E commerce canonical links: include category structure?

[no6thgear]

I have a client on shopify.  All categories have correct canonical links.

however, the links from all menus, category pages, etc. follow this structure:

/collections/COLLECTION_NAME/products/PRODUCT_NAME

but the canonical link on the above product url is:

/products/PRODUCT_NAME

I have a feeling this is hurting our product detail page's seo.  Our collection pages are ranking fine, but for some reason the detail pages aren't.  It could be that they are deeper, but I am trying to make sure nothing big is causing it first before I get into the smaller factors.

Any best practices on this?

[no6thgear]

noone has an opinion or experience?

[Everett]

Hello no6thgear,

Generally speaking, product detail pages have a much more difficult time ranking for anything other than the specific product name/model. Even then, eCommerce sites are often going up against juggernauts like Amazon, Target, Walmart, eBay, or whoever the leaders are in your niche. If you're using any manufacturer/distributor product descriptions that are shared on other websites, or have a lot of products with "thin" content it will make ranking these pages much more difficult, if not nearly impossible.

That said, it IS best practice to link directly to the page instead of relying on rel canonical tags or 301 redirects, which treat them symptom and not the cause. If you can find a way to do this in Shopify I recommend it, though I'm not sure if it would be worth changing eCommerce platforms for if there are no other strong issues supporting the change.