Why Shopify Product Filter Apps Seriously Harm Your SEO!

WARNING: 

IF YOU ARE USING SHOPIFY PRODUCT FILTERS THEN PLEASE READ THIS ARTICLE BECAUSE THEY ARE SERIOUSLY HARMING YOUR SEO!!!

If you are using ANY product filter app on the market and you are not using our OS 2.0 theme then one of two things are happening.

1 – Your product filter pages are BLOCKED from the search engines altogether – which means you’re missing out on 1000’s and 1000’s of high-converting searches every month.

2 – Your product filter pages are causing MASS DUPLICATIONS of your root collection pages – which means you’re being PENALIZED by Google which seriously harms your SEO, rankings, traffic, and conversions.

Our AAP® SEO Product Filters are the only product filter pages in the world that are FULLY optimizable. Our product filter tech allows you to optimize:

• Product Filter Page URLs
• Product Filter Page Meta Titles
• Product Page Meta Descriptions
• Product Page H1 – H6 Tags
• Product Page Indexable Content
• Product Page Image ALT = Tags

These 6 key elements of on-page optimization are essential for avoiding content, keyword, and metadata cannibalization which basically ruins your SEO.

Our filter pages UNLEASH 100’s if not 1000’s more high-converting landing pages in the search engines.

A typical store with 50 collections and 20 filters in the sidebar will only ever have 50 collections pages in the search engines (depending on whether or not your filter app is blocking your pages from the search engines or duplicating them).

With our theme and filter tech, you would have an additional 950 pages in the search engines.

That’s a STAGGERING 1900% increase in organic visibility and because our fully-optimized filter pages tap into longtail, high-purchase-intent search terms, stores using our theme and filter tech typically convert between 5-10% organically.

What Are Shopify Product Filters?

Shopify product filters are tools or features that allow customers to narrow down their product search results on an online store built using the Shopify platform.

These filters help enhance the shopping experience by making it easier for customers to find the products they are looking for in a large inventory store.

Commonly used product filters on Shopify include:

1. Price Range: Customers can specify a minimum and maximum price, and the store will display products within that price range.
2. Product Categories: These filters let customers select specific product categories to view products only within those categories.
3. Attributes: If products have specific attributes (e.g., size, color, material), customers can filter products based on these attributes.
4. Tags: Tags are keywords or labels associated with products. Customers can use tags to filter products based on specific characteristics or features.
5. Availability: Customers can filter products to show only those that are currently in stock or available for purchase.
6. Brand: If the store offers products from multiple brands, customers can filter products by brand.
7. Rating and Reviews: Customers may choose to see products with a certain minimum rating or filter products based on the number of reviews.
8. New Arrivals: A filter that displays recently added products.
9. Sale Items: This filter displays products that are currently on sale or have discounted prices.
10. Custom Filters: Some stores might offer additional filters based on their unique product offerings or customer preferences.

Implementing product filters on a Shopify store (or any store for that matter) can improve user experience and increase the likelihood of customers finding products that meet their specific needs and preferences.

These filters are typically part of the theme or a 3third party app and are customizable to fit the store’s design and product catalog.

These usually appear in the sidebar on the left but more recently are available horizontally on a collection page too.

The Problem With Shopify Product Filters

Shopify itself doesn’t offer built-in product filter pages but it does allow you to create them if you know what you’re doing with Liquid files and some themes even try this too.

The absence of native product filter pages in Shopify can be seen as a limitation or a potential problem for some merchants who desire advanced filtering options for their online stores.

You can read my other article here on more technical SEO issues with Shopify.

The main issues or challenges that arise due to the lack of built-in product filter pages in Shopify include:

1. Limited Functionality: Without native support, merchants may need to rely on third-party apps or custom development to implement product filter pages. These solutions may not always provide the full range of filtering options or customization flexibility that merchants desire.
2. App Dependence: When using third-party apps for product filtering, merchants become dependent on the app’s availability, performance, and compatibility with Shopify updates. If the app is discontinued or no longer supported, it can disrupt the functionality of the product filters.
3. Integration Complexity: Integrating third-party apps or custom filtering solutions can be more complex and time-consuming compared to using built-in features. This may require additional setup, configuration, and ongoing maintenance efforts.
4. Costs: Some filtering apps may come with a cost, and these expenses can add up for merchants, impacting their budget and the overall cost of running the store.
5. Performance Impact: Depending on the app’s efficiency and the volume of products in the store, using third-party filtering solutions might impact the website’s performance and page load times, not to mention the SEO impact!
6. Design and Branding: Third-party apps may have their own styling and design, which could clash with the store’s branding and design. Customization options might be limited, making it challenging to achieve a seamless look and feel.
7. Inconsistent User Experience: If different apps are used for different functionalities, such as filtering and search, it may lead to an inconsistent user experience for customers navigating the store.

In a nutshell, most stores need product filters to improve user experience but using the options and apps that are currently available come with a heavy price and I’ll show you why for a number of reasons.

You see, filter pages are not accessible via the dashboard to optimize like standard pages. They are created dynamically which basically means they are created automatically via tags.

#1 – Blissful Ignorance of Product Filter SEO Issues

An extremely large percentage of Shopify product filter App developers are blissfully ignorant of the need to not create duplicate and conflicting collection page URLs.

They are blissfully unaware that creating Shopify Collection page filters causes mass duplication penalties that will seriously damage a site’s ability to rank in the search engines.

This is very poor in my opinion and shouldn’t be allowed.

#2 – App Developers Block The Duplicate Pages From the Search Engines Altogether

The best-selling Shopify apps for product and collection page filters deal with the collection page duplicates by blocking them from the search engines entirely with a ‘canonical tag’ back to the root collection page.

This means that every filter page URL on the site is blocked excluding 1000’s of potential revenue-generating pages that could be crawled, indexed, and ranked in the search engines.

There’s nothing wrong with that at all – these app developers are quite happy with that and have canonicalized the filter pages back to the root collection page correctly (told Google to ignore the duplicate pages) but why on earth would you BLOCK these high-converting landing pages from the search engines altogether?

The internet is so competitive already, so why would you want to disadvantage your Shopify store by blocking 1000’s of high converting lading pages from the search engines altogether?

Kristin Mark

For example; there are up to 10,000 searches per month in the US alone for the search term:

• Size 16 Dresses

If your filter pages are BLOCKED from the search engines, you’ll never have a page optimized for this search term, unlike our theme and filter tech.

Imagine how much traffic your store is missing out on right now!

#3 – JavaScript Shopify Product Filters

Not one of the most common solutions being used for sidebar filters, again, these are great for UX but terrible for the search engines as they don’t generate any URLs whatsoever. The store’s ‘collection’ and ‘product’ pages are therefore the only pages that can be optimized, missing out on a vast amount of potential traffic.

There have only ever been three options for Shopify store owners but now there’s a significant alternative with our unique theme and product filter tech.

How Do Our Shopify Product Filters Work?

Our unique, built-in product filter technology fully optimizes filter and collection page URLs, completely eliminating keyword and metadata conflicts.

As a result, these URLs can be unleashed in the search engines so that they can be crawled, indexed, and ranked as normal pages to help you maximize your organic visibility, rankings, traffic, and revenue.

Unlike any other solution or attempt we’ve seen, our technology allows you to create the most technically optimized filter pages ever possible with Shopify, significantly improving your Shopify SEO and organic visibility. They allow you to create:

• Unique, optimized URLs
• Unique, optimized meta titles [different from H1’s]
• Unique, optimized meta descriptions
• Unique H1 – H6 tags
• Unique, optimized, and indexable on-page SEO content
• Unique, optimized alt=tags

I’ve seen a few attempts at the odd word that is different in the ‘meta title tags’ from a few apps but none anywhere near the advanced level that our AAP® SEO Product Filters offer.

PLEASE NOTE: If you haven’t already – please watch my video at the top of this page where I demonstrate this in much more detail.

Conclusion

If you’re using product filter apps or are thinking of migrating to Shopify but you’re put off by this major issue…

You have a HUGE opportunity to significantly increase your organic visibility in the search engines with an enormous advantage over your competition by using our exclusive OS 2.0 theme and filter tech.

Our unique canonical programming technology completely eliminates ALL duplications across your store and typically increases your organic visibility by 1900%.

PLEASE NOTE: – Our theme and product filter tech are NOT AVAILABLE in the Shopify Theme or App Store as they require manual input, planning, configuration, and installation by our team of Shopify SEO experts, and, the filter tech only works with our own themes as its ‘built-in’ technology.

Because of the high level of SEO expertise required for each installation (which is why we do not sell this as an app in the store), our theme and filter technology is only available through RankHigherTheme®.

Trust me, the results are phenomenal. Read some of our reviews and case studies.