The Collection Description

First things first, what’s a collection description on a Shopify collection?

A collection description is a piece of text that appears below the collection title on a collection page. The collection description offers a description of the collection, the included products, and other relevant information.

How much impact do collection descriptions have on your SEO and rankings?

Collection descriptions may be the #1 most impactful piece of collection SEO. Often with Shopify stores, I work with, adding descriptions to their collections boosts their store’s rankings and increases their traffic from Google.

If you want Google to know more about your collection pages, you’ll want to ensure each has a collection description. Adding a collection description will give the body of your collection more content, helping your visitors and Google more easily understand what the collection is about

Here are three examples of collection descriptions. (Want to see more examples of collection descriptions with commentary? Check out these collection description examples.)

Antique Jewelry Mall’s Solitaire Engagement Rings Collection Description

The Chocolate Season’s Brownies & Bars Collection Description

SDG’s Disc Golf Discs Collection Description

Where do you add or edit a description for a collection on a Shopify store?

Adding a collection description to a collection is pretty simple.

Go to a collection page (or create a new collection page)
Enter your collection description in the ‘description’ field at the top of the page

If you add a description to a collection, save the collection, refresh the collection’s public page, and still don’t see a collection description, you might have descriptions turned off in the customizer.

Why are collection descriptions important? What are they good for?

Collection descriptions add a large amount of relevant content to the page, improving the experience for your visitors and giving Google lots more content.

If you want Google to understand better what a collection page is about, one of the best things you can do is to add a collection description to that collection.

Just ~50-75 words of additional content describing the collection and the products in that collection will do your SEO, keyword rankings, and customer experience a world of good.

The content in the description can help your visitors:

On top of that, collection descriptions are great places to include relevant secondary keywords.

What makes a collection description ‘good’?

Good collection descriptions do a few things well. (They don’t necessarily do all of these, but they at least do some).

First, good collection descriptions provide an overview and a good amount of content (without going into too much detail) of the collection and products. They’re like a retail store sign describing what to expect in an aisle.
Second, good collection descriptions include links to recommended products, related collections, or blog posts. Altogether, this content in the description helps visitors who land on this collection understand the context of the collection and what to check out next.
Third, good collection descriptions have ~50 – 125+ words of content. This isn’t a hard-and-fast rule and is more of a general guideline. You want enough content in your description to be helpful + valuable for visitors and help Google know what a page is about. And you want to stay short enough that you aren’t clogging up the screen. As a guiding light, your goal is to write for humans first and search engine robots second.)

Specifically, I recommend collection descriptions include:

50 – 125+ words
Describe the unique features and benefits of the products in that collection
Links to ~2-4 select + recommended products and ~1-2 recommended additional collections

When in doubt, look at what your competitors are doing for similar collections and emulate their strategy.

Your ‘do this, not that’ action plan for better collection descriptions

Ready to get started crafting high-quality collection descriptions for your top collections in your store? Here’s what I recommend you focus on:

First, pick your ‘top’ 3-5 collections

Crafting high-quality descriptions for every collection in your store at once is way too heavy of a lift. So, I recommend that you start with just your ‘top’ collections. What’s that mean? Well, you’ll want to pick your priority collections.

Once you’ve picked your initial ~3-5 collections, you’re ready to move forward to the next step.

Next, for each collection, write ~50-125+ word collection description

Explain what that particular collection is about and what the reader can expect. Share answers to any common questions.

Can it be longer? Sure, but you want to aim to have just enough content in your collection description so it isn’t overwhelming to a visitor. This is a description, after all — not an article. (You can, however, link to a blog post or page you write that goes into greater detail on that collection description with featured recommended products.)

More so, you can always come back and add more content later. So aim to get something in place that you optimize and refine in another ~3-6 months.

Include 1-2 in the collection description to recommended products in that collection

This approach has two significant benefits for your store.

Once you’ve finished with your first batch of collection descriptions, pick another ~3-5 new collections to work on

Your goal is to get collection descriptions for all the top-priority collections in your store.

What’s the bottom line on collection descriptions?

Collection descriptions are vital for collection SEO! Writing a ~50 – 130 word collection description for a collection might be the single most impactful optimization you can make to that collection.

Remember, the goal isn’t to have the perfect collection description. The goal is to have a better-than-average collection description. (If you have no collection descriptions, aspire to add a bit more content to the page.)

Ideally, you’re adding ~50-125+ words with a few links to recommended products or blog posts/content.
Maybe you include a short 1-2 sentence testimonial from a customer for some social proof and additional content. (e.g., “Their BBQ accessories are great, I’ve been a customer for 31+ years!” H. Hill.”)
But if all you can muster is ~30-50 words for some of the collection descriptions in your store? That’s fine too. Maybe you’ve ruthlessly prioritized. Or perhaps you’ve run out of steam. Either way, you’ve improved your store, which is the goal.

Now that you’ve finished reading this chapter on collection SEO, you can:

Read the previous chapter

The Collection Title (Page Headline)

Read the next chapter

Collection Description Examples

Or you can jump to one of these reader-favorite chapters:

If you want help growing your Shopify store, I encourage you to check out my Shopify SEO + Growth services.