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The limitations of the Shopify architecture are no secret. SEOs have been trying to wrap their heads around how to best-utilise their default architecture since 2006, when it was originally released. Shopify’s simplicity and ease of use makes it a popular choice of platform in all corners of ecommerce.
But this popularity has come with the notion that their collection-based architecture is “okay” for SEO, a claim usually preceded by “well, Gymshark use it.” For anyone who is unsure about whether the Shopify structure is good for SEO, let’s set the record straight – it’s not.
While this is true, simply not using Shopify isn’t an option in many cases. It has established itself as one of the premium platforms and is very ease to build and use. Shopify is here to stay, and that means finding a best-practice way to structure sites and URLs using it. Fortunately, we’ve developed just that in a recent client project as part of our SEO Agency offering.
What Are the Issues with the Shopify Architecture?
Constricting Structures
Any page on Shopify (besides the homepage) must fit into one of four pre-defined page types. A page can only be:
- A collection page.
- A product page.
- A site static page.
- A blog or resource page.
On the surface, this may not seem like an issue. What other types of pages do you really need on a website? But the devil is in the details.
Let’s look at collection pages, as these are the worst offenders in SEO terms. A collection page cannot be placed underneath another collection page within the sitemap, which this means they will usually be arranged in a flat structure beneath the homepage. This limits the normal achievable levels of site architecture, or tiers, to only 2: the homepage > a collection page.
It’s the same case with product pages. Within Shopify’s sitemap architecture, they too sit underneath the homepage on that second level of architecture. This limits the site in another damaging way, as products can’t be arranged underneath their relevant product listing page, restricting the topical authority you can demonstrate on a structural level.
Limited URL Formation
Hand in hand with the confines of Shopify page types comes restrictions on URL formation, with the preset terms always set into the URL. All collection page URLs must include /collection/, product URLs must include /product/, and the same is true with pages and blogs. The name of your category product then follows this, for example /collection/car-manuals.
This all makes for very restrictive URL building – but the worst of the architecture issues is yet to come.
No Native Nesting
In both the site structuring and URL formation, Shopify prevents you almost entirely from nesting pages beneath each other. The best way to demonstrate this is by showcasing what nesting should look like.
Ideally, in both the sitemap and URL, relevant pages are nested beneath each other. Our client, Haynes, sells car manuals for a staggering number of car makes and models. With such a large quantity of products, nesting by manufacturer and model would ordinarily provide the perfect way to break down these products in manageable groups. This could look something like: /car-manuals/bmw/3-series/.
For all the 3-series manuals, the products we want to sell, we’d want them placed at the end of this chain, like so: /car-manuals/bmw/3-series/1997-2003/.
Shopify’s architecture does not allow for nesting in this way. Collection pages cannot be placed underneath each other, not in the structure or in the URL. So, we can’t have a BMW category page sat underneath the car-manuals page, we certainly can’t have a 3 series category page sat underneath that, and since products are held in an entirely different location in the site, we can’t nest them either.
These restrictions restrict us from building tiers of site architecture, they stop us from building topical authority through a logical arrangement of pages, they make it very hard to pass link equity back up the chain, and they make it near impossible to build URL logical URL structures. Not a great place to start.
How Did We Create a Solution?
The Client’s Situation
Our client, Haynes, had engaged our website migrate services to assist with moving two of their websites to the Shopify platform. Haynes manuals are the best of their kind in the world, and they cover a huge range of car manufacturers and models, with manuals for models that were developed as far back as the 50s. As a result, they have a huge number of products that need to be categorised on the site.
Both their existing sites both utilised nesting and customised URLs heavily, so it was critical that we found a solution that retained this as much as possible while creating a structure that could provide the foundations for an easy-to-navigate site.
Our task was to advise on the best way of doing this, and to do that we had to determine what a best-practice Shopify structure would look like.
Ideal Site Structure
We started with developing what the ideal site structure might look like, free of any Shopify limitations, nesting to our hearts’ content.
This might sound counterproductive considering the real restraints we were working to, but the motive for this was to give us a guide for what we’d create in an ideal world. The Shopify structure would then be created in the image of this perfect-world implementation.
Based on the existing site and some competitor analysis, we created a structure that focused equity on vehicle manufacturers, models, and model types. Our category and product architecture looked like this:
| Tier/Click Level | Page Content | Page Type |
| 1 | Manufacturer | PLP |
| 2 | Model | PLP |
| 3 | Model-variant Manual | PDP |
Best-Practice Website Structure in Shopify
Once that was established, we began the difficult process of wrangling this into the Shopify architecture. We knew we wanted at least two layers of architecture so, to do this within Shopify, we used URL nesting.
The URL would indicate position within the structure as well as which level and section of the site architecture the page existed within. Crawlers scanning the site could very easily identify the topic of the page, as well as it’s related pages, and on-page breadcrumbs would provide further context on architecture levels.
Let’s take a look at an example of this. At the top of our structure are the manufacturer pages, and using the BMW example again, would have the URL end “/collections/bmw-car-manuals”. Our breadcrumb structure would look something like “Car Manuals > BMW”.
Beneath this are collection pages for each car model. We’ve used the 3-series example before, and in this instance the URL end would be “/collections/3-series-bmw-car-manuals”. Notice how the entirety of the URL of the above category is included here – by doing this we can pass equity up and down the chain as they both contain the same string. The corresponding breadcrumb for this page would look like Car Manuals > BMW > 3-Series.
Finally, we have product pages. We have to attempt the same but different, as the product page needs to first contain the /products/ directory and needs to be descriptive of the product itself rather than a selection of similar products. However, we still want it to receive equity in the same way our collection pages do.
Our solution is to make some alterations to the layout while retaining the key terms: “/products/bmw-3-series-car-manual-1997-2003/”.
And the breadcrumb helps provide key architectural context for crawlers: Car Manuals > BMW > 3-Series > 1997-2003.
This structure allows us to nest as best we can, pass equity seamlessly between related pages and, by using breadcrumbs, build layers of site architecture into a system that restricts them by default.
Conclusion
Our key to success throughout developing this structure was keeping what we ideally wanted to create in mind and making as few trade-offs as possible. Shopify’s platform has contributed to more than a few poor site structures but, through the smart use of URL nesting combined and breadcrumb structures, you can overcome these limitations.
You’ll create a site that looks and behaves as if it’s been custom-built while still passing equity effectively and providing google with enough context to know which pages are connected and why. Shopify might not be perfect, but this structure is the perfect implementation of it.
If you’re struggling with the structural limitations of Shopify or want to know how your site architecture stacks up, explore our marketing insights for architecture content or get in contact with us to request an SEO audit.
