WooCommerce category naming conventions

[SushiUK]

I am managing a woocommerce store selling prescription glasses/spectacles.

We have a lot of categories with similar names and I want to adopt the best possible naming convention to get the best from search.

So we have a number of similar categories for both Men's and women's glasses. Currently they are named as follows:

Women's Glasses-Women's Rimless Glasses
-Women's Semi Rimless Glasses
-Women's Plastic Glasses
-Women's Metal Glasses
-Women's Retro Glasses

Currently, this results in the following URL structure for sub categories:

https://www.glassesonspec.co.uk/product-category/womens-glasses-2/womens-rimless-glasses/

(For some reason WooCommerce is adding -2 to the end of the primary category name, it will not let me change it for some reason, this is the subject of a further investigation!)

So first question, is there too much duplication of the word glasses on the sub items? for example, should they read;

Women's Glasses
-Rimless
-Semi Rimless
-Plastic
-Metal
-Retro

Hence giving this URL structure:

https://www.glassesonspec.co.uk/product-category/womens-glasses-2/rimless/

OR, should we change the top level category name to just Women's and let the sub categories complete the picture?:

Women's
-Rimless Glasses
-Semi Rimless Glasses
-Plastic Glasses
-Metal Glasses
-Retro Glasses

Giving this example URL structure:

https://www.xxxxxxxxxxxxx.co.uk/product-category/womens/rimless-glasses/

This would solve my hyphenation problem, however my fear is the top level category on it's own is not descriptive enough when viewed as stand alone:

https://www.xxxxxxxxxxxxx.co.uk/product-category/womens/

The second part of my question relates to how to deal with the change in URL structure. I am using Yoast Premium, so will that pick up the changes and automatically redirect to the new one as it does when done manually? Or will I need to take a different approach using HTACCESS commands?

I hope the above makes sense,

Many thanks,

Bob

[SushiUK]

Hi Chris,

Thanks for your response and suggestions. I think I've found a solution to all of the issues I'm currently experiencing!

https://www.perfectseourl.com/

This should fix the -2 problem, as I can now dispense with the "product-category" slug completely and also follow your suggestion of going with the "womens" category name etc.

Many thanks!

[Chris_Hickman]

The reason for the -2 added to the category permalink is because you have a duplicate name. Even if this category is in the trash it will cause the -2 to be added if a new category is made. Delete any duplicate names in the trash to fix this.

I would recommend using the shorter category "womens" and if possible shorten the "product-category" slug so that your keywords have a chance to appear in bold the search listing preview.

Usually your product category links and breadcrumbs will update automatically when the permalink is changed. If you have placed manual links to these categories you may want to consider adding 301 redirects to the updated URLs.

Hope this helps. Best of luck with your updates.