Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
WooCommerce category naming conventions
-
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 GlassesCurrently, 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
-RetroHence 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 GlassesGiving 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
-
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!
-
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.
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
-
Why Product pages are throwing Missing field "image" and Missing field "price" in Wordpress Woocommerce
I have a wordpress wocommerce website where I have uploaded 100s of products but it's giving me error in GSC under merchant listing tab. When I tested it show missing field image and missing field price. I have done everything according to https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/product#merchant-listing-experiences and applied fixed i.e. images are 800x800 and price range is also there. What else can be done here?!merchant listing.jpg
Technical SEO | | Ravi_Rana0 -
Nofollow/Noindex Category Listing Pages with Filters
Our e-commerce site currently has thousands of duplicate pages indexed because category listing pages with all the different filters selected are indexed. So, for example, you would see indexed: example.com/boots example.com/boots/black example.com/boots/black-size-small etc. There is a logic in place that when more than one filter is selected all the links on the page are nofollowed, but Googlebot is still getting to them, and the variations are being indexed. At this point I'd like to add 'noindex' or canonical tags to the filtered versions of the category pages, but many of these filtered pages are driving traffic. Any suggestions? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | fayfr0 -
Problems with WooCommerce Product Attribute Filter URL's
I am running a WordPress/WooCommerce site for a client, and Moz is picking up some issues with URL's generated from WooCommerce product attribute filters. For example: ..co.uk/womens-prescription-glasses/?filter_gender=mens&filter_style=full-rim&filter_shape=oval How do I get Google to ignore these filters?
Technical SEO | | SushiUK
I am running Yoast Premium, but not sure if this can solve the issue? Product categories are canonicalised to the root category URL. Any suggestions very gratefully appreciated. Thanks Bob0 -
How well do .ltd.uk domain names rank?
Hi all, do .ltd.uk domain names rank well? How well do they stack up against a .com or .co.uk? I'd really appreciate any feedback from people with any experience with these domains. Thanks John
Technical SEO | | john251810100 -
301 Redirect with an Exact Domain name Match
My Client had a site that ranked for a pretty competitive two word phrase, but for a variety of reasons had to transfer the site to a different domain name (with none of the previous keywords). We've 301'd everything just fine to the new site, but our traffic for that two word phrase, as well as related long tail traffic, is beginning to drop. Could the drop be related to something that we didn't do well in the transfer? Or is it due to the new domain name now not being an exact match? Sitenote question: Our Google Analytics is still set up for the former domain name and shows data just fine. Is there any reason to switch GA to the new domain? What are the pros/cons? Much thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | TrevorMcKendrick0 -
How to 301 multiple domain names to a single domain
Hey, I tried to find and answer to this seemingly simple question, but no luck. So, I have one domain name with a website attached to it. I also registered all the other domain names that are similar to it or have different extensions - I want to redirect all the other domain names to my one main domain name without getting penalised by the big G. It looks like this: www.mainsite.com - this is my main domain I also have www.mainsite.com.au, www.mainsite.org, and www.mainsite.org.au which I all want to just redirect to www.mainsite.com I have been told that the best way to do this is a 301 redirect, but to do that you need to make a CNAME for all the other domains that points to www.mainsite.com. My problem is that I cannot seem to create a CNAME record for http://mainsite.com - I have it working for http://www.mainsite.com but not the non www record. What should I be doing differently? Is it just my DNS provider is useless? Thanks, Anthony
Technical SEO | | Grenadi0 -
What's the difference between a category page and a content page
Hello, Little confused on this matter. From a website architectural and content stand point, what is the difference between a category page and a content page? So lets say I was going to build a website around tea. My home page would be about tea. My category pages would be: White Tea, Black Tea, Oolong Team and British Tea correct? ( I Would write content for each of these topics on their respective category pages correct?) Then suppose I wrote articles on organic white tea, white tea recipes, how to brew white team etc...( Are these content pages?) Do I think link FROM my category page ( White Tea) to my ( Content pages ie; Organic White Tea, white tea receipes etc) or do I link from my content page to my category page? I hope this makes sense. Thanks, Bill
Technical SEO | | wparlaman0 -
How do I get Google to display categories instead of the URL in results?
I've seen that for some domains Google will show a nice clickable site heirarchy in place of the actual URL of a search result. See attached for an example. How do I go about achieving this type of results? categorized.png
Technical SEO | | Carlito-2569610