URL rewriting causing problems
-
Hi
I am having problems with my URL rewriting to create seo friendly / user friendly URL's. I hope you follow me as I try to explain what is happening...
Since the creation of my rewrite rule I am getting lots of errors in my SEOMOZ report and Google WMT reports due to duplicate content, titles, description etc
For example for a product detail, it takes the page and instead of a URL parameter it creates a user friendly url of
mydomain.com/games-playstation-vita-psp/B0054QAS
However in the google index there is also the following friendly URL which is the same page - which I would like to remove
domain.com/games-playstation-vita/B0054QAS
The key to the rewrite on the above URLs is the /B0054QAS appended at the end - this tells the script which product to load, the details preceeding this could be in effect rubbish
i.e. domain.com/a-load-of-rubbish/B0054QAS and it would still bring back the same page as above.
What is the best way of resolving the duplicate URLs that are currently in the google index which is causing problems
The same issue is causing a quite serious a 5XX error on one of the generated URLs
http://www.mydomain.com/retailersname/1 -
, if I click on the link the link does work - it takes you to the retailers site, but again it is the number appended at the end that is the key - the retailersname is just there for user friendly search reasons
How can I block this or remove it from the results?
Hope you are still with me and can shed some light on these issues please.
Many Thanks
-
You can write canonical tags dynamically, but you need to canonical to the product specific page. Obviously, don't canonical every details.php page down to one. It could look something like this:
$prodDesc = "games-playstation-vita";
$prodCode = "B0054QAS";
$prodURL = "http://www.mydomain.com/".prodDesc."/".prodCode;
?>
I assume that the product description and code are generated from a database, so they should be available somehow to the header.
-
This is really tough to tell from generic examples, because the first thing you need to get at is the root of why these different URLs are being crawled in the first place. If "B0054QAS" is a unique product, why is it reachable by "playstation-vita", "playstation-vita-psp", etc.? That architectural problem has to be solved first, or any canonicalization is just a band-aid.
-
How would using the canonical tag work though - because I am using URL rewriting?
For example
mydomain.com/games-playstation-vita-psp/B0054QAS
is acutally something like details.php?=B0054QAS - so how would a canonical tag work in a dynamic template like above.
Because if I placed the tag below in the details.php page then I would need this to change dynamically based on the product - how can this be done?
http://www.mydomain.com/games-playstation-vita-psp/B0054QAS/>
Or would a 301 redirect be better to achieve the above?
Many Thanks
-
To work on the duplicate problem, i think the best option is the cannonical tag. You will need to include in every page (pages you want to be the official one) inside the head tag the follow:
where ww.example.com/index.html is your page adress.
Than, to block old pages that you don't want to be at google, you can use the robots.txt file. There you will use the disallow function.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Use existing page with bad URL or brand new URL?
Hello, We will be updating an existing page with more helpful information with the goal of reaching more potential customers through SEO and also attaching a SEM campaign to the specific landing page. The current URL of the page scores 25 on Page Authority, and has 2 links to it from blog articles (PA 35, 31). The current content needs to be rewritten to be more helpful and also needs some additional information. The downsides are that it has an "bad" URL- no target keyword and uses underscores. Which of the following choices would you make? 1. Update this old "bad" URL with new content. Benefit from the existing PA. -or- 2. Start with a new optimized URL, reusing some of the old content and utilizing a 301 redirect from the previous page? Thank you!
Technical SEO | | XLMarketing0 -
Which URL would you choose?
1 – www.company.com/subfolder/subfolder/keyword-keyword-product (I’m able to keyword match with this url) or 2. www.company.com/subfolder/subfolder/product (no url keyword match) What would you choose? A url which is "short" but still relevant, or, a url which is more descriptive allowing “keyword” match? Be great to get your feedback guys. Many thanks Gary
Technical SEO | | GaryVictory0 -
Is dash problem for seo?
My web site http://www.green-lotus-trekking.com is this problem for google search engine optimization? Some little percentage problem or totally I am in Confusion?
Technical SEO | | agsln0 -
Duplicate title tags being caused by upper case and lower case version of urls'
Hi GWT is reporting lots of duplicate titles for a clients new site. Mainly these are due to 2x different versions of the url, one with words starting with an upper case character and the other all lower case. Clients dev saying this has something to do with windows server and is ok! Is this correct or should i be telling them to delete and then 301 redirect all upper case versions to the lower case (since lower case better practice) and that will deal with the reported dupe titles ? All Best Dan
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Would you shorten this url, and if so how?
I designed the structure of my website way before I even thought about SEO. I run a website that requires me to categorize articles is somewhat deep nested categories so an example url would be as follows http://www.yakangler.com/articles/news/new-products/boats/item/1442-jackson-kayak-launches-the-big-tuna Would you shorten the url to somethign like this? http://www.yakangler.com/a/n/np/b/item/1442-jackson-kayak-launches-the-big-tuna If so how would you manage the redirects I'm unsure how to add a 301 redirect in my .htaccess file that wouldn't require me to add one for every single article. Could I do it with a rule that recognizes only the middle part of the url and redirect it accordingly? Thanks for any advice you might have!
Technical SEO | | mr_w0 -
301 Redirecting weird URLs with % in them
I've been working on redirecting links reported as 404 in Google webmaster tools. I've stumbled upon 41 URLs that Google is reporting as 404 that include a '%' in the URL, but I don't know how to redirect. Here is an example: URL: bond_information.htm%20Surety%20Bond%20Information,%20with%20FAQ Attempted redirect: redirect 301 /bond_information.htm%20Surety%20Bond%20Information,%20with%20FAQ http://www.mysite.com/ Unfortunately, after implementing the redirect, http://www.mysite.com/bond_information.htm%20Surety%20Bond%20Information,%20with%20FAQ still resolves a 404 error. Anyone successfully fix these errors using Apache .htaccess?
Technical SEO | | TheDude0 -
Difference between URL Rewrites and 301 Redirects for Rankings
What is the difference between URL rewriting and 301 redirects? Specifically if my home page is rewriting the www. version and the /index.html version rather than 301 redirecting them is this equivalent? Does it still pass the link juice on those alternate variations the same way a 301 redirect will?
Technical SEO | | rcarll0 -
URL Structure
Hi Guys, I'm in the process of creating a very exciting startup aimed at the baby industry. It's essentially a social commerce question where parents can shop for products, create lists of products and ask questions. The challenge I'm facing is how best to structure my URLs from an SEO standpoint. For example a common baby topic such as "feeding", can sit in all three categories: Shopping category aggregates all products related to feeding List category aggregates all lists related to feeding Question category aggregates all question and answers on feeding So for that keyword "feeding" you have 3 potential landing pages. What I was wondering is what is the most effective way of doing it? I was thinking of something along these lines: /shopping/feeding /baby_list/feeding /ask/feeding Would love to hear your points of view on this. Thanks! Walid
Technical SEO | | walidalsaqqaf0