Breadcrumbs for ecommerce site

[AMHC]

We are doing a major overhaul on our site, and we have some questions about URLs, breadcrumbs and ecommerce.

Currently, a product can reside in multiple categories, and can have multiple URLs based on how a user navigates to the page. We handle this via canonicals, but it's awful for SEO on many levels. O-U-C-H.

The main issue is that a product can reside in multiple categories.

At this point, Plan A for our overhaul is that a product URL is always going to be www.domain.com/product-name-sku.html/. Neat and clean, and avoids end-user confusion if they navigate to the product through a category that doesn't match the URL.

Plan B: We can anchor a product to a category or subcategory, (www.domain.com/category-name/subcategory-name/product-name-sku.html) but we think that this cuts down on usability as users can navigate to a product through different categories, and the URL may not match the user's navigation.

Based on how Google has devalued URLs for ranking purposes, I don't think that there is much of an SEO advantage to Plan B. Am I wrong?

A product can show up in multiple categories - for example:

www.domain.com/womens-clothing/

www.domain.com/womens-clothing/dresses/

www,domain.com/womens-clothing/dresses/maxidresses/

Category breadcrumbs take care of themselves. What is the best practice to handle the breadcrumb on the product page considering that there are multiple paths a user can take to a product? Options:

1. The breadcrumb on the product page dynamically changes based on how the user navigates to the page. The URL is always fixed as per above, but we change the breadcrumb based on the session.

ex: Product: Black Ruffled MuuMuu

Home > Womens Clothing > Black Ruffled MuuMuu

Home > Womens Clothing > Dresses > Black Ruffled MuuMuu

We would be showing Google different breadcrumbs based on how the bot navigates to the page. Are there any issues with this from an SEO perspective as it would seem to provide the better user experience?

2. The breadcrumb on a product page is always fixed. We anchor a product to a category or subcategory and the breadcrumb is always the same no matter how a user navigates to the product. This is simpler from a development perspective, and we are always showing the same breadcrumb to Google. IMHO, this is not as good for usability.

ex: Breadcrumb is always:  Home > Womens Clothing > Dresses > Black Ruffled MuuMuu regardless of how a user navigates to it.

Which way would our ecommerce experts recommend?

[Sheena_Schleicher]

I typically handle this following:

• URL: "Plan A" - for our overhaul is that a product URL is always going to be www.domain.com/product-name-sku.html/. Neat and clean, and avoids end-user confusion if they navigate to the product through a category that doesn't match the URL.
• Breadcrumbs: Option 1 - dynamically changes based on how the user navigates to the page.