What is the best practice for URLs for E-commerce products in multiple categories?
-
Hello all!
I have always worked successfully with SEO on E-commerce sites, however we are currently revamping an older site for a client and so I thought I'd turn to the community to ask what the best practices that you guys are experiencing for url structures at the moment.
Obviously we do not wish to create duplicate content and so the big question is, what would you guys do for the very best structure for URLs on an E-commerce site that has products in multiple categories?
Let's imagine we are selling toy cars. I have a sports car for sale, so naturally it can go in the sports cars category and it could also go in to the convertibles category too. What is the best way you have found recently that works and increases rankings, but does not create duplicate content?
Thanks in advance!
Kind Regards,
JDM
-
Does the platform you are using let you select a default category for the product? Several platforms will let you select multiple categories and make you chose one as a default category. If so, you can just work off the uri of the page and insert the default category as the canonical category in the rel=canonical.
-
Use the rel=canonical tag so that all URL's would point to the 'end' toy car page - hence avoiding any duplicate content. If there isn't much content anyway, Google has said they actually wouldn't penalise for this.
I had a little look and found something slightly similar I guess here: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/webmasters/wFlGmPiQe5E
I'd def use Rel=Canonical though
Jamie
-
Hi Hatfish,
If both categories are relevant and deserve their own areas, then put the products in both the hierarchies. Then, decide which heirarchy is the most important (from a SERPs perspective) and Canonical the product URL to a single URL.
Using your example:
The sports car category would be my main category. When you navigate to the Convertibles category you would be able to find that sports car. However, when visiting the product the URL would resolve to a single URL. So, if I was in the convertible category it would send me to the Sports Car hierarchy page (through a 301 redirect).
Make sure to identify 1 URL for canonical purposes
Make sure to 301 the subordinate URL to the main URL
This way the user can use both areas to navigate through your site and find the product they are looking for. But, as far as SEO is concerned there is only 1 main URL for each product.
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
-
Product URL Optimisation
Hi guys, We are currently trying to add new products to our site but we are in a quandary on what type of URL structure to pursue. For example:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | michel_8
Product Name: Aspect Exfoliating Cleanser 240ml https://www.example.com.au/aspect-exfoliating-cleanser-240ml (including the size)
VS
https://www.example.com.au/aspect-exfoliating-cleanser 1.) Which is a better URL structure based on SEO 2018 and why?
2.) Is there any merit in removing the size from the URL key with the aim of attracting more traffic? Keen to hear from you guys! Cheers,0 -
Corporate website in multiple locations and with multiple services
Dear Team, We are a corporate setup in India, we have the following services under different brand names: 1. Security guard services - ORION 2. Facility management services - NOIRO 3. Investigation services - Ascertain Solutions We are located in different locations - India, Bahrain and Abu Dhabi What is the best way to structure our website properties for getting maximum SEO benefit, please inform from the following options: i. One website with one blog, we will have multiple pages dedicated to each service where page titles can be the brand names of the service and the location, the domain will be of the parent company only. So everything comes under orionsecure.com. There will be a security services page for India, for Abu Dhabi , for Bahrain. Similar for investigation and facility management. **ii. Multiple websites for different locations and different services, **so there will be orionsecure.com, orionsecure.ae and orionsecure.bh. Also, there will be a noiro.com, noiro.ae etc. Each website will have a blog for content publishing (although it is hard to imagine how we can develop content for different locations). **iii. One website each for each service, location shown differently through domain masking, **so we keep developing different pages as per the different locations on one website only, but this is shown differently through domain masking. Please help with this query, I really need an answer to this. If any more questions, please connect on naman.arora@orionsecure.co.in or call on +91-8510999664. Thanks and Regards, Naman Arora
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ascertain_Solutions0 -
Best practice to consolidating authority of several SKU pages to one destination
I am looking for input on best practices to the following solution Scenario: I have basic product A (e.g. Yamaha Keyboard Blast) There are 3 SKUs to the product A that deserve their own page content (e.g. Yamaha Keyboard Blast 350, Yamaha Keyboard Blast 450, Yamaha Keyboard Blast 550) Objective: - I want to consolidate the authority of potential links to the 3 SKUs pages into one destination/URL Possible Solutions I can think of: - Query parameters (e.g /yamaha-keyboard-blast?SKU=550) - and tell Google to ignore SKU query parameters when indexing Canonical tag (set the canonical tag of the SKU pages all to one destination URL) Hash tag (e.g. /yamaha-keyboard-blast#SKU=550); load SKU dependent content through javascript; Google only sees the URLs without hashtag Am I missing solutions? Which solutions makes the most sense and will allow me to consolidate authority? Thank you for your input.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | french_soc0 -
Building a product clients will integrate into their sites: What is the best way to utilize my clients' unique domain names?
I'm designing a hosted product my clients will integrate into their websites, their end users would access it via my clients' customer-facing websites. It is a product my clients pay for which provides a service to their end users, who would have to login to my product via a link provided by my clients. Most clients would choose to incorporate this link prominently on their home page and site nav.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | emzeegee
All clients will be in the same vertical market, so their sites will be keyword rich and related to my site.
Many may even be .org and ,edus The way I see it, there are three main ways I could set this up within the product.
I want to know which is most beneficial, or if I'm missing anything. 1: They set up a subdomain at their domain that serves content from my domain product.theirdomain.com would render content from mydomain.com's database.
product.theirdomain.com could have footer and/or other no-follow links to mydomain.com with target keywords The risk I see here is having hundreds of sites with the same target keyword linking back to my domain.
This may be the worst option, as I'm not sure about if the nofollow will help, because I know Google considers this kind of link to be a link scheme: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66356?hl=en 2: They link to a subdomain on mydomain.com from their nav/site
Their nav would include an actual link to product.mydomain.com/theircompanyname
Each client would have a different "theircompanyname" link.
They would decide and/or create their link method (graphic, presence of alt tag, text, what text, etc).
I would have no control aside from requiring them to link to that url on my server. 3: They link to a subdirectory on mydomain.com from their nav/site
Their nav would include an actual link to mydomain.com/product/theircompanyname
Each client would have a different "theircompanyname" link.
They would decide and/or create their link method (graphic, presence of alt tag, text, what text, etc).
I would have no control aside from requiring them to link to that url on my server. In all scenarios, my marketing content would be set up around mydomain.com both as static content and a blog directory, all with SEO attractive url slugs. I'm leaning towards option 3, but would like input!0 -
Magento E-Commerce Crawl Issues
Hi Guys, First post here! I am responsible for a Magento e-commerce store and there are a few crawl issues and potential solutions that I am working and would like to get some advice to see if you agree with my approach. Old Product Pages - The majority of our stock is seasonal, therefore when a product sells out, it is not usually going to come back into stock. However the approach for Magento websites is to leave the page present but take the product off the category pages, so users can still find these pages from the search engines and they are orphaned pages as not linked to from elsewhere and not totally clear products are out of stock (just doesn't show the size pulldown or 'Add to Basket' button). There is no process in place to 301 redirect these pages either. My solution to this problem is to: 1. Change design of these pages so a clear message is shown to users that the product is out of stock and suggest related products to reduce bounce rates. I was also planning on having a link from an 'Out of Stock' page on the site to these products so they are orphaned but is this required do you think? 2. When I know for sure (e.g. over a month) that the product will not be returned (e.g. refund) by the user, then 301 redirect the product pages back to category page. How do other users 301 redirect their pages in Magento, I would like an easy to use system. Crawl Errors Identified in Google Webmaster Tools It seems in the last 2 weeks there has been a sharp increase in the number of soft 404 pages identified on the website. When I inspect these pages they seem to be categories and sub categories that no longer have any products in them. However, I don't want to delete these pages as new products might come in and go onto these category pages, therefore how should I approach this? A suggestion I have thought of is to put related products on to these pages? Any better ideas? Thanks, Graeme
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | graeme19940 -
Should we use URL parameters or plain URL's=
Hi, Me and the development team are having a heated discussion about one of the more important thing in life, i.e. URL structures on our site. Let's say we are creating a AirBNB clone, and we want to be found when people search for apartments new york. As we have both have houses and apartments in all cities in the U.S it would make sense for our url to at least include these, so clone.com/Appartments/New-York but the user are also able to filter on price and size. This isn't really relevant for google, and we all agree on clone.com/Apartments/New-York should be canonical for all apartment/New York searches. But how should the url look like for people having a price for max 300$ and 100 sqft? clone.com/Apartments/New-York?price=30&size=100 or (We are using Node.js so no problem) clone.com/Apartments/New-York/Price/30/Size/100 The developers hate url parameters with a vengeance, and think the last version is the preferable one and most user readable, and says that as long we use canonical on everything to clone.com/Apartments/New-York it won't matter for god old google. I think the url parameters are the way to go for two reasons. One is that google might by themselves figure out that the price parameter doesn't matter (https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1235687?hl=en) and also it is possible in webmaster tools to actually tell google that you shouldn't worry about a parameter. We have agreed to disagree on this point, and let the wisdom of Moz decide what we ought to do. What do you all think?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Peekabo0 -
What is the best canonical url to use for a product page?
I just helped a client redesign and launch a new website for their organic skin care company (www.hylunia.com). The site is built in Magento which by default creates MANY urls for each product. Which of these two do you think would be the best to use as the canonical version? http://www.hylunia.com/pure-hyaluronic-acid-solution
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | danielmoss
or http://www.hylunia.com/products/face-care/facial-moisturizers/pure-hyaluronic-acid-solution ? I'm leaning on the latter, because it makes sense to me to have the breadcrumbs match the url string, and also it seems having more keywords in the url would help. However, it's obviously a very long url, and there might be some benefits to using the shorter version that I'm not aware of. Thanks in advance for sharing your thoughts. Best, Daniel0 -
What directories are best for health or health related products?
I am trying to find out if there are any reputable directories related to health supplements and general health information.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DonovanHarrell0