Url structure on product pages - Should we apply canonicalized links in breadcrumbs or entry folders
-
We have products in the that go into mulitiple categories on our e-commerce site. But of course, each product is only canonicalized to one category.
My question is: what should the breadcrumbs look like when users access a product from a non-canonicalized/primary category ?Should we apply canonicalized links in breadcrumbs or entry folders?
For example:
Let´s say we have product called "glacier hiking in the alps". It is in two categories; 1) glacier hiking 2) mountain tours. And is canonicalized to the glacier hiking category.
If a user accesses it from the mountain tours category, should the url/breadcrumbs look like this:
www.example.com/glacier-hiking/glacier-hiking-in-the-alps (because that is the canonicalized version)
Or should it look like like this:
www.example.com/mountain-tours/glacier-hiking-in-the-alps (because that is where the user came from)
Thanks in advance!
-
Hey there Shahin, make sure your breadcrumbs reflect the path the users took. It's a navigational aid that's meant to help the user and creating a canonical version of the breadcrumbs would just create a confusing experience. If your user was trying to get back to the mountain tours page but the breadcrumbs only listed glacier hiking, wouldn't that be odd? Since the URLs are already canonicalized it shouldn't hurt your SEO to set things up this way.
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
-
Link Structure June 2019
Question Which link structure is better in 2019 for best SEO practice Example A) https://www.fishingtackleshop.com.au/soft-plastic-lures/ Or B) https://www.fishingtackleshop.com.au/fishing/fishing-lures/soft-plastic-lures/ We're on the bigcommerce platform and used to have https://www.fishingtackleshop.com.au/categories/soft-plastic-lures/ Last year we went from bigcommerce long URL to short to bypass the link juice being sent to /categories Now we have an SEO company trying to sell me their services after a bit of a steady decline since september 2018 and told me that we should have link structure as example B and that is likely the reason for the dip.. Due to breadcrumbing, True or False?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | oceanstorm
I explained i had bread crumb like shown in https://www.fishingtackleshop.com.au/berkley-powerbait-t-tail-minnow/ buy the SEO guy said no it needs to be in the URL structure too. I was under the impression that Short urls opposed to long was better these days and link juice is passed better if it is short url direct to the point? Am i wrong?1 -
URL structure with dash or slash
Hi, everyone Basically I am editing my website page's URL for SEO Optimisation and I am not sure which URL structure is best for SEO. The main different is the sign ( dash or slash ) before the product-code. HERE ARE TWO EXAMPLE www.example.com/long-tail-keyword-product-code www.example.com/long-tail-keyword/product-code To get more idea of my page, here is one of the product from my website : http://www.okeus.co.uk/pro_view-3.html My website is selling my own product, as a result the only keyword can be found was the name of the product and I separated different design by different code. Any experts who are willing help would be very much appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | chrisyu781 -
Regret changing the URL structure, Would it be appropriate to change it back?
Hi Moz Community, We changed the URL structure 6 months ago for our new site, and we experienced a ranking drop since then. From my understanding, changing URL structure and using 301 redirects will lose link juice, more or less. We think the ranking drop is because of the loss of link juice, assuming other factors remain constant. Here are my questions: How do those link juice losses have an impact on our ranking? Would changing URL structure back to original version regain the lost link juice, with all the redirects done properly? Would it take a lot of efforts? Is it recommended to change it back? Thank you so much in advance. Any thoughts and opinions are appreciated! Best, Raymond
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | raymondlii0 -
WooCommere Canonical links relating to products and subscriptions
Hello, Thanks for taking the time to have a read of this, I'm not quite sure of the best way to address this issue. I have a WooCommerce site with Products and Subscriptions, i.e subscribe to buy the product monthly. Because of the way WooCommerce works these are effectively two different pages, for example: https://formnutrition.com/plant-based-nutrition/form-superblend-plant-based-vegan-protein/ and https://formnutrition.com/plant-based-nutrition/superblend-protein-subscription/ Since the second is just a Subscription of the first (Product) it's basically exactly the same content. I'm not sure if I should make the canonical link of the Subscription point to the Product? I would prefer that customers find the Product first and don't want Google to think this is duplicate content. On the other hand it's not strictly duplicate content as they are two different things? Is there any advice or best practice on how to handle this? Many thanks, Damian
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | damo_form0 -
Can I change a URL on a site that has only a few back links?
I have a site that wants to change their URL, It's a very basic site with hardly any backlinks. http://www.cproofingandexteriors.com/ The only change they want to make is taking out the 'and'.. so it would be cproofingexteriors.com they already own the domain. What should I do?? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MissThumann0 -
Should my back links go to home page or internal pages
Right now we rank on page 2 for many KWs, so should i now focus my attention on getting links to my home page to build domain authority or continue to direct links to the internal pages for specific KWs? I am about to write some articles for several good ranking sites and want to know whether to link my company name (same as domain name) or KW to the home page or use individual KWs to the internal pages - I am only allowed one link per article to my site. Thanks Ash
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AshShep10 -
Altering Breadcrumbs based on User Path to Product URL
Hi, Our products are listed in multiple categories, and as the URLs are path dependent (example.com/fruit/apples/granny-smith/, example.com/fruit/green-fruit/granny-smith/ and so forth) we canonicalise to the 'default' URL (in this case example.com/fruit/apples/granny-smith/). For mainly crawling bandwidth issues I'm looking to change all product URL's to path neutral so there is only ever one URL per product (example.com/granny-smith/), but still list the product in multiple categories. If a user comes directly to example.com/granny-smith/ then the breadcrumbs will use the default path "Fruit > Apples", however if the user navigated to the product via another category then I'd like the breadcrumbs to reflect this. I'm not worried about cloaking as it's not based on user-agent and it's very logical why it's being done so I don't expect a penalty. My question is - how do you recommend this is achieved from a technical standpoint? Many sites use path neutral product URL's (Ikea, PCWorld etc) but none alter the breadcrumbs depending upon path. Our site is mostly behind a CDN so it has to be a client side solution. I currently view the options as: Store Path to product in a cookie and/or browsers local-cache Attach the Path details after a # in the URL and use Javascript to alter breadcrumbs onload with JQuery When a user clicks to a product from a listing page, use AJAX to pull in the product info but leave the rest of the page (including the breadcrumbs) as-is, updating the URL accordingly Do you think any of these wouldn't work? Do you have a preference on which one is best? Is there another method you'd recommend? We also have "Next/Previous" functionality (links to the previous and next product URLs) on the page so I suspect we'd need to attach the path after a # and make another round trip to the server onload to update the previous and next links. Finally, does anyone know of any sites that do update the breadcrumbs depending upon path? Thanks in advance for your time FashionLux
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FashionLux1 -
Link Juice Vs. Page Rank
What is better from an SEO point of view a Page with Page Rank of 5 with 0 clicks linking to your site or a page with a Page Rank of 3 with 1000 clicks linking back to your site? Is link juice important? do search engines count Link Juice?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEODinosaur0