Hello all!
Recently posted the below in Shopify's discussion forum but after speaking with Shopify they suggested I make my post here to see if any of the experts are able to help out with this job.
I was browsing competitor sites that carry the same product as my shopify store and something occurred to me. Take a particular product like our Alden 403 Indy boot. Here's how URL is displayed on competitor sites (I've used asteriks' instead of their site name).
Example #1
http://*****************.com/product/alden-indy-boot-in-brown-chromexcel-403/
Example #2
https://***************.com/shop/index.php/shoes/alden/403-alden-indy-boot.html
Notice that their URLs for this particular product contains brand name... alden. None of our products have the brand name in URL. As our customer very often shops by brand I would think having the brand name in URL is important and would help a potential customer find us easier?
I started to modify this manually in the back end of shopify by adding in brand name and creating a URL redirect so I don't get 404 Page Not Found.
Here's the current URL for the same product on our site:
http://www.supplyandadvise.com/products/indy-boot-brown-chromexcel-403?variant=694627793
I've been adding brand name slowly and changing them to the following:
http://www.supplyandadvise.com/products/alden-indy-boot-brown-chromexcel-403?variant=694627793
I was reading that google likes shorter URL names and penalizes search results for extraneous or unnecessary things in page title. That being said why do the URLs for all my product pages have all this extraneous information on the back end? See bolded portion of the URL below:
http://www.supplyandadvise.com/products/alden-indy-boot-brown-chromexcel-403?variant=694627793
Thinking all of this additional weight is harming my SEO.
So, I'd like to know the following and am hoping to get a quote for the following work:
When the page name or URL is generated can it automatically add the brand name in rather than having to do it manually for each product? Is there a way to do this en-masse for already existing product? Does it even matter?
How does one remove all the extraneous numbers and variant information at the back end of my product URLs? Does it even matter? Can this be done automatically for all our SKUs
Thanks very much and I look forward to learning from this wonderful community.
I can be reached at jonathan@supplyandadvise.com
Cheers!
J