Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
How to handle dynamic product url that changes regularly
-
Hey Moz,
It's actually my first post - although I look at the Q&As on a daily basis!
I was hoping to get your opinions on how to handle dynamic product url that can change regularly.
Before we start, our product page urls get populated by the product titles.
So the situation is this.
- Let’s say we have a product url: /product/12345-abcde-fghj/
- Then the client decides to change the title a week later, so the url changes with it to): /listing/12345-klm-qjk
- Another week later, the agent changes to: /listing/12345-jkhfk-jhf-kjdhfkjdhf
So to note, the product ID will always remain the same.
Naturally, 301 redirecting every time would cause a bit of page authority to be lost every time 301ed. Also potentially creating new a few hundreds of 301 redirect daily sounds totally mental. (I have been informed by the dev we expect a few hundreds to change url daily) Although I understand there’s no limit on how many 301s you can have on a single domain, this would look completely unnatural - really not ideal.
So the potential solution we thought was:
we’ll keep the original url, and make sure that is the only url that will get indexed**/product/12345-abcde-fghj/**and put canonical tag on any of the new urls, directing to the original url. The problem we will have then is that the most current url may not exactly match the description of the product -wouldn’t be ideal for ux.
Has anyone had dealing with issues like this in the past? Would love to get your input!
Many Thanks
-
Thanks Everett! yes there's definitely seo benefit from having the title in the URL, and I think it's pretty significant - from what I have seen previously when we made a massive url changes for one of the websites I worked on - went from /{id}/ to {id}-{product-title}. Also there is a study shows that display url in search results is still a prominent element to influencing searchers' clicks. This is from 2012 but I think the same still applies today. http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/155941/domainbias.pdf so I'd prefer to have the titles included.
It is completely possible to make the very original static, and that would be my preferred option - but we need to assess whether the changes were made because they were "mildly" or "totally" incorrect in the first place, and also at the same time need to convince others - who feel keeping the original urls (when the product titles change) would worsen ux.
301 redirects would be totally mental - so this would not be an option. Also adding canonical tag to the "non-original" urls method - potentially ok in the short term.
I think using static (hardcoded) urls would be the only long-term solution.
-
Hi Patrick that's really helpful thanks,
Completely understand it's confusing, I was totally surprised myself to find out there were so many changes to the title on a daily basis.
I would personally have one static url (original url) so this page can carry on build authority. I'm going to find out what these changes that are being made may be.I mean if it's just the title changing and nothing else, the chances are that the original product title (& url) will still stay relevant - it may be that our clients are trying to optimise their title, or spelling error etc. - I'm not sure at this point but that will be my next job to find out!
I can't link to the site, as it is being worked for relaunch currently. Site relaunches are always terrifying
-
Hi there
This is very confusing haha. What I would suggest is, if the product itself stays the same while new items or features are added to it (the only reason I can think why URLs are changing - correct?), to create one static URL / page for the product and update the description as the product updates. I would also add Schema into the template of the product so that it dynamically pulls information from the description and let's crawlers know of the changes. You'll have to talk to your web development team to make sure this is possible.
This way, you have one static URL per product, with only descriptions / features changing. This will cut down on multiple URLs, redirects, canonicals, and overall, confusion. I would also take a look at this resource from inFlow; this is on duplicate content for eCommerce which it sounds like you might potentially run into.
Let me know if a. that I am on the right thought pattern here and b. that this helps. You may want to link to your site so that the community can get a more indepth look! Hope this helps - good luck!
Patrick
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
-
Truncated product names
Due to the restraints of category page layout many of the products in certain categories have the product titles truncated, in some cases missing off 2-5 words depending on the product in question. The product name which displays on the category page is lifted straight from the product page itself, so not possible to do something like "product name including spec..." to place ... to indicate a bit more. I'm assuming not but just wanted to check that Google will not frown on this. Text is not being hidden it just does not render fully in the restricted space. So there is a scenario of 'bits of' text in the source not displaying on the rendered page.
Technical SEO | | MickEdwards0 -
301 redirect from dynamic url to static page
Hi, i want to redirect from this old link http://www.g-store.gr/product_info.php?products_id=1735/ to this one https://www.g-store.gr/golf-toualetas.html I have done several attempts but with no result. I anyone can help i will appreciate. My website runs in an Apache server with cpanel. Thank you
Technical SEO | | alstam0 -
Reviews on Product Page or Separated
Good Afternoon We currently have our individual product information pages set-up with a link through to a separate review page optimised for the term "Product A Reviews" I was reading about structured data and if I read correctly, the reviews should sit with the marked up product data so I was wondering whether to merge them back into one page. We have many reviews so the review pages are paginated in blocks of 25 My options are: Leave as it is, product info page and separate review page Merge the review content back in to the main page and have the pagination work on that page Include the first 25 reviews on the product info page then when user clicks through to page 2, 3 etc they're taken to the separated review page. In that way the product page would regularly get new content and we can still have a page specifically targeted for reviews. From the users point of view, they probably aren't even aware they're being taken to a separate reviews page so with that in mind as I'm typing this maybe they should be one page again
Technical SEO | | Ham19790 -
Category URL Pagination where URLs don't change between pages
Hello, I am working on an e-commerce site where there are categories with multiple pages. In order to avoid pagination issues I was thinking of using rel=next and rel=prev and cannonical tags. I noticed a site where the URL doesn't change between pages, so whether you're on page 1,2, or 3 of the same category, the URL doesn't change. Would this be a cleaner way of dealing with pagination?
Technical SEO | | whiteonlySEO0 -
URL path randomly changing
Hi eveyone, got a quick question about URL structures: I'm currently working in ecommerce with a site that has hundreds of products that can be accessed through different URL paths: 1)www.domain.com/productx 2)www.domain.com/category/productx 3)www.domain.com/category/subcategory/productx 4)www.domain.com/bestsellers/productx 5)... In order to get rid of dublicate content issues, the canoncial tag has been installed on all the pages required. The problem I'm witnessing now is the following: If a visitor comes to the site and navigates to the product through example 2) at time the URL shown in the URL browser box is example 4), sometimes example 1) or whatever. So it is constantly changing. Does anyone know, why this happens and if it has any impact on GA tracking or even on SEO peformance. Any reply is much appreciated Thanks you
Technical SEO | | ennovators0 -
Changing menus regularly - will this impact SEO
We are working on an internal project, where the website owner is thinking of making regular changes to one or two items on the top level menu. Assuming they redirect the original pages or navigate to them in other ways, is there any other impact on SEO to changing the menu structure? I assume they'd submit new sitemaps after each change. Many thanks Fiona
Technical SEO | | fionah0 -
Why google index my IP URL
hi guys, a question please. if site:112.65.247.14 , you can see google index our website IP address, this could duplicate with our darwinmarketing.com content pages. i am not quite sure why google index my IP pages while index domain pages, i understand this could because of backlink, internal link and etc, but i don't see obvious issues there, also i have submit request to google team to remove ip address index, but seems no luck. Please do you have any other suggestion on this? i was trying to do change of address setting in Google Webmaster Tools, but didn't allow as it said "Restricted to root level domains only", any ideas? Thank you! boson
Technical SEO | | DarwinChinaSEO0