How to Use Shopify Product Handles to Boost Store Rankings

An object handle is used to identify individual pages or products. The object handle of a Shopify product is essentially the name of the product. This can be found in the URL and is everything following "products."

Apart from hreflang tags and custom filters, a well-thought-out object handle will help search engines identify the product and will assist customers in finding what they're looking for.

How to Edit Shopify Product Handles

Editing the object handles of a product in Shopify can be easily achieved by following the steps below:

1. From the Shopify Admin page, head to Products > All products.
2. Select the product whose handle you wish to edit.
3. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and locate the Search engine listing preview box.
4. In the top right of the box, select Edit website SEO.
5. At the bottom of the expanded box, select the URL and handle field.
6. Edit the handle according to your preference.
7. If this is a pre-launched product, you may want to select the Create URL redirect box to avoid broken links on your site.
8. Select Save.

Best Practices for Effective Shopify Product Handles

Although product handles have had less of an impact on SEO in recent years since Google realized how easy they were to change, they still play a role.

Structuring a product handle correctly could boost traffic and sales between 10% and 20%, which is why the following practices should be considered:

• Keep the handle concise but descriptive.
• Include Keywords but don't keyword stuff.
• Use hyphens to separate words.
• Eliminate stop words such as "the, and, or, of, a, an, to, for," etc.
• Object handles are case-sensitive; always use lowercase letters.
• Make sure you redirect old URLs to prevent broken links.