As an online merchant using Shopify, you may want to customize your product URLs to make them more SEO friendly and easier for your customers to remember.
Shopify makes it easy for you to locate and modify your product URLs with just a few clicks.
The product URL is the unique part of the URL that identifies each product on your Shopify store.
By default, Shopify generates the product URL from the product title.
For example, if your product title is “Diamond Bracelet,” the URL may look like this:
https://yourstore.com/products/diamond-bracelet
Where is the product URL location?
Go to the product page (marked with 1 in the image below) and select a product (marked with 2 in the image below):
After you clicked on the product name to open the product page go to the “Search engine listing” section (marked with 1 in the image below) and click on the “Edit” link (marked with 2 in the image below):
What can you change in the product URL?
Shopify allows you to change only the handle, the last part of the URL.
So as you see in the image above the URL in Shopify has the following format:
https://storename.myshopify.com/products/gold-bracelet-engraved-with-diamonds
This part can’t be modified:
https://storename.myshopify.com/products/
You can only modify the last part of the URL which is called the handle which is the name of the product:
In our example the following:
gold-bracelet-engraved-with-diamonds
How to change the product URL?
After you’ve clicked on the “Edit” link (marked with 2 in the image above) you can see the “URL handle” input box (marked with 1 in the image below).
Click inside the input box (marked with 2 in the image below), remove the existing handle and add yours.
I’ll change the handle from “gold-bracelet-engraved-with-diamonds” to just “bracelet” (marked with 1 in the image below):
Once you change the product URL handle with a new one Shopify will automatically create a redirect (marked with 2 in the image above) that will be added to Shopify URL redirects.
If you have the store live, leave the redirects in place as Shopify creates them. If the store is not live and is still in the development phase you can untick the checkbox since you do not need the redirects.
Once you have everything in place save your new change by clicking the “Save” button (marked with 3 in the image above).
How to bulk edit the product URLs for all your products in the store?
I’ve shown you how to change the product URL for a single product which in many cases is the only thing needed but what if you want to change in bulk the URLs to multiple products or for all the products in your store.
Going to each product page in part is time consuming and not recommended since Shopify allows you to edit the URLs in bulk on a single page.
Go back to the product listing page (marked with 1 in the image below).
Select all the products you want to open in the “Bulk” editor (marked with 2 in the image below). I’ll select only the first 3 for this example, but you can select all the store products if you want.
After you have all the products selected click on the “Bulk edit” button (marked with 3 in the image above) Shopify will open the “Bulk” editor page with all the products that you selected like in the image listed below.
Now this page could already have columns listed by default. You need to remove them to make the process of changing the product URLs much easier.
In order to remove the columns or add new ones click on the “Columns” button (marked with 1 in the image below).
You’ll see all the columns available for you to add in the bulk editor. Uncheck everything that you do not need and check only the “URL handle (SEO)” column (marked with 2 in the image below).
Now the “URL handle (SEO)” column (marked with 3 in the image below) is listed and you can start editing the product URLs handles one by one (marked with 4 in the image below):
In cases when a part of the URL handle has a word that is repeating itself you can type that word one time and populate all fields in the column.
For example you have “gold-bracelet-engraved-with-diamonds” and “gold-bracelet” which both contain the “bracelet” word.
It doesn’t make sense to type the word in each row inside the “URL handle (SEO)” column, instead you can type it once in all rows inside the column
In order to select multiple fields keep pressed the ⇧ key and select the first (marked with 1 in the image below) and last field (marked with 2 in the image below) in the “URL handle (SEO)” column.
All selected fields will be highlighted which means that when you type something in any one of them all of them will reflect that change.
After you’ve set up your new URL handles, save your settings by clicking the “Save” button (marked with 3 in the image above).
Best practices on changing the URL
1. As a recommendation and according to Google you should keep the redirects in place for at least 1 year since you changed the handle or until you remove the products from the store, in that case the URL will no longer exist on your store so it is safe to remove the redirect.
2. Do not add numbers inside the URL, instead add numbers as words like: one, two, three.
3. Use hyphens to separate words, which is a best practice for optimizing URLs.
Conclusion
In conclusion, finding and changing the Shopify product URL is a straightforward process that can be completed in just a few steps.
By knowing where to find the URL and how to change it, you can improve the visibility of your products on search engines, make it easier for customers to find and share your products, and enhance the overall user experience on your Shopify store.
Whether you’re a new Shopify user or an experienced one, understanding the importance of the product URL and how to optimize it can go a long way in driving traffic and sales to your store.