Do product titles have to match SEO titles in Shopify?

Matching your product title with the SEO title depends on your product and what you do with the page.

Matching your product title with the SEO title sends a strong positive signal to Google. That's because your title tag will match your header tag (h1 usually) and any links to the page.

Think of these as mini votes that tell Google what the page is about.

However, this question is about more than just SEO.

The page title also

• describes what the product is to the customer,
• describes what the product is to your employees,
• appears in the search results on your website,
• may be trademarked,

and so on.

I usually recommend keeping most of your product title in the SEO title - positive signals and whatnot. If needed you can expand on it to provide more context. In the SEO title, you may want to refine the product title, add a qualifier, or maybe add a subtitle.

Let's say my product title is JSON-LD for SEO.

For most people, this means nothing as the title is unique to my product and may not hit the keywords customers use.

Refining the SEO title might look like: Shopify Apps: JSON-LD for SEO.

To add a qualifier, I may use: JSON-LD for SEO - a structured data app for Shopify stores.

Adding a subtitle would be: JSON-LD for SEO: The safest way to get Rich Results for your Shopify store.

The SEO title field in Shopify only changes the meta title tag and only shows up in the browser tab for that page and in Google Search.

This keeps your product name intact so your customers and employees can easily find the product. Adding some additional context for search queries is a bonus.

Notice how I'm avoiding the typical Etsy-style product names that are all about keyword stuffing. This tactic doesn't work outside of Etsy. If I were on Etsy, my product title may look more like Structured Data for Shopify, JSON-LD, SEO, Rich Snippets, Rich Results, Google, Shopping, JSON-LD for SEO and I could go on and on.

In the end, if your product title and SEO title can match, that's great and probably ideal.

If they don't match because you’ve created a better title for SEO purposes, also great.

Test out different options to see what works. And remember that Google's algorithms are constantly changing. So what works (or doesn't) today, may work tomorrow.

This advice applies equally to blog posts, collection pages, and Shopify pages too. They all work the same.

What I personally do is to use the matching version first. Then as a page becomes popular and attracts some SEO traffic, I may play with the SEO title to better target the traffic and keywords.