The Shopify blogging platform is probably one of the most overlooked feature for Shopify. Most Shopify merchants know Shopify as THE ecommerce website builder, and spend most of their time fine tuning their product offering and various sales and marketing activities; totally neglecting the blog altogether.
For merchants who take note of the blog and wanted to start a blog for content marketing purpose, this usually starts with the “Shopify blog OR WordPress” research – which (in most cases) would lead them to even more questions about the Shopify blog.
While we don’t have a good answer for the “Shopify Blog OR WordPress” question (because it depends on your need and resources), this post aims to help you make a better decision by answering the most asked questions about the Shopify blogging tool.
1. Can I change my Shopify Blog URL structure?
ANSWER: You can’t
For those who are new to Shopify blog, here is how the Shopify blog URL structure looks like:
abc.com/blogs/[BLOG-TITLE]and this is how the blog article / post URL structure looks like:
abc.com/blogs/[BLOG-TITLE]/[ARTICLE-TITLE]Unlike WordPress where you can customize these structures, Shopify has these structures fixed (so – NO, you can’t change these URL structures), and many in the SEO community believe that this is bad for SEO generally.
Our take is that this is only a small factor that can’t be looked at in isolation, and it is far more important to choose a platform that you are familiar with, resourceful enough to manage and stay consistent in creating great content.
2. How to allow commenting on my blog articles?
ANSWER: You can use an app to do this.
One of the most asked features for Shopify blog is to allow customers’ comments as well as merchants to reply to customers’ comment.
While Shopify blog doesn’t have the commenting features built-in, there are a couple of Shopify apps you can use to activate this. Most of these plans come with either a free tier or a free trial so you can test and make sure to get the one most suited for your needs.
3. How can I insert products in my blog articles?
ANSWER: You can do this with apps (see below)
If you have build a blog that constantly draw traffic to your website, congratulations! It is logical then to want to insert related product(s) to all your articles to make sure the traffic is converted into sales.
The most traditional and manual way is to hyperlink key phases to the products.
But we are living in a high tech world, so why not look further to insert your products in a more pleasing, efficient and marketable way to improve conversion?
To do that, the only way possible now is to use app. You may check out apps below:
If you are comfortable with code and rather not use an app, check out this post on the Shopify forum.
4.Can I add tag filtering to my blog posts?
ANSWER: You can use the Blog Posts Articles Filter PRO app to do this.
For businesses utilizing the Shopify blog to create evergreen content like recipes, lookbook, guide etc, it is inevitable that this growing collection of content would eventually become too big and overwhelming.
Shopify blog has a built-in tag system, and some themes do come with a dropdown filter for your blogs. Unfortunately most of these remain rather static and not customizable. The best option is to use the Blog Posts Articles Filter PRO app (built by us) – which allows you to create multiple dropdown filters, categorized by any way you want. The app doesn’t come with customize options, but you can always reach out to us and we can help with that FOC.
5. How to migrate all my blog posts from WordPress to Shopify blog?
ANSWER: Manually, or try this app (use at own risk)
One of the most resource efficient way to run your Shopify site is to keep your blog within Shopify. For many, this means moving their existing content from WordPress to Shopify.
While there are apps that do this, we can’t personally vow for them. There are a lot of moving parts at play especially if your blog is already driving constant traffic, the last thing you want is to accidentally killing these traffic due to migration, and need to rebuild your Google rranking again.
Our advice: Speak to a Shopify expert / SEO expert – it’s worth it.
We hope this blog post help you clear off some of the questions you have, so you can make a better and informed decision when deciding which platform to use for your Shopify business 🙂