shopify how to seo collections

all right you lot how are ya it's been,forever right we haven't done a let's,talk sharp tutorial newsletter thing,for ages um and i thought it was about,time i sorted that out to be honest,but,great news i'm in a new office as you,can see if anyone if you've watched,previous um newsletters and tutorials,and stuff like that i used to have a,blue wall and now i have,a roof,and a window so new office new energy,and today you are in for a trade because,today we talk about shopify specifically,shopify collections so everybody knows,that because shopify collections are all,you know flat in regards to hierarchy,you know everything slash collections um,you can't create the ideal information,architecture and you can't create you,know parent and child relationships and,that also impacts your breadcrumbs as,well right you can't do that in a,shopify environment right,wrong,so wrong so today we're going to be,talking about exactly how you can build,a beautiful shopify information,architecture,beautiful internal link structure as,well to really kind of help reinforce,that and allow search engines of course,including google,to understand how those category,relationships work those beautiful,parent-child things from a usability,perspective we're talking about seo,navigation we got it we've got it this,tutorial is a bigger so,yes we already know that shopify can be,a bit of a pain in everything slash,collections and flats,but we have ways around that and we're,going to be talking about that in,today's tutorial and i can't wait so,full of beans full of energy new office,new environment,let's do this,see at my desk in a minute,okay so welcome back i'm back at my desk,i have a huge red light in my face at,the moment but we're going to persevere,with this because there's nothing you,could do about the sun,well there is you can usually draw a,curtain or pull a blind but these are,roof windows,and i don't have the option so we're,gonna we're gonna crack on regardless,we're gonna be troopers all right so,here we are,on love coco which of course is a,shopify website as you'd expect,and i kind of just want to walk you,through a couple of things this is,almost like,default,worst case scenario setup for shopify,when it comes to collections and many,many sites big small in between um are,in this bucket this catchment if you,like so if we just have a poke around,their site,i don't know who love cocoa are but if,you are watching this then i will,happily happily have a really good,discussion about exchanging chocolates,for uh for services and improving seo,and navigation and stuff let's talk love,coco if you're out there let's have a,chat,um,right okay back on with the task so,we can see here if we look in the bottom,left-hand corner of my screen you can,see the url there so we've got,collections chocolate bar gifts uh and,this is you know if we scroll through,all of the collections here we can see,the same thing which is that all of the,shopify collections categories,um are all at root right they're all at,root i'm not very sorry but all um flat,within the collections subdirectory i,guess is the point i'm trying to make it,and that kind of creates a bit of a,problem so the issue is is that it kind,of,structures a flat hierarchy in a way out,of the box but we also have to remember,here with that in mind that urls are,literally just urls in the sense of a,url does not define a hierarchy it,certainly helps if we could have you,know slash parent slash child,but in reality a url is just a url,obviously without the caveats of,thinking about making url clean and,everything else we're not going to talk,about that today but my point here is,whether you've got nested categories in,your urls or whether you've just got,slash collection slash category name,regardless of its depth it is just the,url,and there's things that we can do,outside of the url itself that influence,and can really start to define and build,that internal linking structure and,hierarchy that we'd love to have,so what we'll do first is jump in,see here let's go and take a look at,milk chocolate bars my favorite,and,let's jump into the,salty caramel bar because that sounds,good,and if we take a look at a couple of,things on this page so first thing we,can see in fact if i jump back a second,we can see the url here so slash,collections slash milk chocolate bars,now we know from the way that the mega,menu is designed that,chocolate bars and gifts is ideally the,parent category,for,milk chocolate bars,but the reality is here that that's,you know because of getting the,limitations of shopify we're not able to,to replicate that in this default,behavior,so if we open up the products and we,take a look at the breadcrumb here we,can start to see the problem because,shopify out of the box and these,breadcrumbs out of the box um if you,decide to show breadcrumbs in the first,instance depending on the themes you,have all that sort of good stuff um we,have home which of course is is you know,the the start of the breadcrumb trail,then we have milk chocolate bars but we,know from this website that there's a,there's a step missing here there's a,pair in a category or potentially,multiple pairing categories that,sit between milk chocolate bars and home,but because of the way shopify is built,out of the box it doesn't it's not there,so what happens here is you have,categories,and if we think about you know i'd love,to have probably crawled this site,beforehand and been organized enough to,show you the flat structure of how the,urls and internal linking structure is,but the problem is the fact that,everything is flat right,so,i've also just noticed as well this kind,of hovering add to cart button and i've,got to be honest i don't know how i feel,about it i've just saw it in the corner,of my eye so um that's interesting,um,so you know regardless of what vertical,we're in whether it's chocolate gifts,whether it's chocolate bars we can see,the problem is the same,now,let's talk about the solutions because,we spoke about the problem we know what,it is everything's flat to collections,great everybody knows that that's how,shopify works but now let's start,chewing into,some of the solutions that we can look,at here,i'll just realize this bottle's in the,backdrop,and it's it's uh it's purple,i hope cadbury don't sue me uh anyway,let's move that out of the way,it might not be leaking all over my,floor anyway,let's start looking at solutions,so rc geeks is a website that i've used,before i'm a big fan of rc cars i'm a,big kid at heart really so i use this,site quite a lot and this website is,actually plagued by a very similar,situation to love coco but they've taken,things a step further to make things,better so let's go to the home page for,a moment,and if we jump into their mega menu we,can see,exactly the same situation that we saw,on love coco which is everything is flat,to collections right,so if we jump into off road for a second,which is a parent category of,trucks boogies um crawlers and kits we,can see what they've done here,is started to offer,these i'm going to call them call to,actions but really these really,prominent internal links that are,pointing to,other categories on the same level which,is great because this is where you start,to define and really set out your,internal linking structure right this is,where the magic starts to happen and by,creating that internal linking structure,you help,categories that are further or deeper,into your hierarchy,rank better they get more link authority,result they're easier for people to,navigate to it's greater for usability,there's just so many positives and very,little negatives,so we can see here in terms of what,they've done so off-road cars is on the,same level according to their menu,um,do you know what apologies no it's not,categories on the same level it's child,categories of the parents so we're in,off-road cars now,which is the pairing category and then,the sub the sub categories or the,children of off-road are shown,on the page i'll click something,here we go so off-road cars and then on,the off-road cars page we can now see,the sub-categories that are in the menu,now this is ideal because it it's it's a,way of um,i'm going to say hacking but that's,really the wrong word because i can't,think of the right word right now but,it's it's it's ultimately building a,solution,and hacking the default behavior that,shopify would have when you start to,reinforce that hierarchy and you start,to reinforce the relationships between,parent and child categories and building,those internal links that's of course,going to help from an seo perspective,but,one thing that rc geeks haven't done,is if we jump into,a particular product we can see the,problem here is exactly the same as it,was on love coco,which is that if we look at the break,room we've got home milk chocolate bars,that's it and if we go to rc geeks we,can see home off-road cars okay we have,the product name here but that isn't a,link that's just a string of text to let,you know what products you're on,so but we know from looking at their,menu that the,we'll say this yeah this is a crawler,so really the breadcrumb structure,ideally should be off-road cars so home,off-road cars,crawlers,then the item name and that would then,allow google and other search engines to,again understand how this product,uh relates,to its respective child and pairing,categories and then if you additionally,think about schema and you know,structured data whichever you want to,call it,um we can then be in a situation where,we further reinforce those relationships,by allowing people to associate those,connections and parent-child,relationships and as we know you know,product pages are a particularly,important landing page if you've landed,on a crawler and you know you want a,quarter but not this specific one then,it would be definitely more attractive,to go back one level,in the break room to look at all the,crawlers on this website rather than,going back to all off-road cars and then,irritatingly not seeing the specific,sub-category of products that i'll be,looking for,so,they're getting there rc geeks are in a,good place,but it could be better,and i want to show you the best option,that i believe i've seen in the world as,far as,um,navigation and internal,structuring and category hierarchy is,concerned,so we've got the little thistle gift,shop and i love these guys actually i,don't know them personally,but i think a lot of people,um,and a lot of go-to examples is normally,going straight to,you know all birds and the big players,and a really strong multi-million pound,retailers in shopify where they've got,lots of budget maybe your house,or big agency resources or in-house,developers to go and tweak and customize,themes and if you've got that perfect,but let's be honest shopify is,predominantly made by independent,businesses support and use by,independent businesses so,i went out of my way to find a small,independent business that's doing things,right and the reason i wanted to do that,is to prove to you guys that you don't,need big budgets and super,you know talented people in your,business to be able to get this right,when it comes to shopify,all right onwards and upwards so the,little thistle gift shop um,i'm not i actually don't really know,what thistles are i hold my hands up i'm,sorry,but,they look cool,and their internal linking structure and,hierarchy and category management is,even cooler let's take a look,so,mega menu very comprehensive very broad,now you could argue that a mega menu to,be honest is part of your internal,linking structure and in many ways it is,but it's on every single page isn't it,and then you get into the arguments of,whether it's javascript powered or,whether it's,not and how it's generated or whether it,only loads on hover and blah blah blah,blah blah as a result yes it helps but,it's not really definitive of internal,linking,um,and i just wanted to kind of make that,caveat it's not for this particular,tutorial otherwise we'll be here forever,all right,so they've got really nice they've got,you know little official gift shop i've,got a really nice,um,i'm gonna say,i can't get my words out today,absolutely lost,they've got like a multi-step,a lot of levels of hierarchy here which,are great because it means navigation is,easier it means people can find what,they want they can be as specific or as,broad as they want when they're looking,for gifts or things for themselves so,let's take a look at ladies for a second,and i love this because they've built,departments so you've got ladies as a,department and then within ladies you've,then got jewelry and then inside jewelry,you've then got pendants,um,and so it's great because if you think,about landing pages and creating emails,and driving traffic from social or even,seo as well right gifts for her,this is the category that you need the,ladies category,right gifts for her it's perfect jewelry,grist for her ladies jewelry perfect,but we can see here regardless that if,we look at the urls the urls haven't,changed they're still everything's flat,to collections we can't change that,realistically at least not yet in,shopify terms um,but let's jump into this for a second if,we go into pendants,and we open a specific item,scottish thistle official thistle heart,pendant,um,oh,wait,i know what thistles are what am i,talking about a thistle's a plant,never mind i'm having a moment,um i need lunch so if we look at the,hierarchy here which is more my point,look at the breadcrumb look at the,breadcrumb it's absolutely perfect,because we have home,we then have sharp you could argue,because this is actually quite a,multi-faceted breadcrumb that you could,drop home from this,and you could potentially even drop shot,from this but actually i'd probably say,to keep shot but you could drop home,from this i'd realize because there's,that many levels here but home shop,ladies which is of course the department,as well dub it jewelry and then pendants,this is beautiful right this is,incredible this is the dream breadcrumb,right here i would probably say as well,to kind of give um,thistle a little bit of,a critique here is,the,our,name of the item can be removed and the,reason why it can be removed is because,there's quite a lot good on this break,room and we already know what it's,called because we're on the page only,for it to be here,um,glenna i'm going to assume is the brand,maybe or the collection,in terms of designer collection not,shopify collection,but look at it my point here is if we go,here,to love coco we've got,one and then the category that it's in,none of the relationships between the,parent and child categories and then we,go to here and we have this beautiful,structured really,properly thought out hierarchy and,breadcrumb,now this is great and yes of course it's,your shopify site you can see that,and now everybody wants to know,how did they do it how did they do it,um now the one thing that little thistle,gift shop and i'll answer that question,in a minute the one thing that a little,thistle gift shop haven't done is taken,the opportunity to do what rc geeks have,done and link to child categories,if any exist,within the category page,so although the breadcrumbs perfect,they're missing an opportunity here to,internally link to subcategories,on the category pages as well,right,um,so really what you want is for rc geeks,internal,linking,structure with linking to child,categories to be,there you want that right we need that,and,the little thistle gift shops breadcrumb,structure we mash both of those together,you have the ultimate internal,or information architecture and internal,linking structure and beautiful,breadcrumbs at the same time,now to show you how the little thistle,gift shop took care of breadcrumbs it's,really really simple i think with an,asterix,star thing,um,because it depends on the theme you have,and compatibility i'm sure and,everything else,but it's this,this little absolute gem of a breadcrumb,um,plugin i just call them plugins because,i'm so fiercely,tied to wordpress and woocommerce i just,caught everything i plug in that's in a,marketplace,um and the app store so,this little thing here,category breadcrumbs is what the little,thistle gift shop are using to generate,these really attractive properly well,thought out breadcrumbs and that's,literally it,so that plugin along with creating your,category pages and adding in this,feature of adding your child categories,is how you,use shopify and get around that flat,hierarchy,by design shopify limitation that's how,we do it there is one edge case that i,wanted to show you here,which is how model tune another rc cars,company,or retailer should i say,um who have used a mashup of both,collections and tags to create,a hierarchy,and also in the urls as well it's a it's,a weird one it's crazy let me show you,um so we have honestly i'm desperate to,try to sit about here but as you can see,there's like the sun,so,what i'm going to show you here is if we,look at this url,we're in the rc in fact we'll look at,the url here actually we've got,collections,and then the category rc cars and then,the brand here is mugen,now,mugen is a tag by the looks of it,rc cars is the collection and what,they've basically done here is use a,mashup,of,collection url,and a tag to almost create a hierarchy,but it doesn't just have to be a brand,right if we jump into electric for a,second,we've got electric race kits we've got,self build kits if we just open this,page up here so we've got collections,rc cars self building electric,and although i don't think it's perfect,it's certainly an alternative way of,creating a hierarchy based url structure,if that's important to you,on shopify my,take on this and my advice here would be,to adopt more about what rc geeks do,with these beautiful kind of internal,links here,and,really well thought out break rooms and,that means if shopify decides to,discontinue tags at any point or your,theme is incompatible with them or,things change right when you're on a,software as a service based platform,things can change,so,use something that's a little bit more,robust and a bit a little bit more,purposeful,but,again if you're in a situation where,this is attractive for you then it's an,option go and check it out so that's it,i've waffled on for about 20-ish minutes,i really hope that's helpful,and you now understand how you can build,a really glorious and informational,architecture when it comes to your,categories and your collections and,shopify the plug-in you need,to be able to to advocate that,and,create,really,sexy looking breadcrumbs in shopify as,well,so there we go the first one of many in,my new office maybe i'll pick another,time where it's not quarter past one in,the afternoon and the sun is right here,but i've had fun and i hope you enjoy,this uh this tutorial and i'll see you,soon on the next one take,you

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