Duplicate content issues on Shopify and how to fix them
Getting your Shopify store to rank well in search engine results is crucial. However, a common pitfall that many Shopify store owners encounter is the issue of duplicate content. Duplicate content can negatively impact your Shopify SEO efforts, resulting in lower search engine rankings and reduced organic traffic. In this blog post, we’ll delve into why duplicate content is detrimental to your store’s SEO, identify the types of duplicate content issues that commonly arise on Shopify, and provide solutions to help you mitigate these problems effectively.
Why Duplicate Content Is Bad for SEO
Ranking Confusion: Search engines struggle to determine which version of the content should be ranked, potentially leading to lower rankings or exclusion from search results.
Link Dilution: When multiple URLs have identical content, backlinks and ranking signals are split across these pages, reducing the authority of each page.
User Experience: Duplicate content can frustrate users, as they may see the same content multiple times, leading to a poor user experience.
SEO best practise for Shopify duplicate content
Shopify Product Variations
Product variations refer to the different options available for a single product, such as various sizes, colours, materials, or styles. On Shopify, there are two primary ways to handle product variations: using individual product listings for each variation or employing a single product listing with built-in variants. Here, we’ll explore why individual product variations are the best choice for SEO.
- Unique URLs for Each Variation: One of the standout benefits of individual product variations is that they each have their unique URL. Each URL can be optimised for specific keywords, allowing you to target a broader range of search terms and long-tail keywords that potential customers might use to find your products. This means a higher chance of ranking for different variations of your product.
- Improved Internal Linking: When you have individual product variations, your internal linking can be more precise and effective. You can create hyperlinks to each unique variation from relevant areas of your site. This not only provides a better user experience but also ensures that search engine crawlers can easily access and index each variation, improving your overall site structure.
- Structured Data for Rich Snippets: With separate product listings for each variation, you have greater flexibility to use structured data and schema markup to provide detailed information about the individual product, including attributes like size, colour, and availability. This can result in rich snippets in search results, providing users with more information and potentially increasing click-through rates.
- Targeting Specific Keywords: By having dedicated product listings for each variation, you can create product titles, descriptions, and meta tags that are tailored to the unique attributes of each variation. This precision in SEO optimisation allows you to target specific keywords more effectively and improve your chances of ranking for those keywords.
To prevent duplicate content you will need to ensure the page titles, product titles and page copy are different on each variation however the additional work is well worth the effort. In Google’s eyes you will have more unique product pages, which will help you rank higher in the search results.
Shopify Product URLS created by tags
Product URLs generated by product tags on a Shopify website can also lead to duplicate content issues, Here’s how this happens and why it’s detrimental:
- Product Tags and Their Purpose: In Shopify, product tags are a way to categorise and organise products within your store. You can use tags to group products based on various criteria such as colour, size, material, and more. This can be extremely helpful for both store owners and customers in terms of navigation and filtering products.
- Product URLs and Duplicate Content: When you assign product tags to your products in Shopify, the platform automatically generates unique URLs for each combination of product and tag. This can also be caused when you create Bestsellers or on sale collection pages.
E.G website.co.uk/collections/products/mens/cargo-shorts
website.co.uk/collections/products/cargo-shorts
Duplicate Content Dilemma: The problem arises when the content on these different URLs is largely identical. Some themes will create canonicals from the tagged products to the main product page but this isn’t always the case. You you could have multiple product URLs that essentially show the same product information. Search engines like Google aim to provide diverse, relevant, and unique results to users. When they encounter multiple URLs with similar content, they may perceive it as duplicate content.
The other issue with having multiple URLS of the same product is in links. Links to a page tells Google which pages on your site are of most importance, you need to have a hero product which all links go to. By adding in some code to your Theme you can tell it prioritise a specific product URL in all collection pages. This will ensure your hero product pages get all of the in links.
To fix this issue complete the below:
- In the Menu go to “Online Store” then “Themes”
- Select “Actions” and then “Edit code”
- In the Snippets folder select “product-grid-item.liquid”
- And adjust the code to the following:
From this: <a href=”{{ product.url | within: current_collection }}” class=”product-grid-item”>
To this: <a href=”{{ product.url }}” class=”product-grid-item”>
Once changed all of your links will point to the correct product URL
Pagination on Shopify collection pages
Collection pagination on Shopify is a common feature that helps organise and display large product catalogues more efficiently. It allows store owners to divide products within a collection into multiple pages, each containing a limited number of items. While pagination can improve the user experience, it can also inadvertently lead to duplicate content issues when not managed properly. Here’s how collection pagination can create duplicate content and why it’s important to address this concern for SEO:
- Multiple Pages with Similar Content: Pagination breaks down a large product collection into smaller sections, usually with a limited number of products per page. For example, if you have a collection of 100 t-shirts, pagination might display 10 t-shirts on each page. As users navigate through the collection, they can access multiple pages, each with a similar set of products and descriptions.
- Unique URLs for Pagination: To make each page accessible, Shopify generates unique URLs for each page within the collection. For example, the first page might have a URL like “example.com/collections/t-shirts,” and the second page might be “example.com/collections/t-shirts?page=2.”
- Duplicate Content Concern: The problem arises when the content on these different pagination pages is largely identical. While the products themselves might change slightly, the descriptions, titles, and other content elements can remain the same. Don’t assume that your Shopify theme will canonicalise the pages correctly and it is worth checking.
Best practices for SEO would be to increase the amount of products on a collection page, you need to balance having as many products on a page as possible with the potential reduction in page speed this can create. Aim for 20 products on each collection page and check the speed to ensure it’s not too slow. This method will also reduce the amount of paginated pages you have which reduces the amount of clicks to find a product.
