Translating your store isn't just product copy. Search engines read your page titles, meta descriptions, and URLs. Here's how SEO translation works in Shopify, and what it handles for you automatically.
Default or custom?
If you never customized a product's SEO title and description, Shopify builds them from the product title and description, so translating those covers it. If you wrote custom ones, they need their own translations.
- Default: Follows the translated title + description
- Custom: Needs its own translation
Translate URL handles
You can also translate URL handles, so a product URL reads naturally in each language. Automatic translation skips handles, so add them by hand for your most important pages.
- EN: /products/linen-wrap-dress
- FR: /products/robe-portefeuille-lin
- Note: Auto-translation skips handles
hreflang is handled for you
Shopify adds hreflang tags automatically for published languages on their own domain or subfolder, and lists every version in your sitemap. That tells Google which page to show to which shopper.
- hreflang: Added automatically
- Sitemap: Lists every language version
- Needs: A domain or subfolder per language
Doing this at scale
LinguaFlow translates SEO meta titles and descriptions along with your product copy, and shows every draft for review before it goes live. See LinguaFlow.