If you've recently migrated your website or you're just looking to perform a quality control check of your Shopify website, then run a broken links report. This report will allow you to crawl your entire site and the crawler will check through all links on all pages. This means images, embedded URLs linking to related products or even links in your descriptions linking to other pages or external pages. This will allow you to fix broken 404 links which is great for keeping your Google Rank healthy.

This is also a very important quality control check that we perform during and after our website migrations. We help companies migrate to Shopify and retain their existing SEO Traffic, Rank, and Authority.

Crawling Shopify For Broken Links

Step 1: Open Screaming Frog and enter the URL to the website you want to crawl and click "Start".

shopify broken links crawl 4

Step 2: Once the crawl is complete go to the "Response Codes" tab, then filter to "Client Error (4xx).

shopify broken links crawl 2

Step 3: Highlight the results in the top window that you want to see the broken links for. You can click on one at a time or highlight multiple to export to a spreadsheet.

shopify broken links crawl 3

Step 4: Click on "Inlinks" or "Outlinks" to filter the broken link types. Inlinks are the links on the page that point to other internal pages on the website. Outlinks are the broken links that are pointing to an external link.

The crawler is hopping all of these links to see what the status code is. If the code comes back as 404 (Broken Page) then you will see the links in this list.

If you need help migrating your website and keeping your existing Google Traffic, Rank, and Authority

If you're migrating your website and are looking for a way to check to see if your 301-Redirects that you put in place are working, then follow these steps below to check for 404 error codes.

As with any migration you should have already migrated each page 1:1 to the new platform you're migrating to. On the new platform, you would add 301-Redirects from the Canonical URL > New URL. In the case of Shopify migrations, the New URL is the page handle. You will need a spreadsheet of the original URLs for this method so the crawler can access that old URL and follow the 301-Redirect hop to the final destination in which is will report back if the page is valid (200 Code) or broken (404 Code).

  • Step 1: Open Screaming Frog.
  • Step 2: In the menu find "Mode" and click on "List".
screaming frog 301 redirect step 1
  • Step 3: In the menu find "Configuration" > "Spider" > "Advanced" tab > Tick "Always Follow Redirects" and click "Ok".
screaming frog 301 redirect step 2
  • Step 4: Compile a list of your OLD Site URLs into a spreadsheet.
  • Step 5: Click Upload at the top and select "From a File".
screaming frog 301 redirect step 3 1
  • Step 6: The crawler will run and once at 100% go to the menu and find "Reports" > "Redirects" > "All Redirects" and the report will download.
screaming frog 301 redirect step 4
  • Step 7: In the report, you will find the original "Address", "Final Address" which is the final hop to the new website URL, and most important is the "Final Status Code" / "Final Status". These fields will tell you if the page hopped to a broken 404 page.
screaming frog 301 redirect step 5

If you're trying to capture all the external URLs like YouTube, links to other websites, or other calls to external sites that are happening from your front end website, then follow these steps to see all external URLs on-site in a spreadsheet.

  1. Open Screaming Frog.
  2. Type in the full URL to the website you want to crawl.
  3. Once the website is crawled 100% then in the Overview tab in the right-hand side pane, under "External" click "HTML" filter.
  4. Then in the results sort the "Address" field to organize the common websites together (to easily read).
  5. Highlight all items or just the websites you want to export to a spreadsheet (click the first one and then Shift-Click to highlight.
  6. Click Export
How to capture youTube video links on site.

You will now have a spreadsheet that shows the "From" page which is the page on your website the External URL is located. Then you will see "To" which is the External URL address that your page is linking/calling out to.

If you're providing access to your Google Search Console account, then follow these steps below. There are a few things to know, depending on if you already have an existing property setup in Search Console or not.

If you already have a domain property setup in Search Console

  • Log in to Google Search Console
  • In the upper left-hand corner of the admin, select the correct domain property that you want to provide access to.
  • Then in the left-hand navigation, click on "Settings."
  • Now click on "Users and permissions."
  • In the upper right-hand corner, click on the button "Add User."
  • Enter a valid Google Email Address and select permission (Full is Prefered for Pelican Commerce projects).

If your providing access to Pelican Commerce for Sitemap Submission, then use email address [email protected].

If you do NOT have Search Console setup - New Setup

  • Log in to Google Search Console
  • If you have any domain properties setup, then you will automatically land on one of your existing domains. In the upper left-hand corner of Search Console, click the drop-down menu to display all your domains and then select "Add property."
  • If you do NOT already have any domain properties setup, then you will arrive at the same place that clicking on "Add property" would take you.
  • On the left-hand side, you'll type in your root domain into the "Domain" area, NOT the URL Prefix area.
  • Click the "Continue" button.
  • If you are auto verified, then you'll receive a notification saying that you were auto verified and all set. If this is the case, skip ahead.
How To Provide Access To Google Search Console blog
  • When the verify domain ownership via DNS record pops up, click the copy button on the right-hand side.
  • Provide this site-verification text to your Pelican Commerce project manager.
  • Once Pelican Commerce adds the verification text to your domain name records, you'll return to Google Search Console to click the "Verify" button.

Providing Access To Search Console

  • Log in to Google Search Console
  • In the upper left-hand corner of the admin, select the correct domain property that you want to provide access to.
  • Then in the left-hand navigation, click on "Settings."
  • Now click on "Users and permissions."
  • In the upper right-hand corner, click on the button "Add User."
  • Enter a valid Google Email Address and select permission (Full is Prefered for Pelican Commerce projects).

If your providing access to Pelican Commerce for Sitemap Submission, then use email address [email protected].

If you're looking for a full .csv export of the URLs indexed on Google for your domain, then follow these steps below. This information is especially useful when re-platforming to Shopify or any platform. All URLs from this index should be redirected to the new page URL to ensure you don't lose your existing website traffic.

Downloading Indexed URLs (Google Search Console)

  • Login to Google Search Console
  • In the upper left-hand corner of the screen, make sure you’re looking at the right website by selecting the correct domain from the drop-down.
  • In the left-hand navigation, click on “Links.”
google search console links navigation
  • You’ll now see a few different blocks with data. Look for “Internal Links” and click the “More” link in the lower right-hand corner.
google search console internal links area
  • On the Internal Links page, you’ll see in the upper right-hand corner a download arrow. Click the arrow and then select “Download CSV”.
google search console export internal links menu
  • You’ll now have the .CSV file download of all URLs Google has indexed for your domain name.
google search console exported interal links

If you're using this information to quality control, check your migration to Shopify, then check out our How To Quality Control Check 301-Redirects After Migrating To Shopify blog post for more detailed steps on 301-Redirects and retaining your existing SEO authority/rank.

If you're migrating your existing website to Shopify, then you're going to want an SEO Migration strategy. This is to be sure you retain your current SEO traffic. Our focus when migrating E-Commerce websites is on keeping existing traffic and making sure all URLs flow smoothly to the new pages on Shopify.

Migrating ALL Pages To Shopify

The key to a successful migration is to migrate all existing pages to Shopify. This includes product detail pages, collection landing pages, content landing pages, and blog pages. Essentially you need to migrate anything that Google has indexed because that is where your traffic will be affected if the URL is sent to a broken 404 page. The fewer 404 errors, the fewer pages that are killed from Google's index. If the pages flow correctly, then you will not lose your equity and traffic to those pages.

Every Page 301-Redirects

All pages must have 301 redirects from the existing URL path to the New URL path. This is important because a 301-Redirect tells search engines to change the address and move your current equity. It also automatically redirects a person that clicks on an old URL to the new page (so they don't even realize there is an original path; they just get the right page). The old path must be the exact "Canonical URL" which is the indexed path on search engines where the rank

Embedded Images & Metadata

Any embedded images or PDFs need to be migrated to the Shopify CDN (Files Area in Settings) and then re-embedded to the content page. Each asset also needs a 301 redirect, and any alt-metadata on images need to be added back to the asset. The page metadata, including title and description, should be matched 100% on Shopify.

Downloading Indexed URLs (Google Search Console)

  • Login to Google Search Console
  • In the upper left-hand corner of the screen, make sure you're looking at the right website by selecting the correct domain from the drop-down.
  • In the left-hand navigation, click on "Links."
google search console links navigation example
  • You'll now see a few different blocks with data. Look for "Internal Links" and click the "More" link in the lower right-hand corner.
google search console internal links area example
  • On the Internal Links page, you'll see in the upper right-hand corner a download arrow. Click the arrow and then select "Download CSV."
google search console export internal links menu example
  • You'll now have the .CSV file download of all URLs Google has indexed for your domain name.
google search console exported internal links example

Quality Control Checking 301-Redirects

Now that you have all pages created from your old site, 301-redirects added to Shopify, and you have a list of your indexed URLs. You're ready to check to be sure all pages have a 301-redirect. If you're not an excel expert, then you can check through these URLs by comparing the Shopify URL Redirects export to the Google Indexed URL export.

Pelican Commerce uses a tool to compare URLs in bulk to make sure there are exact matches. If there is not an exact match, we map any missing URLs found in Google Index to the Shopify URL Redirects area. All URLs must be added to Shopify to be sure traffic is flowing. Make sure you do not blanket redirect URLs to similar pages and do not blanket redirect to the home page. Google sees this as a soft-404, and that is just as good as a broken page in the eyes of the search engine.

Use a 404-Monitor

Once all Google Indexed URLs match a new page inside Shopify and have been added to the Shopify URL Redirect area, you're ready to run a 404-Monitor. After you launch your website, a 404-Monitor will start to run and check the OLD URL to see if the link returns a broken page code 404. Once the list comes back, you can then go manually map the handful of URLs to fix the broken NEW path. We like to use Transportr for just a couple of months (you can cancel the app after you have caught any broken pages).

301 Redirects Monitor

Recap The Process

  • Move all HTML pages from your existing website to Shopify.
  • Match all metadata, including image alt tag metadata.
  • Move image and PDF assets and 301-Redirect on the asset level.
  • Match the page metadata 100% and add a 301 redirect from the OLD URL to the NEW URL path.
  • Download your Google Search Console indexed URLs list for QA.
  • Check your Google Indexed URLs list against your Shopify URL Redirects list to be sure any Google indexed URLs are inside the Shopify URL Redirects area.
  • Install an app like Transportr and run a 404-Monitor to check for broken links (Once the website has been launched only).

If you need help with this process, then reach out to us anytime. We specialize in SEO Migration, which is a process of making sure you keep your existing SEO traffic when Replatforming your existing website to Shopify.

If you've decided to move to Shopify or you're concerned about losing your SEO Authority and Traffic when migrating your existing website to Shopify, then you're in the right place. This topic can ultimately be life or death of your website and business if you skip the specific tasks involved in retaining your traffic most commonly because some web developer just doesn't specialize in this type of migration. That is why we've created a service that addresses the migration process in full, so you can stop worrying about moving to Shopify. You can start getting excited about all the modern features, marketing, and overall experience upgrade you're going to offer your customers.

What Is SEO Migration?

Migrating your SEO simply means that your re-creating your website and all the signal factors on the new platform your moving to. This means a 1:1 page match, including all content, embedded images, assets, and metadata matching on the page level, heading tags, and asset alt-tag matching. But the most essential part of this is the 301-redirect. This tells Google where to change the address of the page, where the rank/authority will transfer to, and it keeps Google, your customers, embedded URLs on social channels, bookmarks, etc.. from heading to a broken 404 page when they try and access the URL.

Blanket Redirects To Home Page

Some agencies will simply redirect all your existing URLs to your home page, so there is no 404 error when someone is trying to access the page. This doesn't sound like a bad idea because people still get to your website and will then find what they want. But that is not true in most cases. The end consumer has a short 4-7 second attention span when they go to any website (Statistics Say), and it has always been that way with sites. So most people will just click off if the link they thought they were going to isn't exactly what they wanted.

But that is only one big reason not to do this. The biggest reason is that this will result in what is called a soft 404 with search engines like Google, which ultimately will completely kill your rank for that page and hurt your overall domain authority. Meaning this is just as good as just breaking the link in the first place.

What Happens If I Don't Migrate Properly?

The most common scenario we see small business owners doing is they hire a web agency, and they are told everything is being taken care of. So they have no clue that if this particular task is not completed, then they will lose all their traffic. In most cases, all of your pages on your website are indexed on Google. Those pages are continually changing in position on Google based on what the end consumer is searching for. The rank is tied to the specific URL of your product, content, or category page itself. If the signal factor (content) changes on the page and the location of the new URL is not redirected correctly using a 301-redirect, then Google will see the page on Shopify as a new page and treat it as such. In many cases, at that point, it appears as a duplicate page with duplicate content, which means it will not rank the same because it is not unique. This is where the trouble starts and becomes a problem when Google starts to take the original page in their index and then begins to remove those old pages along with all that free traffic you were receiving.

What Solutions Do You Offer?

We offer a full end-to-end white-glove migration service. This means we re-create all pages on your website on Shopify, we set up your theme, apps, products, collections, content pages, and blog posts and then migrate your orders and customers, bulk invite your customers, set up your store settings, and even set up your marketing tracking code and then launch your new Shopify store. If you're looking for a complete migration service by certified Shopify Experts, then reach out to us anytime.

If you're re-platforming from an existing website to Shopify, then there are many things to think about. Image migration is usually on the list. But, images are typically brought over with the product pages, content pages, and collection pages, but not the alt data, and 301 redirects for images.

We have found that some companies have high rank and high traffic images that lead to a conversion from Google Images. Yes, many people search Google Images and Bing Images for products. So how can you keep your traffic flowing, and how can you transfer the existing image URL Google Rank to the new URL with Shopify to retain your current traffic?

You'll Need To:

  1. Migrate the Image asset to Shopify
  2. Match the Alt Tag (Meta Data) from the old platform to Shopify
  3. Add a 301 redirect to Shopify for each images OLD PATH > NEW PATH (Shopify CDN URL)

How To Add 301 Redirects To Images

Inside Shopify, you can go into the "Online Store" area on the left-hand side of the admin screen. Click on "Navigation" and then "URL Redirects." Each image you are moving to Shopify that is indexed with search engines will need 301 redirects added. This may sound like Mission Impossible, but that's where Pelican Commerce can help using our bulk bot crawling and bulk uploading to Shopify methods.

Once you are in the "URL Redirects" area, you will be able to add a redirect. Adding the redirect is quite simple. You're just adding the path of the OLD URL and redirecting it to the FULL URL (Shopify CDN URL). Make sure to follow the example below. Otherwise, the redirect will not work. Do not add your domain name in front of the "Redirect from" URL.

How to 301 redirect images when replatforming to Shopify

Matching "ALT Tag" MetaData on Shopify

If your images have handcrafted "Alt" tags added to each image on your existing platform, then you will need to match that exact Alt Tag data on Shopify. To do this, you will capture the Alt Tag data from the existing image, head on over to your Shopify admin, click on products, and find the product where the image is located. Once you are on the product edit page, you will hover over the image that you want to add the Alt Tag to, and you will see"ALT" appear. Click on "ALT."

Shopify Edit Alt MetaData

Once you click on the ALT link, a popup will display on your page with the "Image alt text" area. Add the same alt tag metadata into this area and click save.

alt tag shopify

How Can This Be Accomplished In Bulk?

If you have a medium to vast catalog, then moving a high number of images will take a lot of time, which is why there are bulk tools with the Shopify API that allow 301 redirects and Alt MetaData to be imported. Keep in mind that 301 redirects can be added in bulk inside the native Shopify area "URL Redirects." You don't need an additional app for this. But you will need an additional app that allows for many datapoints like ALT Tags, and even bulk blog creation for blog migrations to Shopify. The primary app that covers more data points than any other is called Excelify, which you can find in the Shopify App Store.

How Can We Help?

We offer full-service migrations to help small businesses migrate from any platform to Shopify. We crawl and capture all rich product data, images, metadata, and bulk map 301 redirects for all assets to retain existing search engine rank. If you have a catalog or website that needs to be fully moved, and images that need to be migrated, metadata matched, and 301 redirects added, so you retain the existing traffic that your images drive to your website, then reach out to us today!

Moving to Shopify? Join the tens of thousands of companies making the switch to Shopify's modern, robust, and simplistic platform. If you have an existing website, then you will need to tell Google where your moving. An SEO strategy is required to be sure your current search engine traffic, embedded links, social links, and all other links across the internet don't break. This will help you retain your rankings, authority, and conversions by redirecting existing content and links to your new website. If this process is not accomplished correctly, then it can take 6+ months to work your way back up to where you were (if you're lucky)!

Our SEO Migration service is where we strategically map your OLD URL paths to your NEW URL paths. We migrate your existing meta title and description for every page on your website. Search engines like Google include you in their index, and if you create a new set of URLs, then those pages are looked at as "New," and all of your rank and authority is lost on your existing URLs. All of your link popularity, history, and authority will be lost, and significant loss in rankings and revenue. Trying to fix and recover your traffic takes significantly more time than creating a solid strategy before you make the switch to Shopify.

Who Needs It?

If you're an online e-commerce seller with a product database with your own direct sales channel on any platform, then you need to retain your existing SEO. Even if you don't have a lot of traffic and your moving to Shopify to grow your business, then don't start by destroying your reputation with Google. If you change your URLs and don't tell Google (even with no existing traffic), your growth on Shopify will be halted from day-1.

How We Can Help

We create bots, crawl, and capture your existing website data, content, SEO metadata and links, and migrate to Shopify or Shopify Plus. We perform a 1:1 page migration and put 301 redirects on all pages and then submit your site to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.

Why Is My SEO at Risk?

It's common to see small businesses hire a designer or developer that will put blanket redirects in place for all pages on their new Shopify store. This means the links will not break, but all traffic redirects to a single page like the home page. This significant change in your traffic to the same page will, in some cases, get you penalized by Google, or at a minimum, you will lose your rank for each page not correctly redirected.

All links on your site should be redirected from the OLD URL to the NEW URL on Shopify. If any links are skipped, then this action will break internal embedded links, social media links, links that Google has included in their index, and overall change your traffic and, as a result, lost revenue. 

Get ahead of this issue today and give us a call, and we'll create a solid strategy for you to retain your existing traffic and rank when re-platforming to Shopify. We have performed hundreds of these migrations with companies that have high traffic and high volume stores online. There is no magic formula, just a great process that we stick to, Google's process! We follow Google's path to re-platforming, and we do not use shortcuts. That is why our process works, and all migrations should include this process no matter who is moving your website to Shopify.

SEO Migration Service - Keep Your Current Search Engine Rank

Migrating your existing website can be a mission that many small business owners dread. One of the significant challenges when performing a migration is the URL structure that does not match when moving from your existing platform to Shopify. This will cripple your SEO rank and traffic that you currently have and quickly get you pushed down the page on search engines. But one commonly overlooked part of not doing this correctly is the years of embedded links on blogs, social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and embedded URLs on your website's content pages.

How to properly migrate your embedded social media links

Shopify has an area called "URL Redirects," and this is used to provide the search engine with a 301 code (permanent redirect) and to take the website visitor automatically to the proper page. This is how you tell search engines and users that the page has moved and that you did this intentionally. So yes, there is a way to keep your rank. However, it is not as easy as it sounds when you're dealing with hundreds or thousands of pages.

  1. Export a product data feed on your existing website admin area.
  2. Check the spreadsheet to see if the URL path to the product detail page for that product is available in the feed.
  3. If you see the URL, then capture everything after the ROOT domain name. e.g., This blog post is https://www.pelicancommerce.com/migrate-shopify-keep-embedded-social-traffic, and you only need: /migrate-shopify-keep-embedded-social-traffic/.
  4. Now you need to match up the NEW path on Shopify. e.g. /blog/migrate-shopify-keep-embedded-social-traffic/.
  5. Since Shopify has a different way of creating URL paths, you will most commonly need to create one for every URL on your website that needs to be redirected. (It is smart to at minimum redirect all that are indexed on Google).
  6. Log into your Shopify Store Admin > Online Store > Navigation > URL Redirects
Shopify URL Redirects

7. Enter the OLD URL PATH > NEW URL PATH

Shopify URL Redirects New Url and Old URL

8. Click Save redirect and you will see a confirmation if the path format is valid.

Shopify Redirects

This process can be completed in bulk by using the Import and Export links in the URL Redirects area.

How Pelican Commerce can help

We offer a migration service to help small businesses move their product data, content pages, blogs, categories, theme setup, and more. In this process, we bulk map OLD URL to NEW URL. We push a submission through Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools to keep your traffic when migrating to Shopify from any website platform on the internet.

Contact us today and let us help you migrate to Shopify the right way and keep your existing SEO traffic!

Over many years we have seen an increase in migrations to Shopify from existing e-commerce sellers. These businesses are trying to get off their old, clunky and outdated shopping cart platforms and onto the more connected, modern software that Shopify and a few other platforms offer. But as a business owner, the main question you ask when thinking about moving is, "How is this going to affect my existing business?".

Pros to moving to Shopify and jumping ship from your old platform

I was going to add some bullet points here, but they seem so cheesy because you already know what the benefits are if you have found this article. So let's jump into the crap you're going to have to deal with when moving.

Cons to replatforming to Shopify (or most platform)

  • Most of the time, transactional (or historical) data is lost because modern hosted platforms don't play well with importing this type of data.
  • Customers have to reset their password, and the account is mostly blank (there is just no way around this).
  • There is a period when making changes is not smart to your content as the new location of your URLs is soaked in by Google.
  • Each page needs to be moved 1:1 by matching the content on your existing site. Keep in mind this has nothing to do with the design of your pages or home page—just the content and metadata.
  • Embedded content like images, hard-coded links, etc. has to be updated by hand or bulk mapped to a server that only hosts these assets for the life of that embedded content. This is commonly overlooked when migrating the content of very well established sellers with large catalogs.
  • Many older systems can add custom fields for product data and have more fields for data in the admin. Moving an older website to Shopify is like stuffing 12 clowns in a tiny car. It's possible, but just accept that you're probably moving from a more bloated system to a more simplistic system.

What we can offer you in this process

We offer a full 1:1 migration service, which includes data crawling to ensure all your product data, images, content, and bulk 301 redirects on every single page are put in place in our Migration to Shopify service. The proper way to keep your existing SEO rank with Google, Bing, and other search engines is to move every single page and redirect each page to the new location using 301 redirects. Blanket Redirects are very bad and cause businesses to lose all their traffic. Perhaps not forever, but usually for 6+ months. If you want to retain your current rank, then this process is a must. Check out our Shopify SEO Migration Service and contact us for more info.

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