To wire collections, product pages and blog posts together, give every product page a link to its collection and to one guide, give every guide links to the products it names, and give every collection links to its guide and its sibling collections. Those links, placed in the main content with descriptive anchor text, let a crawler follow your store as one subject instead of three separate piles of pages.
Most stores grow three separate worlds. The products describe themselves, the collections list products, and the blog talks about the topic. The guide that explains how to choose a running shoe never mentions the shoes on sale, and the shoe page never mentions the guide. A person can bridge the gap with the menu. A crawler sees a catalog over here and some articles over there.
Which links should every product page carry?
These are the four links we check on a product page. Each one belongs in the main content, next to the product, and not only in the menu or footer.
- A link to the collection the product belongs to uses the collection's name as the anchor.
- At least one link goes to a guide that helps a buyer choose, use or care for the product.
- Two or three related products are linked, each with a descriptive text anchor.
- A breadcrumb leads back to the collection, marked up as BreadcrumbList structured data.
Menu and footer links do not count here. They are the same on every page and say nothing about this product in particular, which is why a store whose menu links everywhere can look connected and still leave each product isolated.
Which links should collections and blog posts carry?
| Page type | Usually links to | Should also link to |
|---|---|---|
| Product (PDP) | Other products | Its collection and a relevant guide |
| Collection | Its products | An explainer article and sibling collections |
| Article | Nothing, or one product | The products and collections it discusses |
A collection links to its products already, through the grid. It also needs a link to the guide that explains the category and to its sibling collections, placed in the collection description. A blog post needs a link to every product and collection it names, at the point where it names them. Our guide to anchor text shows how to word each one.
How do I add these links on Shopify?
Start with the template, since one change reaches every product at once.
- In your Shopify admin, go to Products, open any product and scroll to the Metafields section. Click Add definition, name it "Primary collection", choose the Collection reference type and click Save.
- On each product, choose its main collection in that field. This avoids linking to a sale collection or to "All products" by accident.
- Go to Online Store > Themes, open the actions menu (the three dots) on a duplicate of your live theme and choose Edit code. In sections/main-product.liquid, paste the snippet below where the link should appear, such as under the price.
- To choose related products by hand, install Shopify's Search & Discovery app from the Shopify App Store and set related and complementary products for your best sellers. Most current themes show them in a product recommendations section.
- For each product, open the description and use the link button in the editor to link the guide that fits it, with a descriptive anchor such as "how to choose a trail running shoe".
- Open each guide on your blog and link every product and collection it names, at the sentence where it names them.
- Go to Products > Collections, open each collection and add a sentence to the Description that links its guide and one or two sibling collections.
{%- assign primary = product.metafields.custom.primary_collection.value -%}
{%- if primary -%}
<p>See all <a href="{{ primary.url }}">{{ primary.title }}</a></p>
{%- endif -%}How would a running store wire this up?
Take a running store on Shopify with a Trail running shoes collection, 24 shoes in it, and a guide called "How to choose a trail running shoe". The guide names three shoes for muddy trails. After the pass, each of those three sentences links to the shoe it names, and the guide links to the collection with the anchor "trail running shoes". Every shoe page links to "Trail running shoes" through the primary collection field, and to the guide with the anchor "how to choose a trail running shoe". The collection description links to the guide and to the Road running shoes collection.
The store now has a loop a crawler can follow in any direction, and the guide's advice sits one link away from the shoes it recommends. If some products still have no links in, an orphan page check finds them.
How common is the gap?
In our study of 216 Shopify storefronts (June 2026), 58 percent failed Mesh Integrity, our metric for whether a store's pages connect into a structure a machine can follow. The same study found a median AI Visibility Score of 46 out of 100. The Mesh explains the full structure, and topical clusters covers how the blog side is organized.
Common questions
Why should my products and blog posts link to each other?
When products and posts link to each other, a crawler reads them as one store. Without the links, it sees a catalog and a blog that have nothing to do with each other. The links also send readers of a guide straight to the products it recommends.
What links should a product page have?
A product page should link to its collection, to at least one guide and to two or three related products. All of them belong in the main content with descriptive anchors, and a breadcrumb should lead back to the collection.
Do menu and footer links count?
Menu and footer links repeat on every page, so they say nothing about one product. Count only the links in the main content of the page.
How many links should a blog post have to products?
Link every product and collection the post names, at the sentence where it names them, so a post that recommends three running shoes carries three product links.
Our Essential scan reads up to 100 pages of your store whenever you choose. It sends every finding with its fix, in order, including how your product pages, collections and guides link to each other.