Thomas, a JSON-LD for SEO and Shopify SEO: Simplified customer had a great question about titles, headlines, and how they work in SEO.
You and Kai talk about Headlines in the 3rd chapter, but I don't see any Headlines field on the Shopify page where I could actually input information.
To me, Page Title and Page Headline seem to be one and the same. Any clarification here would be much appreciated!
I'm going to start with a bit of background on HTML. You won't need to write HTML but understanding it a bit will help you see how Shopify is turning the data in their forms into the final result on your page.
Headlines mean HTML header tags which are the <h1>, <h2>, <h3>..., <h6> tags. The largest is h1 and h6 is the smallest.
Page titles are the <title> tags and are different.
In a Shopify product the product title is used as both:
-
Part of the page title. Usually the page title is also includes your store name. These appear in the browser tab and as the big blue link in the Search Results
-
As the h1 tag.
For example, I have a product with the product title of Awesome Concrete Shirt (don't laugh at the product name ;) )
On the product page for that product, the PAGE title is:
Awesome Concrete Shirt - Little Stream Software Dev
Which is the:
[Product title] - [Store name]
Then on the page, there's a h1 header with just the product title.
That's what Shopify does out of the box, but there's more you can do which is what Kai and I were recommending.
First, at the bottom of the product administration area (where you entered the title, description, etc) there's an area called Edit website SEO.
In here is a way to set a custom PAGE title for that product.
It won't change the PRODUCT's title, only what is used for the PAGE title. This would change what's shown in the browser tab and (maybe) in the search results. Shopify shows a preview for it so you can see what it'll be like.
The second thing Kai and I were recommending is to use additional headline/header tags directly in your product description.
To do this,
- type the headline text in the description
- select it with your mouse
- and click that button with the A and a dropdown.
You don't want to use the Heading 1 because your product title already uses that, but the Heading 2 and 3 are good ones.
Save the product and then look at it on your storefront and you should see that the text you entered shows up bigger and bolder.
Shopify collections, pages, blog posts, and your homepage all work similarly. The title or name of them are used in the page title and the h1 header tag, you can customize the page title with the Edit website SEO, and you can add additional header tags into the descriptions of the collection, page, and blog posts.
Page titles and headlines are just one of the subjects Kai and I cover in Shopify SEO: Simplified.
Shopify SEO: Simplified is 3-hour audio training course that teaches you what you need to know about Shopify, SEO, and how to get traffic to your store.
Every JSON-LD for SEO Plus+ account comes with a copy, along with all the other benefits of the Plus+ account.
If you're looking for information about how to do SEO with Shopify, it's definitely a resource to get.
Eric Davis