gone. If not, i think that a lot of sites will leave Shopify.
I personally intend to migrate to Shopify from a small local platform in Romania (that by the way, offers the link optimization posibility), but after finding out that the link cannot be SEO optimized, I am not so sure about migration, even though I worked almost 20 days for the shop setup on the Shopify.
Thank you very much!
Can't agree more!
and to add my point again: Shopify themselves don't use their own /pages structure... so why are we forced to?
@Lizzy and @Jason I appreciate everything you all do and you have a ton of wisdom in the posts in this community.
We're all hoping this request will be heard and implemented. Would you please re-approach your team about making this update and actually get confirmation that it will be updated and a timeframe? Thank you very very very much!
Yessss!!
Wait, so you can't have something like :/skin-conditions/eczema/ but have to have /pages/eczema/
I was able to craft URL's back in 2000 on an ecommerce solution. This is very basic.
This issue is also very important to me and it's messing up with my SEO big time!
Why isn't there an option for this out yet?
Can anyone at Shopify please reply to us?
Thank you
I would like to add myself to the list of people that are asking for a fix to this real SEO issue.
@Lizzy are you able to provide an update with regards to this issue?
As mentioned in my previous post above, can you please get your team leader or an experienced expert to provide a reason why this feature has not been looked at and implemented?
i appreciate all of your help so far on this thread but as you are not the decision maker for something like this I want this to be looked into further.
Shopify customers deserve an answer.
Hi,
Just want to join this conversation. 🙂
Our urls are way to long and they just don't look any good. I'm not even starting on SEO side of things and sharing the links around... It would be great to have an option to get rid of /collections / pages / products ect.
Looking forward into progress on the matter.
Warm wishes
Theriion
I'm a web developer wishing to set up a store with Shopify. I'm gobsmacked this is even a thing. I want my url to be www.xx.com/electronics/tvs for example, not www.xxx.com/collections/electronics and www.xxx.com/collections/tv
This really makes little sense from a SEO perspective. Can Shopify surface a url rewriting config page so I can have more control over the site structure.
Timb -- couldn't agree more. And thanks for hopefully getting this back on Shopify's radar. It's something I've been puzzled by for quite a while.
I assume there's a logical reason for this since there's no way Shopify just overlooked it. A solution to this should be figured out ASAP. I encourage the many others I'm sure are are here for the same issue to comment and get this flagged to the top!
Same issue here, Please fix asap
You would think this issue countless merchants dislike would've been fixed by now. This issue was brought to attention way before this post. It's crazy that this was even implemented at all... Whoever had that idea must have some control issues? IDK... I just think there should atleast be SOME sort of option to change it. Give us a option! IDC if it gives me a headache but give me a way! Lol
I have this issue from way Long and none of the so-called "Shopify Guru's" able to help... 1st of all, please stop calling Guru when you clearly not able to help MANY with just 1 URL related issue.
I have been frustrated so much that I have redirected about 50+ customers to wordpress.
Though I love Shopify, however this issue making MANY of us going nuts.
can't agree more.... get us this feature!
Is there a solution in Shopify +? (Yes, we would pay for it...)
or we go to Magento 2 Cloud 🙂 => i know irony does not work in the great www... hence allow me to explicitly call out IRONY!
Still no solution... SAD
Still no response from Shopify? Looks like they've abandoned us LOL!
On a serious not we all need this fixed cos the URL looks rubbish at this point in time. Looks fake.
Shopify!!!!! Please, please, pretty please ... SORT IT OUT!
This is ridiculous that there isn't a solution yet! I've been asking about it for years with client websites and I almost went to Big Commerce because of it. In fact, Shopify take notice >> Big Commerce is using this issue as a selling point for their platform.
It is absolutely crazy that Shopify still doesn't have that feature. It really cheapens the look of any website that has those breadcrumbs on the URL
David
I see Shopify has updated store search results. Why can't we get the main URL structure fixed? I think every store owner / developer would like this feature and it shouldn't take this long to get it done...
im pretty sure they're just ignoring this thread now lol
Lizzy....are you or anyone else going to reply to the huge amount of people want to know WTF is going on here and if any changes are likely to happen with this set up effecting people SEO hugely.
Don't keep ignoring us. It's just **bleep**ed up, to put it politely!
Please speak to us, or get someone else to give us an update.
Hi everyone,
Nick here from Shopify. I wanted to provide an update on this for you all to follow up on what Lizzy said a while back.
This is a feature request which has been put forward, and we are unable to provide a timeline. It would be great if people could reply in this thread with feedback, but in doing so, explain how exactly this will help your store and business so I can add it to the existing feature request. This gives the development team some more context on why this is important for store owners and could help make it a reality.
Nick | Community Moderator @Shopify
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hello @Nick
i am not sure if this is an attempt to be sarcastic, but every SEO person on this planet, anyone who has worked with google and the likes before would never doubt nor second this request.
it is a sad-joke that Shopify does not take this serious! And the worst: they don't use the logic and structure themselves... i guess they have at least 1 capable seo person inhouse...
Bottom line: just give us the freedom and flexibility over our URL structure, and we are all friends again.
THanks.
Hi @Nick First of all thanks for the response. At the same time, it is completely unfair to come now and say for what reason you want? and can't tell the timeline when this will be done? i.e it's been a Year, So do you think it is fair response from you saying that being from Shopify Team.
Yes, As the People who don't want to see /collections /products , Like told by @ChristianM , it helps in terms of Organic Search when we have a very well-structured website where these /collections and /products are unnecessary things which damage and impact the store or else business in Organic Traffic. Wordpress has several options to remove any such type of things with custom coding or else with Plugins. Like that, In Shopify, For the users who want to remove those /collections and /products from url, provide them an option where they can edit the code or other which is going to remove them completely.
It will be really bad if you can't say timeline as it is very simple thing and don't prolong, As the feedback was given Respond within 1 day by sending the same to Technical team and ask on how much time it take (like already told, Your Team needs to give ability to remove /collections and /products customly by editing coding or some other thing which don't take more than a day or two to do that). I hope you @Nick ask the Team and respond back with teamline as it's already an year and no longer Good to delay.
To say you further @Nick , Defaultly for Shopify Sites if users visited from collections pages and then to specific product, the url looks like Sitename.com/collections/collection-name/products/product-name . Inorder to avoid this from collections to look like sitename.com/products/product-name even if gone from Collections page, it can be edited like told here https://paulnrogers.com/how-to-change-the-product-url-structure-in-shopify/
So in sameway, Provide opportunity to remove completely /collections and /products like having ability to look like sitename.com/product-name and sitename.com/collection-name either if users go to Products directly or else gone via collections. The option is clear just by providing the removal option or else hiding option with a coding (like told it was happening with above case).
Really I was about to start with Shopify, This issue is preventing to go with you, Hence kindly request you to interact with Technical team and come back in a day as this is not some Heavy task work (when already above case was solved)
@Nick The answers to your context request "explain how exactly this will help your store and business " are already in this thread. Really, thanks for the reply but just read the thread for answers and perhaps people wouldn't react poorly to the response.
Simply, we want control over the URL structure. We want to create our own taxonomy. We want to not be buried in sub pages we have no control of, like /pages or /products simply does not work for everyone. When advertising the preference is always to link to yoursite.com/maypromo rather than yoursite.com/pages/maypromo. Would you ever want to verbally give somebody that path and expect them to go to it? We are forced to use redirects for attempting to accomplish this but redirects are NOT GOOD FOR SEO.
All of those reasons have already been mentioned in this thread so it's a bit of a concern that there's a request for more info here on context. The context is 6 pages deep. (edit: 7 pages now)
Hi @Nick , here's Michael
For a hundred times we are mentioning that it's a SEO concern, it's sad to say that we all would like to move to another platform because we can't get the traffic we want with our website due to bad URL structure. Why is that important to us? Because Google is reading our Sitemap or (Breadcrumb of a current location of a user's query) and what's written onto. This is defining more information for google to grab relevant content for a user's query. A bad URL structured including /page or /collections is just a rookie implementation. It looks like we're building a website on VTech Kid's PC , user friendly platform for "beginners".
Stop throwing us some basic information about "how to optimize SEO on shopify" like we are newbies. If we're here, it's to convince you to re-write your URL structure as we all demand it to optimize something we all care about. So how you Shopify Gurus cannot get it? We need real professional support and our request is one of the most important right now!
Sad to say, some people are on their start-up or heading to step up their game with this ecommerce platform but hit a plateau because of this issue so we can't develop a real long-term profitable ecommerce.
Thank you for your time. I know there is a bunch of other requests and questions from other members but as an SEO Expert, i took time to reply because i can see the potential of a huge upgrade for your platform vs. your competitors.
Regards.
@Nick the most obvious case would be for people switching to Shopify from another platform...don't you want to make it as easy as possible?
I'm switching from wordpress to shopify and i have tons of links all across the web that I have already shared and blogged ect...
now all of the links are broken because I can't change the URL structure.
the only way with shopify would be to create a redirect for each url (pain in the ass) -- then you still don't know if you missed a link due to human error and the fact that i have a lot of pages and products.
besides wanting to make the transfer easy for new customers - isn't it pretty obvious for SEO purposes and also just having a shorter cleaner link 🤷♂️ shopify seems to be the only platform that doesn't allow you control over the structure - yet it's one of the most expensive.
Did you respond just to make us think you guys were working on it?? I'm starting to see why Shopify stock is falling.
@Nick Thank you for the reply.
Excuse the tone please.
I guess it won't help to get this feature done soon, simply by reacting aggressively. Honestly, reasons for this request have been stated several times in this thread. Most likely in every basic on-page SEO guide as well. @Lizzy has claimed she put the request forward twice over the space of several months. But with zero updates or replies, it just sounds like an excuse to calm us down. That's why people are getting upset.
Now why do we and YOU need this feature:
1. It helps SEO, basically every other good shop system offers this feature. Details in this thread.
2. Makes migrating from another platform much easier. Details in this thread.
So not only does it help your customers, it also makes it easier to acquire new ones.
Is that reason enough to make this feature request a fast lane ticket and get it done ASAP?
Thank you for your understanding and please, please keep us updated.
Have a nice day,
Felix
I appreciate everyone's desire for the feature however please avoid speculation and personal attacks. Per our updates, in this thread, we have been capturing your feedback and adding it to our feature request system.
My last reply was enforcing that we cannot provide a timeline, and at this time the only thing we can do is collect your feedback since everyone was looking for an update in this topic.
I understand this thread has lots of feedback and that has been captured already but since this feature has not come to fruition yet the more context we can provide to our development helps them understand every aspect of this request. Again we cannot provide any sort of timeline and in the event, we do have more information we will update.
To those that have been why this is important, we appreciate your feedback.
Thanks, Nick
Nick | Community Moderator @Shopify
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@Nick
If you want a compelling business case use Site Migrations. New sites aren't as bad although migrations are extremely painful without control over the taxonomy. Yeah, ok some of the taxonomy can be reserved, like for Shopify's core being /cart /checkout etc. But open the rest up and those who are on other platforms can now retain their url structure when migrating. Now a bunch of new customers wouldn't have that gating factor.
Somebody mentioned .htaccess, they don't use Apache, it's NGINX so it would be an NGINX directive file if they went that far as to provide this feature via direct file edits. Honestly, I don't care if it's direct access to the NGINX directives or a UI that takes care of all of it.
If an app based install for pro users (like Shopify Scripts and Shopify Flow) to modify NGINX directives is the quickest path to resolution, that would be satisfactory as a stop gap. Overall, the update should be integrated into the UI so it's not just limited to more technical users.
Thanks for your feedback @Click !
@gregj & @fusiondesigner , per my previous note we cannot provide a timeline.
This request has been logged, and feedback has been continuously added.
Per our community guidelines please avoid personal attacks.
Nick | Community Moderator @Shopify
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@gregj I am almost 99% certain, that the feature will not be done in a month, having worked in the digital industry a bit. I'd assume 3 months at the earliest. Their devs team surely have a full schedule. Unless this feature would be made a top priority, fast-lane, emergency ticket (if a ticket actually exists), it will not even be started by the end of the month.
I'm not a developer, but assume that it won't be very easy to implement from a technical point of view, as a few other things will have to be changed as well.
That said IMO it's one of the few major flaws of shopify, so IMO it should receive a top priority.
Maybe we can find the head of product on Linkedin and send him a few messages there? With a bit of luck this might get us more attention.
Per our previous notes, we have captured this request and feedback has been added continuously.
While I understand everyone's desire to have this feature reaching out to staff members will not help in changing priority; in fact, this could be seen by some as spam, or harassment if multiple messages are sent.
Posts requesting a timeline or sharing speculations will be removed since they prevent others from seeing the current situation which is we have captured this request, it has been logged correctly, and when we have more detail to share we will follow-up in this topic.
Nick | Community Moderator @Shopify
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So to sum up, there are no workarounds on this and no timeline on a solution? What is the bottleneck or limitation here?
@Anna_Rauch1 This is just a guess:
Scarcity of developer resources + big feature, which isn't easy to integrate from a technical perspective.
Hi @Nick
Just to echo what some people are saying, we are trying to do the same with our Shopify sites in terms of removing pages. Our SEO folks are saying it's crazy that /pages, /blog, /collections, /products etc has to be within the URL. Simply put, from a google search perspective it's putting our client's products in a subcategory that it does not need to be in. Competitors without this url 'folder' are ranking higher. It's put us in a spot of bother with a recent client who's rankings are set to fall. Wished we'd picked up on this issue earlier in the project. Hopefully this will be implemented.
Thanks
I would also like to know when there is update on this thread. To mention I would love to get this feature ready as soon possinble! Since it would help a ton with improving SEO overall.
Thanks. Nikola
It's been 10 days and so do you have any update? I.e as we are setting up our site, I am asking now i.e if there is anything means can wait else will move forward
Posts requesting a timeline or sharing speculations will be removed since they prevent others from seeing the current situation which is we have captured this request, it has been logged correctly, and when we have more detail to share we will follow-up in this topic.
Nick | Community Moderator @Shopify
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Hey Nick,
Its been 2 months since ur last message. Why is still nothing done with this issue ? i mean, shopify should know the bad impact it has in terms of SEO and brand image.
So just why ? How could shopify think that kind of URL is ok ?
real exemple taken from my shop :
xxxxxxx.com/collections/collections/products/collection-mandarine
It imply 3 times the word "collection". wtf ?