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Hi, hope you guys can help as I am going down a rabbit hole with this one!

We have a solid-ranking sports nutrition site and are building a new SEO keyword strategy on our Shopify built store.

We are using collections (categories) for much of the key product-based seo. This is because, as we understand it, Google prioritises collection/category pages over product pages.

Should we then build additional collection pages to rank for secondary product search terms that could fit a collection page structure (eg 'vegan sports nutrition'), or should we use blog posts to do this?

We have a quality blog with good unique content and reasonable domain authority so both options are open to us.

But while the collection/category option may be best for SEO, too many collections/categories could upset our UX. We have a very small product range (10 products) so want to keep navigation fast and easy. Our 7 lead keyword collection pages do this already. More run the risk of upsetting ease/speed of site navigation.

On the other hand, conversion rate from collection pages is historically much better than blog pages. We have made major technical upgrades to the blog to improve this but these are yet to be tested in anger.

So at the heart of it all - do you guys recommend favouring blog posts or collection/category pages for secondary high sales intent keywords?

All help gratefully received - thanks!

Hi Moz folks, would love your thoughts on benefits of Shopify collection pages v blog posts for ranking secondary shopping keywords not suitable for existing shop pages - all help gratefully received, we are going down a rabbit hole on this one and need some sanity!

So, we’re updating our site which already has a reasonable seo foundation and are looking to rank better for key shopping search keywords in our space (d2c sports nutrition).

My question is should we prioritise store collection pages (category pages in Shopify terms) or blog posts for some of the main keywords not already covered by our core in-store collections/categories?

Priority keywords already covered are things like protein powders, protein bars, energy drinks, etc.

As context, we have a small product catalogue (10 products) and for easy navigation on site have these grouped into 7 collections/categories in the main menu and available from the homepage. All are quality high volume and high intent shopping keywords for our business.

The secondary terms we are now looking to add content for are things like marathon nutrition, vegan sports nutrition, etc so now ​need to choose if we create product collection pages for these, or use blog posts to do the work.

The advantage of collections, we believe, is that Google is likely to prioritise these in search. The disadvantage from a UX point of view is that more categories in store could make our simple and clear product range (10 products only) look complex or repetitive.

Conversely, a blog post removes any UX confusion with too many categories, but we have a conversion rate issue with our blog. It performs well in search, but conversions are poor. We have addressed this with a new keyword targeting strategy and blog customisation, but we have yet to test this so while in theory it should work well, we do not know for certain.

In summary: we want to rank key shopping keywords beyond our core ones we have - would you advise we use blog posts or product collection pages?

All help gratefully received - thanks!

Warren

Thanks so much for the clear and helpful response. Amending the links is easy enough for us to do, we'll get to it.

Hi, we have recently changed our brand name after 7 years and have changed our root domain to match (33shake.com since 2012, now 33 fuel.com)

The site is the same (no migration to a new one) as there were no other business changes apart from the name/domain.

301 redirects are looking after all former 33shake.com links, which are now being redirected to their new 33fuel.com equivalents (slugs are the same in 99% of cases).

My question is:

We have a lot of backlinks for our old domain (33shake.com) on our own content via our YouTube channel (100+ videos) and also our podcast (64 episodes in, broadcast on 10 platforms).

For maximum SEO benefit as we continue to restore domain authority, etc to 33fuel.com, are we best to leave these historical backlinks pointed at the old domain and let the redirects pick them up when people click? Or are we better off swapping all of these old historical backlinks so they point directly to the new domain?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated, this is quite a maze we are now picking our way through!

Warren

Hi, hope you guys can help as I am going down a rabbit hole with this one!

We have a solid-ranking sports nutrition site and are building a new SEO keyword strategy on our Shopify built store.

We are using collections (categories) for much of the key product-based seo. This is because, as we understand it, Google prioritises collection/category pages over product pages.

Should we then build additional collection pages to rank for secondary product search terms that could fit a collection page structure (eg 'vegan sports nutrition'), or should we use blog posts to do this?

We have a quality blog with good unique content and reasonable domain authority so both options are open to us.

But while the collection/category option may be best for SEO, too many collections/categories could upset our UX. We have a very small product range (10 products) so want to keep navigation fast and easy. Our 7 lead keyword collection pages do this already. More run the risk of upsetting ease/speed of site navigation.

On the other hand, conversion rate from collection pages is historically much better than blog pages. We have made major technical upgrades to the blog to improve this but these are yet to be tested in anger.

So at the heart of it all - do you guys recommend favouring blog posts or collection/category pages for secondary high sales intent keywords?

All help gratefully received - thanks!

Hi, we have recently changed our brand name after 7 years and have changed our root domain to match (33shake.com since 2012, now 33 fuel.com)

The site is the same (no migration to a new one) as there were no other business changes apart from the name/domain.

301 redirects are looking after all former 33shake.com links, which are now being redirected to their new 33fuel.com equivalents (slugs are the same in 99% of cases).

My question is:

We have a lot of backlinks for our old domain (33shake.com) on our own content via our YouTube channel (100+ videos) and also our podcast (64 episodes in, broadcast on 10 platforms).

For maximum SEO benefit as we continue to restore domain authority, etc to 33fuel.com, are we best to leave these historical backlinks pointed at the old domain and let the redirects pick them up when people click? Or are we better off swapping all of these old historical backlinks so they point directly to the new domain?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated, this is quite a maze we are now picking our way through!

Warren