Same subcategory in different main categories
-
Hi all,
A fairly common problem in webshops is having the same subcategory in multiple main categories. Let's take the following example:
I came across this interesting article on this topic: https://moz.com/community/q/e-commerce-site-one-product-multiple-categories-best-practice
Although I understand that the answer on the above question is the most thorough method, I don't see a problem with just using canonicals either. On the webshop we are restructuring, there are only a few of these subcategories that return in multiple main categories, so generating a path via user activity and storing it in a cookie doens't seem really necessary to me.
Is it ok to just use canonicals or can this cause issues?
Thanks.
-
I would have no issue with using rel canonical links in this kind of situation where you cannot control the underlying CMS to the extent that you would need to entirely avoid the duplicate URLs. The only real risk in my opinion is in the canonicalisation not being respected, but if these are essentially exact duplicate pages, I think the risk of that is low (and even if that were the case, the impact would be relatively low too).
Good luck!
-
You are correct - if you are ending up with duplicate content because you are generating URLs (and probably breadcrumbs) based on the navigational path someone is following, canonicals are your best answer.
-
Both pages have exactly the same content: the same subcategory text about company law and the same products. Only the path that a visitor has to follow to reach these pages is different.
-
Personally, I don't see what you need to use canonical tags with the example URLs you supplied
The need only be used if the page/ produce at the end of the URL(s) is the same
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
-
The main navigation is using JS, will this have a negative impact on SEO?
Hi mozzers, We just redesigned our homepage and discovered that our main nav is using JS and when disabling JS, no main nav links was showing up. Is this still considered bad practice for SEO? https://cl.ly/14ccf2509478 thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ty19861 -
Duplicate content across different domains in different countries?
Hi Guys, We have a 4 sites One in NZ, UK, Canada and Australia. All geo-targeting their respective countries in Google Search Console. The sites are identical. We recently added the same content to all 4 sites. Will this cause duplicate content issues or any issues even though they are in different countries and geo-targeting is set? Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wickstar0 -
Effect on SEO for e-commerce on a different domain?
We are engaging a vendor to host our LMS and the process for purchasing access to the LMS (product pages/checkout). The vendor can only accomplish this by domain masking (redirecting portal.ourdomain.com to a subdomain on their domain). Our concern is the SEO implication. Obviously we would prefer the content hosted in a subfolder on our domain for the best SEO outcome, but this isn't an option. The vendor's domain authority is considerably lower than our own, but they recommend moving our product pages, which are currently hosted on our primary domain, to their subdomain so the checkout process is fully integrated using their product. Several of our product pages rank in the top 10 on Google and we don't want to lose that. Does anyone have any experience with domain masking and maintaining page rank? My inclination is that moving these high-ranking pages will 1) Hurt our primary domain, and 2) Negatively effect the rank of our product pages. Thanks in advance, Beth
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bethkmac0 -
Why does my ecommerce category page have such low PA?
I'm a bit of a newbie to the game and I've learnt a lot over the past couple of days with a Moz subscription. I'm starting to put together a strategy to improve our SEO performance and get our site ranking higher for some specific terms. We have a low domain authority at 25. The page I am concerned about is one of our main product categories, link here. About a year and half a go we changed our domain name and did a 301 redirect on all our category, products and content pages. Would this have affected anything? These redirects are still in place. I also notice OSE shows now inbound links. I'm almost certain there are a few around though. Most recently we've been investing in unique descriptions for all products in this category at around 60 words per product, this excludes the product features in a tabular format. I appreciate this isn't many words. I have also read a lot about faceted navigation and this category suffers from a very flat product structure were facet navigation is used heavily by the user to find a product that matches their requirements. Does anybody have any ideas about this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | joe-ainswoth0 -
Targeting different countries with domain name
Hi currently have a eCommerce store .com.au targeting Australia. We want to start targeting the US market with the same products. I guess what would be the top choice in this case since our domain is location-specific to Australia and not a generic top-level domain (gTLD)? Cheers, Chris
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jayoliverwright0 -
Product Category Subcategory hierarchy
Hi all, I am developing an ecommerce store and would like some advice on the Category / Product URL structure for SEO purposes. Products have many options Products belong to a sub-category. Sub categories belong to a category There will be a maximum of 500 products in the database. 1. http://shop.com/{category}/{product_slug}?{product_option} Flattened with query string option http://shop.com/apple/iphone-5s?model=32gb&colour=white 2. http://shop.com/{category}/{subcategory}/{product_slug}?{product_option} // Hierarchical with query string option 3. http://shop.com/{category}/{product_slug}/{product_option} 4. http://shop.com/{category}/{subcategory}/{product_slug}/{product_option} 5. http://shop.com/{category}/{product-slug} http://shop.com/apple/iphone-5s-32gb-black Option 5 seems best to me, however I am also worried about duplicate content between pages. http://shop.com/apple/iphone-5s-32gb-black http://shop.com/apple/iphone-5s-64gb-black http://shop.com/apple/iphone-5s-64gb-white The above 3 examples will all have very similar content. And if I use canonical url tag, which product page would I refer these pages to? At least with Option 1 I can use the canonical tag to tell search engines that pages with get parameters can point to the non get parameter version. In addition to Option 5, should I create a http://shop.com/{category}/{subcategory} page? That way Option 5 item canonical tags can point to that page. e.g. http://shop.com/apple/iphone-5s which would contain product summary detail with product options listed on the page? Am I missing something here or can anybody provide a better solution?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MangoMM0 -
Geo targeting - same language, different countries
We are in serps in US google, but not in the UK, Australia. Also we have non-english translations of the website - these options works very well. Are there any logic options to make uk.domain.com? We can add United Kingdom in the description and texts. Can this do though in www.google.co.uk ? Same with AU. Website content fits all countries.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bele0 -
Hiding tag and category root in wordrpess = plunge rank
I deleted the "tag" portion of my tag urls's that were ranking pretty high....so: www.businessinteriors.co.uk/tag/office-fit-out-bristol became www.businessinteriors.co.uk/office fit-out-bristol The old tag page ranked 7 before the change and even 3rd at one stage. The new name page without the tag has re-appeared at 23.... So quite a plunge in ranking from the change and this is across the board for all my tags (200) that were ranking high and I wanted to improve. Have I made a major error? Or will they naturally start coming back to where they were before? Weirdly some of the changes have had a positive impact - so ranking has gone up slightly in some areas..but completely out done by the plungers :-s
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bizint0