Remove Product & Category from URLS in Wordpress
-
Does anyone have experience removing /product/ and /product-category/, etc. from URLs in wordpress? I found this link from Wordpress which explains that this shouldn't be done, but I would like some opinions of those who have tried it please.
https://docs.woocommerce.com/document/removing-product-product-category-or-shop-from-the-urls/
-
Hi there,
I can't point you in a specific direction on how to go about doing this, but as Martijn mentioned it's important that you make sure:
- 301 redirects are setup from old URLs to new URLs (/cat-name 301s to /prod-name)
- ALL internal links are updated to /prod-name (for example, in the main navigation, footer, sidebars, etc.)
- I believe what Martijn meant with the URL depth comment was that websites (particularly ecommerce sites) should be structured logically (mainly for topical authority). So for example, if you are a site that sells electronics, it's important from both a user and bot perspective that there is a domain.com/laptops/ page (which would be the category page). Under that, it makes sense to have a product page that would live on domain.com/laptops/macbook for example. It sounds like you are considering to remove the top-level category pages, which might result in a worse user experience and possibly a less-than-ideal setup for link equity being passed down to product pages.
Martijn, is that what you were hinting at?
-
Any follow up?
-
Then when you click through to a product:
I have encountered no problems doing this in Opencart. No 301 redirects were needed because the plugin takes care of this itself.
I want to make sure that you're aware of the different internal structures in URL depth. That's probably why most people would advise you not to go this way.
I'm sorry, I'm not sure what you mean in respect to different internal structures or why the above would be an issue.
-
Hi,
You should be able to just change this in the permalinks. It's good to be reminded of some of the things that you need to take care of: redirects, making sure that all old links are pointing the new right way. But most of all, I want to make sure that you're aware of the different internal structures in URL depth. That's probably why most people would advise you not to go this way.
Martijn.
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
-
Pagination & SEO
Hi We have automatically created brand pages based on which brand they have in their attributes. At the moment, developers have restricted the ability to properly optimise these for SEO, but I also wanted to look at how we should handle pagination. Example: http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/brand/manutan?page=1 http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/brand/manutan?page=2 http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/brand/manutan?page=3 Should we do any of the following - which I've found in an article: Put no follow on all links located on pagination pages Should we no index these pages as they are wasting crawl budget? - Don’t show links to page 2, 3, 4, 5… 10, 11, 12… at the end of your content but only a link to the next and previous pages so that you won’t dilute your page authority. Or does anyone else have any tips on how to handle these pages? Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Ranking for homepage & category page?
We lost our Google organic ranking (position 1 - 3) for our highest converting key phrase (cotton tees) in February. The ranking was for our homepage (brandname.com) which is very image heavy and doesn't have much readable content. We noticed that all of our competitors are ranking above us for their category page, not their homepage. The difference between us and our competitors is that we specialize in this key phrase and they just offer one category of the key phrase. For example, we only sell cotton tee's and they sell cotton tees, handbags and shoes. When we dropped we noticed that Google began showing our homepage AND category page in the results, so we pointed our brandname.com to brandname.com/cotton-tees canonically. The idea was that this would assure that the homepage and category page were not competing with each other. The homepage was not really optimized for cotton tees so we thought this might help. 1. Is there any harm in removing the canonical and allowing both pages to rank? (We're also working on redesigning the homepage to add more readable text & optimize for cotton tees.) 2. Our homepage URL used to be "brandname.com/cotton-tees" and we consistenly ranked between 1 and 3 for cotton tees during that time. We modified the homepage URL because it seemed spammy and are now just "brandname.com". Does it make sense to go back to the URL with the key phrase in it if that is our main product and we want to rank for it?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EileenCleary0 -
Can you nofollow a URL?
Hey Moz Community, My questions sounds pretty simple but unfortunately, it isn't. I have a domain name (we'll use example.com for this) http://example.com which 301 re-directs to http://www.example.com. http://example.com has bad links pointing to it and http://www.example.com does not. So essentially, I want to stop negative influences from http://example.com being passed on to http://www.example.com. A 302 re-direct sounds like it would work in theory but is this the best way to go about this? Just so you know, we have completed a reconsideration request a long time ago but I think the bad links are still negatively affecting the website as it does not rank for it's own name which is bizarre. Actual Question: How do I re-direct http://example.com to http://www.example.com without passing on the negative SEO attached to http://example.com? Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RiceMedia0 -
URL Re-Writes & HTTPS: Link juice loss from 301s?
Our URLs are not following a lot of the best practices found here: http://moz.com/blog/11-best-practices-for-urls We have also been waiting to implement HTTPS. I think it might be time to take the plunge on re-writing the URLs and converting to a fully secure site, but I am concerned about ranking dips from the lost link juice from the 301s. Many of our URLs are very old, with a decent amount of quality links. Are we better off leaving as is or taking the plunge?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TheDude0 -
Removing index.php
I have question for the community and whether or not this is a good or bad idea. I currently have a Joomla site that displays www.domain.com/index.php in all the URLs with the exception of the home page. I have read that it's better to not have index.php showing in the URL at all. Does it really matter if I have index.php in my URL? I've read that it is a bad practice. I am thinking about installing the sh404SEF component on my site and removing the index.php. However, I rank pretty high for the keywords I want in Google, Bing and Yahoo. All of the URLs that show up in the searches have index.php as part of the URL. Has anyone ever used sh404SEF to remove the index.php and how did you overcome not loosing your search engine links? I don't want an existing search showing www.domain.com/index.php/sales and it not linking to the correct page which would now be www.domain.com/sales. I guess I could insert the proper redirects in the htaccess file. But I was hoping to avoid having every page of my site in the htaccess file for redirecting. Any help or advice appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MedGroupMedia0 -
Canonical url issue
Canonical url issue My site https://ladydecosmetic.com on seomoz crawl showing duplicate page title, duplicate page content errors. I have downloaded the error reports csv and checked. From the report, The below url contains duplicate page content.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | trixmediainc
https://www.ladydecosmetic.com/unik-colours-lipstick-caribbean-peach-o-27-item-162&category_id=40&brands=66&click=brnd And other duplicate urls as per report are,
https://www.ladydecosmetic.com/unik-colours-lipstick-plum-red-o-14-item-157&category_id=40&click=colorsu&brands=66 https://www.ladydecosmetic.com/unik-colours-lipstick-plum-red-o-14-item-157&category_id=40 https://www.ladydecosmetic.com/unik-colours-lipstick-plum-red-o-14-item-157&category_id=40&brands=66&click=brnd But on every these url(all 4) I have set canonical url. That is the original url and an existing one(not 404). https://www.ladydecosmetic.com/unik-colours-lipstick-caribbean-peach-o-27-item-162&category_id=0 Then how this issues are showing like duplicate page content. Please give me an answer ASAP.0 -
Should I remove 404 urls in webmaster tools?
I've recently removed a lot of category pages so should I remove the urls in webmaster tools or let them drop out of the index naturally?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SamCUK0 -
Remove content that is indexed?
Hi guys, I want to delete a entire folder with content indexed, how i can explain to google that content no longer exists?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Valarlf0