Canonical URLs in an eCommerce site
-
We have a website with 4 product categories (1. ice cream parlors, 2. frozen yogurt shops etc.).
A few sub-categories (e.g. toppings, smoothies etc.) and the products contained in those are available in more than one product category (e.g. the smoothies are available in the "ice cream parlors" category, but also in the "frozen yogurt shops" category).
My question:
Unfortunately the website has been designed in a way that if a subcategory (e.g. smoothies) is available in more than 1 category, then itself (the subcategory page) + all its product pages will be automatically visible under various different urls.
So now I have several urls for one and the same product:
www.example.com/strawberry-smoothie|SMOOTHIES|FROZEN-YOGURT-SHOPS-391-2-5
and
http://www.example.com/strawberry-smoothie|SMOOTHIES|ICE-CREAM-PARLORS-391-1-5
And also several ones for one and the same sub-category (they all include exactly the same set of products):
http://www.example.com/SMOOTHIES-1-12-0-4 (the smoothies contained in the ice cream parlors category)
http://www.example.com/SMOOTHIES-2-12-0-4 (the same smoothies, contained in the frozen yogurt shops category)
This is happening with around 100 pages.
I would add canonical tags to the duplicates, but I'm afraid that by doing so, the category (frozen yogurt shops) that contains several non-canonical sub-categories (smoothies, toppings etc.) , might not show up anymore in search results or become irrelevant for Google when searching for example for "products for frozen yoghurt shops". Do you know if this would be actually the case?
I hope I explained it well..
-
Thanks a lot Anthony. Unfortunately the problem cannot be fixed at programming level so I'll try the "solution" with the canonical tags.
Cheers!
-
You are on the right path and realize you have a problem.
My #1 suggestion would be to fix this at a programming/development level to prevent this from happening. Canonical tags can be used to help/fix the problem, but they are more of a suggestion to the search engines as opposed to a 100% perfect fix.
If you can't eliminate the problem, have no fear using the canonical tags. Each category, subcategory and product should have their own canonical URL and the duplicates can canonicalize back to them.
-
Why don't you try to measure the impact one maybe 4 or 5 of the pages?
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
-
Moving site from html to Wordpress site: Should I port all old pages and redirect?
Any help would be appreciated. I am porting an old legacy .html site, which has about 500,000 visitors/month and over 10,000 pages to a new custom Wordpress site with a responsive design (long overdue, of course) that has been written and only needs a few finishing touches, and which includes many database features to generate new pages that did not previously exist. My questions are: Should I bother to port over older pages that are "thin" and have no incoming links, such that reworking them would take time away from the need to port quickly? I will be restructuring the legacy URLs to be lean and clean, so 301 redirects will be necessary. I know that there will be link juice loss, but how long does it usually take for the redirects to "take hold?" I will be moving to https at the same time to avoid yet another porting issue. Many thanks for any advice and opinions as I embark on this massive data entry project.
Technical SEO | | gheh20130 -
301 Redirect Url Within a Canonical Tag
So this might sounds like a silly question... A client of mine has a duplicate content issue which will be fixed using canonical tags. We are also providing them with an updated URL structure meaning rwe will be having to do lots of 301 redirects. The URL structure is a much larger task that than the duplicate content so i planned to set up the canonicals first. Then it occurred to me id be updating the canonical tags with the urls from the old structure which brings me to my question. Will the canonical tags with the old urls redirect credit to the new urls with the 301? Or should i just wait until we have the new url structure in place and use these new urls in the canonicals? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | NickG-1230 -
Ecommerce filter views, URLs and the SEO implications
Hi, I'm dealing with an ecommerce client who sells furniture. Each category landing page has a menu on the left hand side that allows you filter by colour, material, brand etc. Take the www.example/double-beds page, as an example: if you select 'Wood' from the 'Material' filter, the URL changes to www.example/Category/Browse?PageNumber=&ViewAs=&ObjectEntityKey=1916&PageSize=15&SortBy=&filterOptions=47&filterOptions=47 and all the wooden double beds are displayed. As this new URL contains some of the same products/content as www.example.com/double-beds, where do we stand from an SEO/duplicate content point of view? Are we at risk of a duplicate content slap? Cheers, Lewis
Technical SEO | | PeaSoupDigital0 -
Should I make a new URL just so it can include a target keyword, then 301 redirect the old URL?
This is for an ecommerce site, and the company I'm working with has started selling a new line of products they want to promote.Should I make a new URL just so it can include a target keyword, then 301 redirect the old URL? One of my concerns is losing a little bit of link value from redirecting. Thank you for reading!
Technical SEO | | DA20130 -
Will it make any difference to SEO on an ecommerce site if they use their SSL certificate (https) across every page
I know that e-commerce sites usually have SSL certificates on their payment pages. A site I have come across is using has the https: prefix to every page on their site. I'm just wondering if this will make any difference to the site in the eyes of Search Engines, and whether it could effect the rankings of the site?
Technical SEO | | Sayers1 -
Canonical Tag Here?
Hello, I have a client who I have taken on (different to my other client in another question), My client has a ecommerce website and in nearly all of his products (around 30-40) he has a little information checklist like.. Made in the UK
Technical SEO | | Prestige-SEO
Prices from 9.99
Top quality
Free delivery on orders over.. This is the duplicate content, what is the best practise for this as the SEOmoz crawler is giving me a multiple of errors.0 -
Is there actual risk to having multiple URLs that frame in main url? Or is it just bad form and waste of money?
Client has many urls that just frame in the main site. It seems like a total waste of money, but if they are frames, is there an actual risk?
Technical SEO | | gravityseo0 -
Recently revamped site structure - now not even ranking for brand name, but lots of content - what happened? (Yup, the site has been crawled a few times since) Any ideas? Did I make a classic mistake? Any advise appreciated :)
I've completely disappeared off Google - what happened? Even my brand name keyword does not bring up my website - I feel lost, confused and baffled on what my next steps should be. ANY advice would be welcome, since there's no going back to the way the site was set up.
Technical SEO | | JeanieWalker0