What Shopify decides for you
Shopify imposes a URL structure you cannot change:
/products/product-name
/collections/collection-name
/collections/collection-name/products/product-name
/pages/page-name
/blogs/blog-name/article-nameYou can change the final slug. You cannot remove /products/ or /collections/.
This is fine. URL structure is a weak ranking signal, and a consistent, readable one is perfectly adequate. Anyone selling you a workaround to remove those segments is selling risk in exchange for nothing measurable.
What matters more is the duplication the structure creates, which is next.
The collection duplication problem
That third URL pattern is the important one. Every product is reachable at two addresses:
/products/blue-widget
/collections/gadgets/products/blue-widgetA product in five collections is reachable at six URLs, all showing the same thing.
Shopify handles this by default: the collection-scoped versions carry a canonical tag pointing at /products/blue-widget. That is the correct behaviour, and on a stock theme it works.
Two things to check, because both happen:
Your theme may have broken it. Heavily customised themes sometimes strip or override the canonical. View the source of a collection-scoped product URL and confirm the canonical points at the bare /products/ version.
Your internal links may contradict it. If your collection pages link to the /collections/…/products/… form, every internal link points away from the canonical URL. Google weighs internal links against the canonical, and consistent internal contradiction is one of the reasons a canonical gets ignored. Link to /products/… directly.
What Shopify handles, and what it doesn't
Handled by default:
- Canonical tags on duplicate product URLs
- A generated
sitemap.xml - A
robots.txtwith sensible defaults - Clean, consistent URL structure
- HTTPS everywhere
Not handled:
- Title tags and meta descriptions, which default to templates that are rarely what you would write
- Collection page content — Shopify gives you a description field and most stores leave it empty
- Image alt text
- Duplicate content from variants
- Anything about whether your products are what people search for
The pattern is that Shopify handles the plumbing competently and leaves everything requiring a decision to you. That is a reasonable division, and it means most Shopify SEO work is content and structure, not technical remediation.
Collections are your category pages
The single highest-leverage thing on most Shopify stores.
A collection page is the equivalent of a category page, and as covered in ecommerce SEO that is where the broad, high-volume demand sits. Shopify gives every collection a description field. Most stores leave it blank, producing a page that is a product grid and a title — with nothing for a search engine to understand the page from.
What a collection page needs:
- A title tag using the phrase people actually search, not just the collection name
- A description that is genuinely useful — what the range covers, how to choose, what differs between options
- Internal links to related collections
- Products, obviously, but they are not the part that ranks the page
This is unglamorous work on pages nobody enjoys writing, and on most stores it is worth more than anything else on this list.
Variants and tags
Variants in Shopify live on one product page by default, which is the right structure — one URL, consolidated authority, a selector for size or colour. Some themes expose variants as separate URLs with ?variant= parameters; those should canonicalise to the parent, and by default they do.
Tags are the Shopify equivalent of the WordPress tag problem. Tag-filtered collection URLs (/collections/gadgets/blue) can be generated in large numbers, each showing a filtered subset. Some are genuinely searched — a colour or material people look for. Most are not.
The same rule as any faceted navigation applies: index the combinations with real demand, and keep the rest out. The mistake is letting the theme generate and link to every combination without anyone deciding.
Apps
Shopify apps inject scripts, and scripts cost interaction responsiveness — which is measured directly by Core Web Vitals and felt directly by customers on a checkout page.
The discipline is the same as plugins on WordPress: uninstall what you are not using, rather than leaving it installed. Uninstalled apps sometimes leave script tags behind in the theme, so it is worth checking the theme code after removing one.
On the SEO apps specifically: they mostly automate bulk editing of titles and meta descriptions. Useful at scale, and not a substitute for deciding what those titles should say.
Frequently asked questions
Can I remove /collections/ and /products/ from Shopify URLs?
No. Shopify enforces that structure and it cannot be changed. It is not worth worrying about — URL structure is a weak signal, and a consistent readable one is adequate. Workarounds introduce risk for no measurable gain.
Does Shopify create duplicate content?
Yes, structurally — every product is reachable via its own URL and via each collection it belongs to. Shopify canonicalises the collection-scoped versions to the main product URL by default. Verify your theme has not broken that, and make sure internal links point at the canonical form.
Do I need a Shopify SEO app?
Not for the basics. Shopify handles canonicals, sitemaps and robots.txt by default, and titles and descriptions are editable without an app. Apps help with bulk editing at scale; they do not decide what the titles should say.
Why aren't my collection pages ranking?
Most commonly because they have no content. Shopify provides a description field that most stores leave empty, leaving a product grid and a title. Collections compete for broad category terms, and they need actual copy to do it.
Get the platform settings checked, once
Shopify does the plumbing well, which is exactly why the gaps are easy to miss — a customised theme that dropped the canonical, internal links pointing at the non-canonical product URL, collection pages with no description at all.
If you would rather have the platform layer verified than assumed, the CMS SEO Hardening service reviews and fixes the settings on Shopify or WordPress — one-off, no retainer.