Kyle Risley is a senior lead, SEO, at Shopify.
Category page SEO is one of the most underutilized levers in ecommerce. When you add a category page to your store—or collection page, as it’s called at Shopify—you’re basically creating something out of nothing. Each new collection page is a new opportunity to target search terms shoppers use to find products like yours and a new URL for Google to rank.
Most ecommerce merchants have a handful of collection pages to aid in website navigation, but few create all the collection pages they could. Adding more collection pages is an easy way to increase traffic and sales without adding new products to your online store—each collection page is new real estate you can use to target a particular SEO keyword, potentially getting your products in front of more shoppers.
In this guide, you’ll learn how to find collection ideas, evaluate which collections will help you rank on search engines, and create collection pages that convert.
What are ecommerce category pages?
Ecommerce category pages (known as collection pages on Shopify) are web pages that group multiple products based on shared characteristics. For example, if you sell clothes, you might have one category page for tops and another for pants.
It’s common to group products by type so that shoppers can compare similar items, but you can also use category pages to highlight new arrivals, sale items, or curated selections like gift ideas or founder’s picks.
Category pages make it easier for customers to find what they’re looking for on your ecommerce website, as they’re typically part of website navigation. They can also help you reach new customers through organic search—especially with a little search engine optimization wizardry.
That’s because category pages typically rank higher in Google’s algorithm than individual product pages. For example, if you search for “clare v fanny pack,” the fanny packs collection page appears above the product page for the Grande Fanny:
Unlike product pages, which highlight a single product, collection pages provide multiple options—which is a good thing for searchers. Search engine users are likely earlier in their buying journey than users who find your product via social media or users already browsing your ecommerce site. They might still be in the research stage and want to compare different options. Adding more collection pages to your store is the closest thing to a “hack” you’ll find in ecommerce SEO.
As a store owner, you can take the same group of 20 products and describe them in maybe five or even 10 different ways. If you make all of those into SEO ecommerce category pages, that’s five or 10 more ways for customers to find your products online.
Of course, the number of useful and intuitive collection pages you can create depends on your inventory. For example, if you sell stickers, you could group the same set of stickers by material (vinyl, washi, glitter, PVC, fuzzy); theme (planner stickers, animals, nature, flowers); format (sheet, roll, multipack, die-cut); and size.
3 elements of a successful category page
A good ecommerce category or collection page has the following elements:
Relevant, compelling title
Your collection pages’ title tags should clearly describe the products in your collection, like Bow Ties, Fanny Packs, Distressed Jeans, or New Arrivals.
If you’re deciding between two or more different titles, you can use an SEO app or Google Trends to compare the search volume of each. For example, “ripped jeans” has a higher search volume than “distressed jeans” and might give your collection page better reach:
Useful collection description
Your collection description should contain one to two sentences to provide context for what the page is about. Make sure your description contains your title. For example, a description for a Bow Ties collection page might read: “Festive printed bow ties for all occasions.”
Your collection description is also an opportunity to work in some related search terms and long-tail keywords, as Good American does in its ripped jeans collection: “Featuring ripped, distressed & destroyed styles, shop the collection of ripped women's jeans. All our jeans are available in a full & inclusive size range from 00 to plus size 24.”
User-friendly sorting
When you create a collection, you can choose the sorting logic for that page. By default, Shopify sorts products alphabetically. But you can also choose from the following sorting options:
- Bestselling products
- Product title (alphabetical)
- Highest or lowest price
- Newest or oldest product
- Manual
Think about which sort order makes the most sense for your collection—sorting by bestsellers can be useful for larger collections, while sorting by newest product is helpful for collections that you update frequently.
How to create and optimize Shopify collection pages
- Brainstorm potential collection pages
- Decide which collection pages to create
- Build your collection pages
- Preview your search engine listing
- Link to your collection pages
- Measure collection page performance
Here’s how to use effective Shopify collections SEO to improve your category pages’ search engine rankings:
1. Brainstorm potential collection pages
As a store owner, you know your products better than anyone. But if you want more collection page ideas, there are a couple of ways to find them:
Use Google
Type your base product—for example, “jeans”—into Google and then look at the filters automatically generated by the search engine. From there, you can extrapolate collection pages based on dimensions like target gender, color, fit (e.g. skinny), features (e.g. ripped, pockets, cropped), leg style (e.g. straight leg), and rise (e.g. high rise).
Use AI tools
Use a generative AI tool like ChatGPT to brainstorm collection pages, first export your products as a CSV file. From your Shopify admin, go to Products, then click Export > All products > Plain CSV file.
Copy your existing collection names from the Collections page of your Shopify admin and paste them into your LLM along with your CSV file. Prompt the AI tool to recommend new collections based on the products in the CSV file that don’t overlap with your existing collections and have at least five products per collection.
2. Decide which collection pages to create
Now you have a list of collection ideas, decide which ones you actually want to create. First, you can eliminate any collections with less than five products.
Next, make sure your collections aren’t too similar to each other. You can use Google to make this call. If you search for two different collection names and Google returns the same results, the collections are too similar. If it returns different results, you can go ahead and create both collections.
For example, two of three top organic results for “ripped jeans” and “distressed jeans” lead to the same collection pages: Wild Oak Boutique’s “distressed jeans” and American Eagle’s “ripped jeans.” If you already have a distressed jeans collection, you don’t need to make a ripped jeans collection.
3. Build your collection pages
Building a collection page on Shopify is easy:
1. From your Shopify admin, navigate to Products > Collections.
2. Click Create collection in the top right corner.
3. Enter a title and description for the collection.
4. In the Collection type section, you can choose between Smart and Manual: Smart collections automatically include products based on conditions you set. Manual collections involve adding each product by hand.
5. Set the sort order for how you want the products to be sorted in your store.
6. Save the collection as a draft.
4. Preview your search engine listing
Now that you’ve built your collection, make sure it looks good when users find it via search engines.
Shopify automatically generates a search engine listing for each collection based on the collection title and description, but you can edit these by clicking the pencil icon in the top right corner of the listing.
When you click the pencil icon, you’ll see a preview of how your collection page will look in search engine listings, and you’ll have the option to edit the page title, meta description, and URL.
In most cases, the default search engine listing is fine. But you may want to add a more descriptive page title to include secondary target keywords. For example, “Ripped Jeans & Distressed Denim” would help target a wider array of keywords while remaining highly targeted.
Your meta description isn’t a ranking factor, but it can encourage searchers to click on your page. Here’s a formula you can follow for your meta descriptions: Try using verbs like “shop,” “find,” “explore,” or “discover,” and consider adding your business’s name to your meta description. You can also look at successful pages in your industry for inspiration.
5. Link to your collection pages
After creating a new collection page, link to your collection in your online store menus so visitors to your online store can easily find it.
Internal linking also plays an important role in SEO, since search engines use internal links to decide which pages to rank. If a page has more links pointing to it, it appears more important. “Orphan pages” (pages without any links pointing to them) typically struggle to rank.
Here are a few places where you can link to your collection pages:
Website navigation
Link to your most important collections in your main website navigation. For example, Clare V.’s website features a top navigation bar with links to What’s New, Handbags, All Accessories, and Clothing. The site’s mega menu shows more sub-collections like Fanny Packs (under Handbags).
Other collection pages
If you can’t fit all of your collection pages in your main navigation, consider linking out to them from other collection pages. You can link out to subcollections—for example, linking out to Fanny Packs from the Handbags collection page—or collections that are related in another way (like Bag Straps).
You can highlight a featured collection within another collection page with a product image carousel or buttons, but if you have several collections you want to link out to, consider adding text links to other collections within each collection page description.
Product pages
A product page is a great place to link to the collections that product belongs to. For example, this Diamond Galaxy ring from Jacquie Aiche is part of the designer’s Gemstone Rings collection, which is linked at the top of the page as part of the website’s breadcrumbs.
Website breadcrumbs are a way for users to remember how they got to a particular page. In this case: Home > Gemstone Rings > Diamond Galaxy Inlay Concave Rectangle Ring.
Lower on the Diamond Galaxy ring product page, there’s a link to another collection the ring belongs to—onyx jewelry—with a horizontal scrolling gallery that lets shoppers preview other onyx pieces.
Blog posts
If you have a blog, you have another opportunity to link to your collection pages. This strategy works well for one-off or seasonal collections. For example, you might create a collection of green products that you link out to in a St. Patrick’s Day blog post.
6. Measure collection page performance
Ecommerce category page optimization is an ongoing process. Once you’ve created your collection pages, use Google Search Console to monitor which search terms each ranks for. This information can help you continue to improve your collection pages.
For example, you might find that most of the traffic for your Moisturizers collection page actually comes from the search term “face cream.” This might prompt you to change your collection title and description to reflect the language your audience uses. Or maybe you find a small amount of traffic comes from a related URL like “barrier repair cream,” and decide to work that term into your collection description, or create a related collection dedicated entirely to barrier-repair products.
One thing you should not do is change your URL from “collections/moisturizers” to “collections/face-cream.” As long as the connection between the URL and the page is clear, changing the URL is not necessary (and it can lead to short-term performance issues as search engines crawl and rerank the new URL).
Common collection page SEO challenges
Google Search Console can show you which pages drive search traffic to your online store, but to know which pages actually convert, you’ll need Shopify Analytics. If a page is driving traffic but not revenue, there is likely an issue with your page content, your page experience, or both.
Content issues might include a mismatch between the user’s search intent and your product offering: Your page is ranking, but the products aren’t right. This is usually Google’s fault, not yours—the algorithm might not understand the intent behind the query, so it’s showing ecommerce collection pages users aren’t really interested in.
For example, a hot sauce collection page might rank for the query “world’s hottest hot sauce,” but the user may just want to know the world record for the highest Scoville rating, not want to actually purchase sauce. In that case, it may be worth researching other, more shopping-focused keywords.
There could also be an issue with the way you display products on your collection page. Check each of these factors:
- Are product names clearly visible?
- Does each product in the collection have a high-quality thumbnail?
- Can you see the price for each item from the collection page?
- How is your site speed?
- How is your mobile website experience? For example, how far down the page does a mobile user need to scroll to see your products?
After checking these common issues, compare your problem page to other ranking collection pages—are they providing value that you are not? This can give you some ideas for how to improve your page.
Ecommerce category page SEO FAQ
What is a collection page?
A collection page in Shopify is a web page that features multiple different products with shared characteristics. These are also known as category pages.
What makes a good category page?
A good category page has a relevant, compelling title, a useful collection description, and user-friendly sorting.
Is deleting pages bad for SEO?
If a page isn’t driving any traffic, it’s OK to delete it. Make sure to redirect deleted pages to the most relevant remaining page (otherwise, users will see an error message).
