Any input / pointers for my upcoming Ecommerce move?
-
I posted this as a reply on my other question, but never got another responce...
I am basically moving ecommerce platforms to answer your question. I am keep the same domain (www.stbands.com). If you want to get even more specific i am moving from storesonline to corecommerce. Here's some more info:
- All meta tags, URLS, content is virtually going to be the same except my product pages and normal pages will end with .html, however my category pages will still be /categoryname (like a directory).
- My category URLS seem to build in a mod re-write fashion, which I hear is better for SEO (like /sweatbands/head-sweatbands/).
- I have set all my pages to use the rel=cananical tag, so if you are on the category /sweatbands/head-sweatbands/ it cananicals back to /head-sweatbands
- The images are changing names as I upload them on a product because it auto creates new sizes. This differs from our old host and may affect our vertical image rankings. Should I 301 the image URLS?
- I am keeping the www. in my domain name, as opposed to just domain.com to keep everything the same.
- CoreCommerce automatically seems to make my products uppercase in the URL as they are in the title, but the url works both lowercase and uppercase so its not case sensitive.
This is just an overview of some things I think I have most of my bases covered, but i'm aiming for a april 1st launch / move for the new site. Do you guys have any other pointers / suggestions?
-
James,
Thank you for your recommendation. Appreciate it.
-
I completely understand. But this is not good practice. rel=canonical is a band-aid, but I would definately try to 301 to that lowercase url if you can. Seriously.
-
It is the same product, there isn't multiple products. So the user can access the same product by going to any of the following::
/Levi-Blue-Jeans, /levi-blue-jeans, /LeVi-bLuE-JeAnS, or whatever,
But the main version is /Levi-Blue-Jeans. Just to re-inforce, this ins't going to a different page - its the same product. So basically my URLs are not case sensitive, but are produced as the product title, which uses some uppercase letters.
James,
I have the rel=cananical tag on all my product pages linking to the lowercase, exact version of the url.
-
please explain,
user can access http://www.domain.com/Product-Describer-Keyword.html and http://www.domain.com/product-describer-keyword.html ? if yes then you have a duplicate content issue, just to let you know that Google is smart to picking up the Url that is used by the CMS, but when you start getting links to the one not used by CMS then you have an issue .
-
if you can access the same page using multiple URL's this is BAD - you MUST 301 redirect all requests to a single URL - pick lowercase or whatever, but do not leave it as-is. It only takes one mistake on internal linking or a bad inbound link and you'll get all these indexed..
-
James,
My URLS work for both lower case and uppercase. So the CMS spits out a product URL like this:
www.domain.com/Product-Describer-Keyword.html
but if the customer were to goto /product-describer-keyword.html or /Product-describer-keyword it also works automatically (without me manually doing a 301)
So can i assume this is build in?
-
if any URL's work for upper and lower case, make sure you 301 one to the other. I recommend using lowercase, so redirect all upper or mixed case to all lower case.
oh, and dont forget sitemaps..
-
Wissam,
Thank you I need to work on my Bing Feed... Anyone else have any pointers?
-
I have input and pointers
- Data Feeds for your products( Google/ Bing)
- Advise product URLs and basically all urs are lower case ( long term)
- dnt 301 image urls, but make sure they have Alt tags
- I would advise social Integrations (facebook Likes)
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
-
Using Temporary Redirects for Ecommerce Categories?
Hi I'm currently going over old category pages for an ecommerce website, and I'm trying to work out the best way of handling old pages. I will be setting up 301s for the majority of pages, as these are 100% dead and gone. I'm struggling a bit with certain pages though, whereby the category is empty but there is always the possibility that our buyers will purchase these products again in the future (or they might not, there's no way to tell). I know that this isn't what a 302 is for, but I'm wondering which would be better in this case: to create a 302 redirect or to do a full 301 and if the products are repurchased at a later date to create a whole new url. Hope that makes sense. Thanks, Kate
Technical SEO | | Lisaangel0 -
Moving image directory location on redesign.
I'm getting ready to do a redesign for a client and one thing that annoys me about the directory structure of the website is that he has files buried deep in the directories. For example, the images are buried like four folders deep in some cases and I would like to move all of those images into an images folder directly below the root. All of those images, however, have already been indexed by google and show up in google images. If I start moving those images around, could it hurt his rankings?
Technical SEO | | ScottMcPherson0 -
If you are organizing the site structure for an ecommerce site, how would you do it?
Should you use not use slashes and use all dashes or use just a few slashes and the rest with dashes? For example, domain.com/category/brand/product-color-etc OR domain.com/anythinghere-color-dimensions-etc Which structure would you rather go for and why?
Technical SEO | | Zookeeper0 -
ECommerce: Best Practice for expired product pages
I'm optimizing a pet supplies site (http://www.qualipet.ch/) and have a question about the best practice for expired product pages. We have thousands of products and hundreds of our offers just exist for a few months. Currently, when a product is no longer available, the site just returns a 404. Now I'm wondering what a better solution could be: 1. When a product disappears, a 301 redirect is established to the category page it in (i.e. leash would redirect to dog accessories). 2. After a product disappers, a customized 404 page appears, listing similar products (but the server returns a 404) I prefer solution 1, but am afraid that having hundreds of new redirects each month might look strange. But then again, returning lots of 404s to search engines is also not the best option. Do you know the best practice for large ecommerce sites where they have hundreds or even thousands of products that appear/disappear on a frequent basis? What should be done with those obsolete URLs?
Technical SEO | | zeepartner1 -
Duplicate titles / canonical / Drupal
I have a site where there are several duplicate titles, looks like mainly based on a parameterized vs. non-parameterized version of the page. I have what appears to be a proper canonical tag, but webmaster still complains of both duplicate titles & meta descriptions. A good example (taken out of webmaster report for http://igottadrive.com) is: /driving-tips/mirror-setup-and-use /driving-tips/mirror-setup-and-use?inline=true If I look at the page (in either case) there appears to be a correct canonical tag pointing to the base case. However, for some reason google is either ignoring the canonical or its not properly done. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Technical SEO | | uwaim20120 -
Domain name with separated/non-separated keywords
I start a new webshop within a month about spices and coffee. I'm thinking about the domain name to take. I would like to get visitors from coffee and spice keyword searches. How much does it matter (in terms of SEO) if I use spiceandcoffee instead of spice-and-coffee? (The site will be hungarian and it sounds easy to remember without the hypen: fuszer-es-kave or fuszereskave.) Does Google weighing more separated keywords in domain, instead of non-separated?
Technical SEO | | joo0 -
Getting multiple errors for domain.com/xxxx/xxxx/feed/feed/feed/feed...
A recent SEOMoz crawl report is showing a bunch 404's and duplicate page content on pages with urls like http://domain.com/categories/about/feed/feed/feed/feed/feed and on and on. This is a wordpress install. Does anyone know what could be causing this or why SEOMoz would be trying to read these non-existent feed pages?
Technical SEO | | Brandtailers0 -
When moving my ecommerce website from one host to another should I also 301 all my image urls?
I'm going to be 301'ing a lot of pages, but should i also 301 my image URLS? Any other helpful hints would be awesome too, as this will be my first move online ever. We've been with our host 3 years. Thanks! Paul Serra STbands.com, Owner
Technical SEO | | Hyrule0