Altering Breadcrumbs based on User Path to Product URL
-
Hi,
Our products are listed in multiple categories, and as the URLs are path dependent (example.com/fruit/apples/granny-smith/, example.com/fruit/green-fruit/granny-smith/ and so forth) we canonicalise to the 'default' URL (in this case example.com/fruit/apples/granny-smith/).
For mainly crawling bandwidth issues I'm looking to change all product URL's to path neutral so there is only ever one URL per product (example.com/granny-smith/), but still list the product in multiple categories.
If a user comes directly to example.com/granny-smith/ then the breadcrumbs will use the default path "Fruit > Apples", however if the user navigated to the product via another category then I'd like the breadcrumbs to reflect this. I'm not worried about cloaking as it's not based on user-agent and it's very logical why it's being done so I don't expect a penalty.
My question is - how do you recommend this is achieved from a technical standpoint? Many sites use path neutral product URL's (Ikea, PCWorld etc) but none alter the breadcrumbs depending upon path.
Our site is mostly behind a CDN so it has to be a client side solution. I currently view the options as:
- Store Path to product in a cookie and/or browsers local-cache
- Attach the Path details after a # in the URL and use Javascript to alter breadcrumbs onload with JQuery
- When a user clicks to a product from a listing page, use AJAX to pull in the product info but leave the rest of the page (including the breadcrumbs) as-is, updating the URL accordingly
Do you think any of these wouldn't work? Do you have a preference on which one is best? Is there another method you'd recommend?
We also have "Next/Previous" functionality (links to the previous and next product URLs) on the page so I suspect we'd need to attach the path after a # and make another round trip to the server onload to update the previous and next links.
Finally, does anyone know of any sites that do update the breadcrumbs depending upon path?
Thanks in advance for your time
FashionLux
-
Further update to this. Ran into a problem with option 3... this solution works really well when navigating the site internally, however a user landing on one of these URL's directly (bookmark, social share etc) would have a slow loading page as (for non-default product variations) the page will load after the 1st request, then a 2nd request to the server is needed to pull in the image via AJAX.
Loading the other images, stock information, prices, copy etc into an array and doing the work on the client side wasn't an option as the page would get too heavy. So option 3 ruled out.
Ultimately the goal was to reduce duplicate content of product pages and none of the 3 options above do this whilst not affecting page loading times. I did look to fall back on using canonical tags however I've just now found that Facebook are using this tag, so if a user wanted to share a 'red apple' when the canonical is 'green apple' - Facebook would show an image of the 'green apple'.... so at the moment that is ruled out also.
I'll start a new thread on product page duplicates and the best solution - but if anyone has any ideas then please do let me know.
Thanks
Dean
-
Thanks for the response Dana. Option 3 did feel like the best option and that is the one I'm choosing to go with.
Point 2 (with the hash) provides the desired result of Search Engines only seeing the clean URL as the parameters behind the hash will never be seen, but the browser will use them to power the breadcrumbs. In the end it was a toss-up between 2 & 3 but 3 is the most maintainable and quickest for users.
Thanks again
Dean
-
Dean,
This is a great, great question and I am eager to find out what my fellow technical SEOs think because I have faced very similar situations on one of my sites. Thanks for asking this question.
My gut instinct is to select #3 of your options. But not really being a developer, it's hard for me to articulate as to why I think this is the best option. I am really only thinking of it from a user-end standpoint in that I want to know where, in the hierarchy of the site this page lives so that if I need to find it again, I can.
I disagree with your option #2 from an SEO standpoint because anything after a "#" or hashtag in a URL is ignored by search engines....so putting it there isn't going to benefit your SEO in any way.
Interested to hear what others think,
Dana
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
-
Breadcrumbs versus in context link
Hi, I remember reading that links within the text have more value than breadcrumbs links for example because in context links are surrounded by the right content (words) but google search engine optimisation starter guide says breadcrumbs are good, so which one is recommended ? Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
Ecommerce: A product in multiple categories with a canonical to create a ‘cluster’ in one primary category Vs. a single listing at root level with dynamic breadcrumb.
OK – bear with me on this… I am working on some pretty large ecommerce websites (50,000 + products) where it is appropriate for some individual products to be placed within multiple categories / sub-categories. For example, a Red Polo T-shirt could be placed within: Men’s > T-shirts >
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AbsoluteDesign
Men’s > T-shirts > Red T-shirts
Men’s > T-shirts > Polo T-shirts
Men’s > Sale > T-shirts
Etc. We’re getting great organic results for our general T-shirt page (for example) by clustering creative content within its structure – Top 10 tips on wearing a t-shirt (obviously not, but you get the idea). My instinct tells me to replicate this with products too. So, of all the location mentioned above, make sure all polo shirts (no matter what colour) have a canonical set within Men’s > T-shirts > Polo T-shirts. The presumption is that this will help build the authority of the Polo T-shirts page – this obviously presumes “Polo Shirts” get more search volume than “Red T-shirts”. My presumption why this is the best option is because it is very difficult to manage, particularly with a large inventory. And, from experience, taking the time and being meticulous when it comes to SEO is the only way to achieve success. From an administration point of view, it is a lot easier to have all product URLs at the root level and develop a dynamic breadcrumb trail – so all roads can lead to that one instance of the product. There's No need for canonicals; no need for ecommerce managers to remember which primary category to assign product types to; keeping everything at root level also means there no reason to worry about redirects if product move from sub-category to sub-category etc. What do you think is the best approach? Do 1000s of canonicals and redirect look ‘messy’ to a search engine overtime? Any thoughts and insights greatly received.0 -
Mixing static.htm urls and dynamic urls on a Windows IIS Server?
Hi all, We've had a website originally built using static html with .htm extensions ranking well in Google hence we want to keep those pages/urls. We are on a dedicated sever (Windows IIS). However our developer has custom made a new DYNAMIC section for the site which shows new added products dynamically and allows them to be booked online via shopping cart. We are having problems displaying them both on the same domain even if we put the dynamic section withing its own subfolder and keep the static htms in the root. Is it possible to have both function on IIS (even if they may have to function a little separately)? Does anyone have previous experience of this kind of issue or a way of making both work? What setup do we need to do on the dedicated server.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | emerald0 -
Keywords under product listing pages
Hi guys, One of my main concerns when we start redesigning the site Trespass.co.uk, is the current pages like this one http://www.trespass.co.uk/snow-sports/clothing/ski-jackets/womens-ski-jackets are bordering over optimisation. Is this the case as each product listed in the url above has "womens ski jacket" under each product. If we have 50 products on each product listing page with the product name + type of product, ie. flora womens ski jacket, xyz mens waterproof jacket. Are we over optimising the page for the main keywords by having them under each product? Would that page be over optimised for womens ski jackets? Thanks guys
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Trespass0 -
Should /node/ URLs be 301 redirect to Clean URLs
Hi All! We are in the process of migrating to Drupal and I know that I want to block any instance of /node/ URLs with my robots.txt file to prevent search engines from indexing them. My question is, should we set 301 redirects on the /node/ versions of the URLs to redirect to their corresponding "clean" URL, or should the robots.txt blocking and canonical link element be enough? My gut tells me to ask for the 301 redirects, but I just want to hear additional opinions. Thank you! MS
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MargaritaS0 -
Breadcrumbs in SERPs
Hi there, Breadcrumbs now showing for my websites in Google.co.uk & Google.ie I have 2 websites .co.uk & .ie both having the same content. There are legalities for having 2 separate domains. Anyway... When I click on one of the breadcrumbs in the SERPs in Google.ie it takes me to the .co.uk website, however the title for that result takes me to the .ie website as it should. I have checked my breadcrumbs on the .ie website and all is fine, however in SERPs it takes me to the .co.uk website, any ideas why this maybe? Kind Regards
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Paul780 -
How do we get individual products to rank ?
Hi, We have a site that sells music and we have been researching SEO and things we can do to help SERPs. We have started on link building and have added links to the footer of our page We have friendly urls, meta tag description added to all products. My question is, Yes we can work on getting keywords to rank better in google, one of ours being buy cds. But when it comes to individual products these keywords and results are useless if people are searching for a CD by artist or title which most do as they know what they are looking for. How do i get better results for all these unique products ? One or more of our competitors constantly show up in first few results for nearly any CD search by artist or title, yet we cant seem to get anywhere near this type of result ? Thanks Chris
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PressPlayMusic0 -
Google Maps results doesn't show my site url but rather the maps url, why is this?
For several of my clients landing pages that show up in the Maps results the website url has been overwritten by the maps url (maps.google.com). Even though on my places page I have the correct website set up. Does anyone have any idea why they would be doing this and how I can correct it? Thanks kinldy in advance, Aaron. maps-url.png
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | afranklin0