Keywords in URLs: Does It Matter?
Keywords in URLs matter a little for SEO, and far less than most store owners think. Google calls the words in a URL a very lightweight signal, used mostly before it has crawled the page. So put the keyword in the slug once on every new page, and leave the URLs that already work alone.
Below is what Google has said, what the data shows, and the Shopify rules that decide most of this for you.
Key Points
| Question | Short answer | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Do URL keywords help rankings? | A little | Google calls them a very lightweight factor, and Ahrefs measured a 0.034 correlation |
| Should new pages have one? | Yes, once | A readable slug helps the click and names the page’s job |
| Should you rename old URLs? | Almost never | A rename is a small migration, and the gain is one minor signal |
| Where do keywords matter more? | Title, H1, body, anchors | Those are the signals Google reads after it crawls the page |
Do Keywords in URLs Help Rankings?
Keywords in URLs help rankings a little, and the lift is small enough that Google itself tells you not to chase it. John Mueller called the words in a URL “a very very lightweight factor” in a March 2021 office hours video, reported by Search Engine Roundtable. He added that Google leans on it mostly “when we haven’t had access to the content yet.”
So the URL does its ranking work in the first hours, before Google has crawled the page. Once the content is indexed, Google has a title, headings, body copy, and links to read, and the slug drops to the back of the line.
What Google Has Said About It
Google has said the same thing about URL keywords for a decade, and the wording keeps getting weaker. In September 2022 Mueller wrote that keyword-stuffed URLs “won’t get penalized” and that stuffing “basically has no effect, positive or negative,” per another Search Engine Roundtable report. Mentioning the keyword is “a good practice,” he said, but “the effect is minimal” and chasing it is “often the wrong prioritization.”
That last line is the part I would tape to the monitor. The slug is a detail you get right in five seconds and never think about again, not a lever you pull when rankings stall.
What the Data Shows
The data puts the URL keyword near the bottom of every ranking factor list it appears on. Ahrefs’ January 2025 study of the top 1,000,000 US keywords found a correlation of 0.034 between keyword in URL and ranking, against 0.255 for referring domains. URL length came in at -0.107, so shorter URLs track with higher rankings more closely than keyword-bearing ones do.
Even so, a correlation that small still points the right way. The pages that rank tend to have readable slugs, and the readable slug tends to be the keyword, so the habit costs nothing and lines up with how many keywords one page can target: one page, one primary keyword, one slug that names it.
Why a Keyword Slug Still Earns Its Place
A keyword slug still earns its place for the reader, not the algorithm. Google’s URL structure guidelines ask for “readable words rather than long ID numbers” and words “in your audience’s language,” and the reason is the person deciding whether to click. A URL that says what the page is works like a street sign.
Also, that sign shows up in more places than the address bar. The slug appears in the search result, in a link pasted into a group chat, in a customer’s browser history, and in the anchor text people use when they link to you without writing their own. A slug like mineral-sunscreen-guide reads right in all of those, and p=4471 reads right in none of them.
Write the slug for the person who sees it with no other context. If the slug alone tells them what the page is, it is doing its job for Google too.
What Does a Good URL Look Like?
A good URL is short, plain, and permanent, and that is the whole checklist. Ahrefs’ same study found URL length correlates with rankings at -0.107, three times the size of the keyword effect, so the shorter address wins more often than the stuffed one. Short URLs are also easier to share, remember, and keep forever, so the incentives all point one way.
The house rules I use on every site:
- The slug is the primary keyword, nothing more: mineral-sunscreen-guide, not the whole title.
- Hyphens between words, all lowercase. Google recommends hyphens over underscores, and its URL handling is case sensitive, so Guide and guide are two different addresses.
- No dates, years, or numbers that will age. A slug like best-sunscreens-2024 is a URL with an expiration date.
- Drop the filler words a searcher would drop: the, a, for, how, to.
On top of those, write the slug at the moment you pick the keyword. When you confirm a target the way you would any low-competition keyword, the slug is that keyword with hyphens, decided once and never touched again.
And keep slugs boring on purpose. Clever slugs age badly, campaign slugs outlive their campaigns, and the boring version still reads fine five years from now. URLs are infrastructure, not copywriting.
Where Shopify Puts Your Keywords
Shopify puts your keywords in the handle, the last piece of the URL, and fixes everything in front of it. Products live at /products/handle, collections at /collections/handle, pages at /pages/handle, and blog posts at /blogs/blog-name/handle. You cannot remove those folders, and fighting them is wasted effort, so the handle is the only place a URL keyword goes.
Product and Collection Handles
Product and collection handles are generated from the title when you create the item, and you can edit them in the Search engine listing section of the product or collection. The problem is that a title-generated handle carries every word in the title. A product called “The Everyday Mineral Sunscreen SPF 50 (Unscented) 3 oz” gets a handle to match, and the fix is to trim the handle to the keyword on the day you create the product, before the page has any history.
The same move opens every collection page SEO job I do on Shopify: the collection handle is the keyword, and the title and H1 agree with it. Three signals saying one thing beats three signals saying three things.
Tags are the trap here. Shopify’s tags help page says outright that “tags aren’t used by search engines, so don’t use tags to try to improve search results,” and on many themes every tag spawns a /collections/all/tag-name URL that competes with your real collection. Those URLs are also where Shopify canonical problems start, since the same products answer at two addresses.
Blog Post URLs
Blog post URLs on Shopify follow /blogs/news/handle, and the “news” piece is the blog’s own handle. Rename the blog once, early, to something that reads like a section (/blogs/guides/ or /blogs/skincare/), and leave it alone after that. The post handle is the post’s primary keyword, same as a product.
Also, when you do change a post handle, Shopify’s blog post help notes that a “Create a URL redirect” option is pre-selected, so the old address redirects to the new one. The same page says that “in most cases you won’t need to” change the address at all. That covers the mechanics. It does not cover the ranking dip that comes with any rename, which is the next section.
Should You Rename Old URLs to Add Keywords?
No, you should almost never rename old URLs to add keywords. A rename is a small site migration: the old address holds your links, history, and rankings, and the new one introduces itself to Google through a redirect. Google’s site move documentation says the process can take weeks or more, with ranking fluctuation along the way, and the thing you bought with that risk is one minor signal.
The math only flips when the URL is actively bad: a meaningless ID string, a wrong topic left over from an old draft, or a dated slug on an evergreen page. Then rename once, redirect permanently, and fold it into a bigger cleanup, the way a site redesign already pays the migration cost. A Shopify migration is the other time it makes sense, since every URL is changing anyway.
If you do rename, never chain it. One old URL, one 301, straight to the new address, kept live for as long as the site exists. Shopify adds one more wrinkle: it only redirects from URLs that no longer load, so the old handle has to stop working before the redirect will, and the pre-selected option on the handle edit screen takes care of that for you.
A ranking page with an ugly URL is still a ranking page. Leave it.
Where Keywords Matter More Than the URL
Keywords matter more in the title, the H1, the body, and your internal anchor text than in the URL, in that order. Those are the signals Google reads after it crawls the page, and Mueller’s own line says the URL fades once that happens. The table is the order I work in on every page.
| Spot | Weight | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Title tag | Highest | Keyword near the front, under 60 characters |
| H1 | High | Agrees with the title and says the same thing once |
| First paragraph and headings | High | Answer the search in the first sentence, keyword included |
| Internal anchor text | Medium | Name the destination page, never “click here” |
| URL slug | Low | The keyword, hyphenated, set once |
| Meta description | None for ranking | Still write it, since it decides the click |
Still, the small signals stack. The case for a clean slug is the same as the case for writing meta descriptions: minutes of work, small wins that add up, and nothing lost by doing it. My Shopify SEO services start every engagement with the title, H1, and handle on each money page, since those three agree with each other on every page that ranks.
The test I give clients: if a page is not ranking, the slug is almost never the reason. Check whether the content answers the search, whether anything links to the page, and whether the title promises the right thing. Fix those and the URL question becomes what it always was, a detail.
Quick Questions About URL Keywords
Do Keywords in Domain Names Matter?
Keywords in domain names matter even less than keywords in slugs, and the same lightweight rule covers them. A brand name you can say out loud beats mineral-sunscreen-store.com, since the brand is what people will search once they know you, and a keyword domain caps you at one product line for life.
Should the URL Match the Title?
The URL should match the title’s keyword, not the whole title. A title can run 55 characters with a hook in it, while the slug is the three or four words at the center. If the two drift apart because you rewrote the title later, leave the slug alone and let the title carry the change.
Can Two Pages Share a Keyword in the URL?
Two pages can share a word in the URL, but two pages should not share the whole keyword phrase. Two slugs built on the same phrase usually mean two pages chasing the same search, which is keyword cannibalization wearing a URL as a costume. Pick one winner and point the other at a different query.
Want the Small Signals Cleaned Up the Right Way?
Keywords in URLs matter enough to get right on new pages and rarely enough to justify renaming old ones. Write short, plain handles from day one, leave working URLs alone, and spend the saved effort on titles, headings, and content, where keywords move rankings.
If you are looking at a store full of title-length handles and wondering which ones are worth fixing, book a call. I will go through them with you and mark the handful worth a redirect, so you get the cleanup without the traffic dip. If it turns into a bigger project, my Shopify SEO services pick up where the call leaves off.
Sources:
- Search Engine Roundtable: Google Says Words In A URL A Very Light Weight Factor
- Search Engine Roundtable: Google Won’t Penalize You Over Keyword-Stuffed URLs
- Ahrefs: Links Matter Less, But Still Matter (2025 correlation study)
- Google Search Central: URL Structure Best Practices
- Shopify Help Center: Product Tags
- Shopify Help Center: Working With Blog Posts
- Google Search Central: Site Moves With URL Changes
