Different breadcrumbs for each productpage
-
Hi all,
I have a question related to the breadcrumb. We have an e-commerce site. There is a difference in the breadcrumb when navigating to our products vs directly browsing to the URL of the product.
When you navigate to the product the breadcrumb looks like this (also in the source code):
Home > Sand > Sandpit sand > Bigbag Sandpit sand type xyzWhen you visit the product URL directly, the breadcrumb looks like this (also in the source code):
Home > Bigbag Sandpit sand type xyzLooks to me that can be confusing for a search engine and that it is unclear what the site's structure/hierarchy is like (and also for a user of course). Is that true? If yes, does this have a big direct negative impact looking at SEO?
Thanks in advance!
-
Thanks for your answer! I will discuss it with our developer. But good to know it isn't a huge problem regarding SEO.
-
Hello Amagard,
Your breadcrumb is generated based on the path taken to the product, not the canonical categorization or taxonomy. Is that correct?
It does affect SEO in that your internal link structure changes depending on the path a bot takes through the site. The best practice would be to have the breadcrumb on product pages use the taxonomy of their canonical category, as opposed to the path taken to get there. In your example that would be: Home > Sand > Sandpit sand > Bigbag Sandpit sand type xyz .
I have seen this many times. Sometimes it is very difficult to fix and would require a lot of development time due to the way an eCommerce platform is built. If that is the case with your situation, know that this is not something that will cripple your SEO. It isn't optimal, but your concern should be from a user's perspective. And, from a user's perspective, it can make sense to be able to see the path you took to get to a product.
However, if you can fix it so the breadcrumb always shows the canonical path, which includes category and sub-category, I would do so.
-
Ok, I got it, so first how these breadcrumbs are generated? I mean usually, this will affect not your SEO but in some cases, plugins such as Yoast can create the breadcrumb and also the schema for that breadcrumb in that case you will have to fix the problem or delete them
-
Hi,
Thanks for your response, really appreciate it!
There is not a DC issue; there is only 1 URL. Only the breadcrumb is differs, depending on the way you reach the page (navigating vs directly browsing to the page).
Hopefully you understand what I mean.
Best
-
Hi
Seen your case looks like you have big issue, with your site structure and also with your canonical tags I mean if you have
- Home > Bigbag Sandpit sand type xyz
- Home > Sand > Sandpit sand > Bigbag Sandpit sand type xyz
Then you have 2 pages competing for the same keywords usually will ignore both of them
So first need to know to define the source of the problem, in my experience, this usually occurs when you don't set up correctly the parent and child pages, also you will need to check your site taxonomy ( trust me on e-commerce is even more crucial than link building) a bad taxonomy can ruin all your efforts, also depending on the size of your site can require a lot of time.
The best tool in my opinion (experience) to fix the error Screamingfrog, Semrush and Dynomapper ( this one is almost mandatory)
Good Luck
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
-
'duplicate content' on several different pages
Hi, I've a website with 6 pages identified as 'duplicate content' because they are very similar. This pages looks similar because are the same but it show some pictures, a few, about the product category that's why every page look alike each to each other but they are not 'exactly' the same. So, it's any way to indicate to Google that the content is not duplicated? I guess it's been marked as duplicate because the code is 90% or more the same on 6 pages. I've been reviewing the 'canonical' method but I think is not appropriated here as the content is not the same. Any advice (that is not add more content)?
Technical SEO | | jcobo0 -
How to redirect subfolder on different domain to another but same ftp
Hi i was wondering how can we redirect all subfolder under language repertory from a domain name to another domain name. The thing is that these 2 domain are on the same IP. Exemple Domain1.com/en to Domain2.com/en Domain1.com/fr to Domain2.com/fr I already redirected my domain with this code RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.olddomain\.com$ RewriteRule (.*) http://www.newdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^olddomain\.com$ RewriteRule (.*) http://www.newdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L] Should i apply this code in my .htacces in the subfolder fr and en?
Technical SEO | | bigrat950 -
301 redirecting old content from one site to updated content on a different site
I have a client with two websites. Here are some details, sorry I can't be more specific! Their older site -- specific to one product -- has a very high DA and about 75K visits per month, 80% of which comes from search engines. Their newer site -- focused generally on the brand -- is their top priority. The content here is much better. The vast majority of visits are from referrals (mainly social channels and an email newsletter) and direct traffic. Search traffic is relatively low though. I really want to boost search traffic to site #2. And I'd like to piggy back off some of the search traffic from site #1. Here's my question: If a particular article on site #1 (that ranks very well) needs to be updated, what's the risk/reward of updating the content on site #2 instead and 301 redirecting the original post to the newer post on site #2? Part 2: There are dozens of posts on site #1 that can be improved and updated. Is there an extra risk (or diminishing returns) associated with doing this across many posts? Hope this makes sense. Thanks for your help!
Technical SEO | | djreich0 -
Differences in Sitemaps SEO wise?
I'm a bit confused about sitemaps. I'm just learning SEO so forgive me if this is a basic question. I've submitted my site to google webmaster using http://pro-sitemaps.com and the sitemap generator it creates. I've also seen sites do this: http://www.johnlewis.com/Shopping/ProductList.aspx and http://www.thesafestcandles.com/site-map.html so I did something similar for my site (www.ldnwicklesscandles.com). You figure you see everyone do it you might as well try it too and hope it works. 😉 So I've done both 1 and 2. Which sitemap is best for SEO purposes or should I do both? Is there any format that should or shouldn't be used for Option 2? Any site examples for good practice would be helpful.
Technical SEO | | cmjolley0 -
Does Google see page with Trailing Slash as different
My company is purchasing another company's website. We are moving their entire site onto our CMS and the IT guys are working hard to replicate the URL structure. Several of the category pages are changing slightly and I am not sure if it matters: Old URL - http://www.DOMAIN.com/products/adults New URL - http://www.DOMAIN.com/products/adults**/** Notice the trailing slash? Will Google treat the new page as the same as the old one or as completely different (i.e. new) page? P.S. - Yes, I can setup 301s but since these pages hold decent rankings I'd really like to keep it exactly the same.
Technical SEO | | costume0 -
Checkout on different domain
Is it a bad SEO move to have a your checkout process on a separate domain instead of the main domain for a ecommerce site. There is no real content on the checkout pages and they are completely new pages that are not indexed in the search engines. Do to the backend architecture it is impossibe for us to have them on the same domain. An example is this page: http://www.printingforless.com/2/Brochure-Printing.html One option we've discussed to not pass page rank on to the checkout domain by iFraming all of the links to the checkout domain. We could also move the checkout process to a subdomain instead of a new domain. Please ignore the concerns with visitors security and conversion rate. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | PrintingForLess.com0 -
In Google Merchant is there any difference between google_product_type and product_type
It used to by that we needed to just submit a product type, and now Google wants a google product type that fits within the Google Taxonomy. We always submitted the old product_type in accordance with the Google Taxonomy anyway so now we have 2 columns one for google_product_type and one for just product_type and they are the exact same thing. This seems wrong but does anyone know if there should be a difference?
Technical SEO | | KentH0 -
Different pages first results on same keyword search
Hi, Sometimes Google does not show the page you intended for a certain keyword. Logically you would say that the intended page is not relevant/strong enough. But in my case several pages ranked fine for a long period of time and all of a sudden another less important page gets the highest result on a keyword search. (We are in the camping business) For instance: One of our campsites called Tenuta primero used to rank position 9 in google with page below for a long time (search: 'camping tenuta primero') This was the page we intended to rank with. http://www.suncamp.nl/nl/nl/campings/italie/friuli-venezia-giulia/camping-tenuta-primero/uc19-l1-n797-c13-r115-cp104959/ Now all of a sudden the position for search 'camping tenuta primero' is position 33 with review page below. http://www.suncamp.nl/nl/nl/campings/italie/friuli-venezia-giulia/camping-tenuta-primero/beoordelingen/uc19-l1-n797-c13-r115-cp104959-t22598/ What could have caused this? Pages are in Dutch but main keywords are camping are tenuta primero. Thank you very much in advance! Kind regards, Dennis Overbeek Dennis@acsi.eu | www.suncamp.nl |
Technical SEO | | SEO_ACSI0