When optimising your Shopify blog, you explore numerous tools, practices, and techniques. From default Shopify SEO features and various apps to custom services and tools — you search for anything that will help you leverage your efforts.
While all the optimisation tips and tricks certainly get the job done to an extent, one area often gets neglected — Shopify blog URL structure.
So, in this guide, you'll learn why it matters, how to change it in Shopify, and how to manage blog URLs more effectively.
Let's get right to it!
Why Does Shopify Blog URL Structure Matter?
As a content creator, you certainly dedicate your best effort to fine-tune blog posts. Relevant keywords, structured data, and high-quality insights — all help your posts appear higher in SERP and reach the targeted audience.
So, at some point, you may ask: Is the Shopify blog URL structure really that important?
While it may not seem like a big deal, URLs have ana strong impact on your blog's rankings and navigation. And here's why you should pay attention to the URL structure of your posts.
Improved SEO scores
Search engines consider numerous aspects when indexing your pages, and URLs are one of them. If your links are clear, logical, and well-structured, there is a higher chance of you ranking higher in search results.
Besides, a clear URL structure helps your posts appear in more targeted search results since crawlers can attribute them more effectively. This can also be amplified by adding the relevant keywords to the links.
Brand reliability and trustworthiness
With the rise of spammers, people have become more cautious when it comes to the links they open. A messy URL may be treated as a threat instead of a simple blog link with insightful content.
Correspondingly, a logical and clear URL structure makes your pages more trustworthy and reliable. It increases the chances of people actually opening the link and exploring your blog.
Easier blog navigation
When blog URLs are built logically, it's much easier to navigate your blog and land on the relevant page. The easier the navigation, the more likely people are to stay and explore your content.
This aspect is crucial for both your customers and search crawlers. In case of the latter, clear URLs help them understand the structure of your blog and website as a whole much better.
Default Shopify Blog URL Structure
The default Shopify blog URL it quite simple. It consists of four parts: your domain, blog path, category slug, and blog post slug.
The blog path in Shopify is always "blogs". Then, the category and blog post slugs are changeable and can be adjusted to your specific needs.
So, here is how default Shopify blog URLs are built:
https://yourdomain.com/blogs/category-handle/blog-post-handle
Now, let's explore how you can edit the Shopify Blog URL structure.
How to Change the Shopify Blog URL Structure?
Sadly, you cannot change the sequence of the Shopify blog URL elements out of the box. The /blogs/ part isn't changeable and always goes after the domain. However, you still can edit the category and individual post slugs.
Changing category slug
Shopify treats each category as a separate blog. Thus, you won't find your posts at https://yourdomain.com/blogs. Instead, you have to navigate directly to the corresponding category.
The default category slug in the Shopify blog is "news". To change it:
1. Navigate to Content > Blog posts and press the Manage blogs button.
2. Open the existing News category or create a new one.
3. Start editing the Search engine listing section and specify a new URL handle.
Here, you can also choose whether to create redirects for the old category URL and blog posts assigned to this category. Just check the corresponding boxes and don't forget to save the changes.
Changing blog post slug
Moving on, let's now change the URL slug for a blog post.
1. Go to Content > Blog posts and open the post you'd like to edit.
2. Scroll down to the Search engine listing section and start editing it.
3. Enter the new URL handle in the corresponding field.
In this case, however, a redirect for the old URL will not be created automatically. Thus, you'll have to add it manually to make sure readers don't accidentally come across a 404 page.
How to Optimize Blog URL Management?
It's safe to say that the default Shopify blog URL structure is not as flexible as one would prefer. As a result, it makes it quite difficult to make the URLs SEO-friendly.
That's where you'd naturally start looking for a tool to improve your blog URL management. The Magefan's can do exactly that.
Except for offering a fully-featured blog management system, the app comes with flexible blog URL structure settings. Here, you can change your blog, post, category, tag, and author paths in a few clicks to tailor the most fitting URL structure.
(Example of different blog entity URL structure settings — source Magefan Blog App)
This gives you a chance to build an SEO-friendly URL system and customize it to the specifics of your store.
Blog URL Structure: Best Practices
Knowing how to change blog URL structure is one thing. Being able to do it correctly, according to the best SEO practices, is a whole new story.
Thus, make sure you follow these simple rules to create a clear and SEO-friendly blog URL structure.
Keep blog URLs logically structured
A crucial step here is creating a logical structure for your blog URLs. It should be easy to follow and reflect the content of your post. And it has to be consistent, too.
Think this aspect through, create a unified URL structure for your blog, and adopt it evenly across your blog entities.
Strive for simplicity
They say less is more, and it's as relevant in our case as it could be. Lengthy URLs with lots of parameters and IDs are too complex to grasp both for readers and search engines.
So, keep blog URLs descriptive but concise to improve the navigation and simplify your internal blog management.
Avoid keyword stuffing
While adding keywords to URLs is a common and recommended practice, don't overfo it.
Keyword stuffing will not give you a free pass to the higher SERP positions. Quite the opposite, actually. Correspondingly, include relevant keywords in the URLs while keeping them short and clear.
Use hyphens to separate words
It's a known fact, but we'd still like to highlight that you should use hyphens "-" to separate words in the URLs, e.g., https://yourdomain.com/blogs/news/top-african-safari-tours.
Avoid using underscores "_" or not separating words at all, since it complicates the understanding of the URL.
Create 301 redirects
Last but not least, don't forget to create redirects from the old URLs after changing them. The 404 error pages are unfavourable for both readers and search engines.
Create relevant 301 redirects to avoid such inconsistencies.
By following the steps we covered today, you'll be able to edit the Shopify blog URL structure and adjust it to the specific requirements of your store.
Still, don't forget about other Shopify SEO aspects to drive more traffic to your blog and optimize your store overall.
The default Shopify blog URL structure is https://yourdomain.com/blogs/news.
All Shopify blog URLs are built according to this pattern: https://yourdomain.com/blogs/category-handle/blog-post-handle.
By default, you can only change the blog category and post handles, but not the sequence of the blog URL elements.
To change the former, navigate to Content > Blog posts > Manage blog, open the corresponding category, and change its handle in the Search engine listing section. As for the blog post handle, go to Content > Blog, choose the post, and alter the handle in the Search engine listing section.
