Shopify SEO For Product Variants

Shopify product variants are a fantastic way to reach more potential customers with SEO, but they can also be a headache. 

This is due to the fact that every option generates a new URL, which can soon develop problems and cause duplicate content issues. Fortunately, you can take a few steps to ensure that your product versions are correctly optimized for SEO, without any negative downside.

Shopify product variant pages, unlike the home pages (that must be original and unique), are pages duplicated from the original product page, but containing a different variant of the same product.

For example, if the product URL looks like this:

domain.com/products/atheltic-t-shirt

A variant URL would look like this:domain.com/products/atheltic-t-shirt?variant=43024402907357One thing that Shopify does really well with product variant pages is that they include a canonical tag to the main URL by default, which helps prevent duplicate content issues.

Unfortunately, that’s not the most optimal way of optimizing your product pages for visibility though.

We’ll share the most optimal way with you soon, but first, let’s take a look at the two different ways of creating product variant pages.

This is the most common way of creating product variants in Shopify, and also the easiest.

All you need to do is go into the back-end of your product inside of Shopify, and add a variant.

From there you’ll be able to add unique images and edit other attributes like sizing and so on.

Following this method will generate the URL structure with the variant in the URL, as we discussed before.

Even though option 1 is the most common when it comes to creating product variants in Shopify, we usually recommend following option 2 for best SEO results.

Option 2 is all about creating a totally separate product page for each one of your variants, and then linking all of these product pages together with a bit of code.

By doing this, the user will have the same flawless user experience, since they’ll have all of the different variants accessible right then and there.

The reason why having separate product pages for variants is much more effective for Shopify SEO, is because you can individually optimize the on-page SEO for every single product variant, without being limited to just one product.

This then allows you to rank much better in organic search results for your target keywords.

The first thing you should do before making any kind of decision is some proper keyword research (or keyword mapping as we like to call it at GoldenWeb)

The idea of keyword mapping has to do with assigning a specific target keyword to each product on your store.

And with that said, if you can identify different target keywords for different variants of the same product, then you should definitely use separate product pages for your product variants.

But if you can’t identify unique keywords for different variants of the same product, you should stick with option 1 and use the default Shopify product variant functionality.

Consider requesting a free mini SEO audit where we’ll go through your Shopify store and put together a list of 10 potential quick-wins you can apply to boost the organic traffic and increase the conversion rate to your small, midsize and Shopify Plus stores.