Keep your product catalog and internal links in shape

The Catalog and Links tabs of a brand in the SEO Tool show the products and pages your articles can name and link to. Use them to keep drafts accurate when stock changes and to give your product and collection pages more links from your blog.

Before you start

• Set up the SEO Tool and add your store as a brand: Set up the SEO Tool.
• To read products straight from your store, connect Shopify first: Connect your Shopify store. You can upload a CSV instead.

Why these tabs matter

The SEO Tool writes drafts that can name and link only products that can be bought right now, using their live titles and prices. A draft that names or links anything else is refused. If the catalog is out of date, drafts can be refused or can miss products you sell.

The catalog also watches your published articles. When a product an article features goes out of stock, is archived, renamed or disappears, that article gets a refresh ticket. The refresh proposes an in-stock alternative for you to approve.

Open the Catalog tab

1. In the sidebar, click SEO Tool. You can also go straight to the SEO Tool.

2. Under Brands, click your store.

3. Click the Catalog tab.

   

Four tiles at the top summarize your catalog:

• Products: how many products are in the catalog. If some were removed from the source, the tile says so and notes they are kept for history.
• In stock: products that may be named and linked.
• Cannot be sold: products that are out of stock, archived, draft or unpublished.
• Collections: linkable collection pages.

If the catalog has not been read yet, a red message tells you so. Until it is read, every product link in a draft is refused as "not in the catalog".

Choose where your products come from

The Source: Shopify card shows when the catalog was last read. If you use a CSV, the card names the uploaded CSV as the source instead.

1. In the source card, choose Shopify or CSV.
2. Click Save source.

With Shopify selected, the catalog is read from your store every 6 hours in the background and before every draft and refresh. Reviews, publishes and link proposals read it again if it is older than 6 hours.

To read it right away, click Read from Shopify now. This button appears only when Shopify is your source.

Upload a CSV

Use a CSV when you don't want the catalog read from Shopify. Only what you upload counts, so upload a new file whenever stock, titles or prices change. Pages and blog articles used for internal links still come from your store.

1. Under Upload a CSV, click CSV file and choose your file.
2. Click Upload and read.

Uploading makes the CSV this brand's catalog source.

Two formats work:

• Shopify's own product export (Products, Export), as it is.
• A simple format with a title, a handle or url, and available (yes/no, in stock/out of stock, a quantity, or a status). You can add kind (product or collection), price, currency, sku, vendor, product_type and collections, separated by semicolons.

To see an example of the simple format, open Template for the simple format.

Handle products that can't be sold

The Cannot be sold, still named in live articles section lists published articles that name or link a product your store can't sell. Each row shows the product and its state, the article, how the article uses it, and the ticket.

• Articles that feature the product (linked, in a heading, or named more than once) get a refresh ticket automatically.
• Articles that mention it only once are listed for you to decide. In that row, click Create refresh ticket.

The ticket column then shows the status, such as refresh planned, refresh done or refresh failed.

Follow refresh tickets

The Refresh tickets from stock changes section lists each ticket with its article, the reason, the week and the status. A ticket is a refresh slot in the Schedule tab with a reason that starts with "stock:".

Planned tickets are queued by the hourly sync and by Monday's plan. To queue them yourself, click Queue stock tickets now. This button appears only when at least one ticket is planned.

Each refresh lands in the review queue. Nothing changes on your storefront until you approve it. See Write, review and publish blog posts.

Read recent changes and items

Recent changes lists stock, title and listing changes the tool has noticed, with the live articles affected and the tickets created. The first read only adds items, so nothing is listed here until something changes later.

Items lists every product and collection, unavailable ones first. Each row shows its kind, state, price, stock and how many live articles name or link it. A product that doesn't track inventory shows "not tracked" under stock. The list shows up to 300 items.

Add internal links to your commercial pages

The Links tab shows the pages of your site that the SEO Tool may link to, and the product and collection pages that need more articles pointing at them.

1. In the SEO Tool, open your brand and click the Links tab.

2. In the Site pages card, click Refresh site pages.

   

   This reads your sitemap and your Shopify catalog. It also runs every hour in the background once your store is connected. Afterward the card shows how many pages are known, how many are commercial, and when the sitemap was last read. Search Console page totals arrive with the nightly Search Console sync. To set that up, see Connect Search Console and set a publishing schedule.

3. Look at Commercial pages still underlinked. It lists products and collections with fewer than two published articles linking to them, with their impressions and clicks over 28 days. Pages marked preferred and the most searched pages come first.

4. Check the Best article to link from column. It names the live article whose text already mentions the page, or says no published article mentions it yet.

5. In that row, click Propose link.

Proposing a link adds it to that article as a pending version. Nothing changes on your storefront until you approve it and publish the refresh. Every draft and refresh also gets three to five link suggestions in its review screen.

The SEO Manager agent also has an Internal Linker task that suggests links between your articles.

Troubleshooting

The catalog says it has not been read yet

If your source is Shopify, click Read from Shopify now. The background sync also reads it within the hour. If your source is a CSV, upload a file under Upload a CSV.

Links shows "No pages known yet"

Click Refresh site pages. If nothing appears, check that your store is connected and that its public site address is correct. See Set up the SEO Tool.

A product is missing from the catalog or shows the wrong stock

With a Shopify source, click Read from Shopify now. With a CSV source, upload an updated file.

Commercial pages still underlinked is empty

If it says to refresh the site pages first, click Refresh site pages. If it says every product and collection page has at least two published articles linking to it, there is nothing to add.