Most Shopify stores treat blog content and the product catalogue as two separate systems that happen to live on the same domain. The blog gets written for SEO traffic, the collections get built for conversion, and the two rarely link to each other in any deliberate way beyond a generic “Shop Now” button in the main menu. That’s a missed opportunity, and it’s also why a lot of Shopify blog content ranks reasonably well for informational keywords but never actually moves the needle on collection or product page rankings, or on revenue.
Internal linking is how you tell Google (and your customers) which pages matter most, and it’s how you pass authority from the content that naturally attracts links and traffic, blog posts, guides, buying advice, through to the commercial pages that need it: your priority collections and products. Done properly, it turns a blog into a genuine acquisition and conversion asset instead of a content graveyard sitting under /blogs/news/.
This post covers what Shopify’s default navigation can and can’t do for internal linking, how to add proper contextual links inside blog posts and product descriptions, how breadcrumbs and related products contribute, and a practical framework for auditing whether link equity is actually flowing to the pages you want to rank.
Why Shopify’s default navigation isn’t enough on its own
Shopify’s built-in navigation, managed under Online Store > Navigation, is genuinely useful but structurally limited. Out of the box, most themes support a two-level dropdown menu, a top-level item with a flat list of sub-items beneath it, and a separate footer menu. That’s fine for a store with a handful of collections, but it breaks down for a catalogue with real depth: multiple product categories, sub-categories, and a blog with dozens of posts across different topics.
A few practical limitations worth knowing:
- Menu depth. Standard Shopify menus typically only render two levels well in most themes without a mega menu app or custom theme development. Anything deeper gets awkward or invisible.
- Menus link to hub pages, not context. Your main menu can link to a “Skincare” collection, but it can’t explain to a first-time visitor why that collection matters, or connect it to related buying guides. That’s what contextual, in-content links are for.
- The blog is usually orphaned from commercial navigation. Blog posts often only link back to themselves (via the blog index) and rarely appear anywhere in the main menu, which means they’re relying entirely on their own content, and any internal links you manually add, to connect to the pages that make money.
This is exactly why navigation menus alone don’t constitute an internal linking strategy. They handle top-level wayfinding; they don’t build topical relationships between content.
The topical silo model: blog posts supporting collections and products
A useful mental model is the silo: group your blog content by the collection or product category it’s meant to support, and make sure every post in that group links back to the collection (and where relevant, specific products) it exists to drive traffic toward.
For example, imagine a Shopify store selling running shoes with a “Trail Running Shoes” collection as a priority commercial page. A well-built silo around it might include blog posts like “How to Choose Trail Running Shoes for Australian Conditions,” “Trail vs Road Running Shoes: What’s the Difference,” and “Best Socks to Wear with Trail Running Shoes”, each one written to rank for a genuine informational search, and each one linking contextually to the Trail Running Shoes collection (and to specific stand-out products within it) at the point in the content where that link is actually useful to the reader, not bolted on at the end.
The commercial value of this structure is twofold: it gives Google a much clearer signal about which pages are topically related and worth ranking together, and it gives readers an obvious next step from “I’m researching this” to “here’s where I buy it”, which is a genuine conversion path, not just an SEO tactic.
Adding contextual links inside blog posts
In Shopify’s blog editor (Content > Blog posts, or Online Store > Blog posts depending on admin version), the rich text editor lets you highlight any text and add a link via the toolbar link icon, pointing to an internal collection, product, or page URL. This is the simplest and most common way to add contextual links, and it should be the default for most merchants, no code required.
A few things worth getting right:
- Link on genuinely relevant anchor text, not “click here” or the collection name in isolation every single time. If a sentence naturally mentions “our range of trail running shoes,” link that phrase rather than adding a separate, unrelated sentence just to fit a link in.
- Link deep, not just to the homepage or top-level collection. If a blog post specifically discusses waterproof trail shoes, link to a filtered collection or specific product where one exists, not just the broad “Shoes” collection.
- Don’t over-link. A 1,500-word post with fifteen internal links reads as spammy and dilutes the value of each individual link. A handful of well-placed, genuinely useful links per post is more effective than maximum link count.
- Check links after theme or URL changes. If you ever restructure collection handles or migrate platforms, in-content links inside blog post body text don’t automatically update, they need to be checked and fixed manually, which is a common source of broken internal links on older Shopify stores.
For developers working directly in theme code, contextual product or collection links can also be built dynamically inside custom blog templates using Liquid, for example, pulling related products via a metafield reference on the blog article and rendering them with {{ block.settings.product.url }} inside a custom section, rather than relying purely on manually inserted links in the rich text body. This is more advanced but useful for stores publishing at volume, where manually linking every post doesn’t scale.
Product descriptions work the same way in reverse: the rich text editor on a product page (Products > [product] > Description) can link out to a relevant blog post, a sizing guide, a care guide, a buying guide, giving customers who land directly on a product page (from ads or search) a path into supporting content that can help them convert, and giving that blog post an inbound internal link from a high-authority commercial page.
Breadcrumbs, related products and “shop this” links
Beyond manually placed content links, several structural elements do internal linking work automatically, and it’s worth checking your theme is actually using them properly:
Breadcrumb navigation (Home > Collection > Product, typically shown near the top of a product or collection page) reinforces site hierarchy for both users and search engines, and most Online Store 2.0 themes render this natively or via a simple breadcrumb section/snippet. If your theme doesn’t show breadcrumbs at all, that’s worth raising with whoever built or customised it, it’s a small addition with a real structural benefit, and it typically carries BreadcrumbList structured data automatically in modern themes.
Related products (“You may also like,” “Customers also bought”) are commonly powered by Shopify’s native product recommendations, available to themes via the {% recommendations %} Liquid tag or the Search & Discovery app on newer setups, which uses Shopify’s own recommendation logic rather than requiring a third-party app. This creates automatic internal linking between related products without manual work, but it’s worth checking it’s actually configured, since some older or heavily customised themes never had it switched on.
“Shop this” links from blog to collection are less automatic, this is usually a deliberate content decision, either a simple in-text link as described above, or a dedicated content block (sometimes via a metafield or app block) placing a “Shop the [Collection]” button at a natural point in the post, commonly after the point where the content has made its case. This is one of the more overlooked ways to convert blog traffic, since a reader who’s just read 800 words about choosing the right product is a warmer lead than someone landing cold on a collection page.
This is the layer where a lot of Shopify stores fall short, not because the mechanics are hard, but because writing content that’s genuinely structured to link to the right commercial pages, at the right point, with the right anchor text, is a content strategy skill as much as a technical one. It’s the kind of gap our Shopify copywriting and content work is specifically built to close, writing blog and product content with the internal linking structure planned in from the start, rather than added as an afterthought.
A practical framework for auditing internal link equity
Before adding more links, it’s worth understanding where your current link equity is actually flowing. A simple audit process:
- List your priority pages. Identify the collections and products that matter most commercially, highest margin, highest intent, or strategically important for growth. Be honest about which pages actually deserve internal link investment; not every product needs equal attention.
- Count current internal links to each priority page. A site crawl tool (Screaming Frog is the common choice, or Ahrefs’ Site Explorer if you’re already tracking the domain) will show how many internal links currently point to each URL. Google Search Console’s Links report also shows internal link counts per page, for free.
- Find orphan or under-linked pages. Any priority collection or product with very few internal links pointing to it is a red flag, it’s relying almost entirely on navigation menus and sitemap inclusion to be found, with no contextual signal reinforcing its importance.
- Map existing blog content to priority pages. Go through your published posts and note which ones should logically link to which collections or products, and check whether they actually do.
- Identify content gaps. Where a priority collection has no supporting blog content linking to it at all, that’s a signal for what to write next, not just for link equity, but because it usually means there’s no content answering the questions customers have before buying from that collection.
- Fix and prioritise. Add missing contextual links first to the highest-priority pages, rather than trying to fix everything at once.
FAQ
How many internal links should a Shopify blog post have?
There’s no fixed number, but a useful guide is: enough to be genuinely helpful to the reader, not so many that it reads as manipulative. A 1,500-2,000 word post might reasonably include three to six internal links, to relevant collections, products, and other supporting blog content, placed where they’re actually useful rather than clustered at the end.
Does Shopify support automatic related products without an app?
Yes. Shopify has native product recommendation functionality accessible to themes via Liquid (the recommendations object) or through the built-in Search & Discovery app, which doesn’t require a paid third-party app for basic related-product functionality, though some merchants use apps for more advanced merchandising rules.
Can I add internal links inside product descriptions, not just blog posts?
Yes, and it’s underused. The rich text editor on a product description supports the same link tool as blog posts, so you can link out to a relevant buying guide, size chart, or care instructions article directly from the description.
What’s the difference between navigation menu links and contextual content links for SEO?
Navigation links (main menu, footer) are structural and appear identically on every page, which Google discounts somewhat as boilerplate. Contextual in-content links, placed naturally within relevant text, carry more topical relevance because they’re specific to that page’s content, which generally makes them more valuable for both users and search engines.
Do I need to rebuild my theme to fix internal linking?
Usually not. Most of the internal linking fixes covered here, contextual links in blog posts and product descriptions, checking breadcrumbs and related products are switched on, don’t require custom development. Custom Liquid work is only needed for more advanced setups, like dynamically pulling related content into custom sections at scale.
Next step
If you want a clear picture of which of your priority collections and products aren’t getting enough internal link support, that’s a core part of what we look at during a Shopify SEO audit. Alternatively, if you’d rather talk through your content and linking strategy directly, you can book a call with our team.
