Problem: Magento prioritises product URL's without categories?

[onlinetrend]

HI there, we are moving a website from Shoptrader to Magento, which has 45.000 indexations.
yes shoptrader made a bit of a mess. Trying to clean it up now.

• there is a 301 redirect list of all old URL's pointing to the new
• one product can exist in multiple categories
• want to solve this with canonical url’s for instance:

1. shoptrader.nl/categorieA/product has 301 redirect towards magento.nl/nl/categorieA/product
2. shoptrader.nl/categorieA/product-5531 has 301 redirect towards magento.nl/nl/categorieA/product
3. shoptrader.nl/categorieA/product¤cy=GBP has 301 redirect towards magento.nl/nl/categorieA/product
4. shoptrader.nl/categorieB/product has 301 redirect towards magento.nl/nl/categorieB/product, has canonical tag towards magento.nl/nl/categorieA/product
5. shoptrader.nl/categorieB/product?language=nl has 301 redirect towards magento.nl/nl/categorieB/product, has canonical tag towards magento.nl/nl/categorieA/product

Her comes the problem:
New developer insists on using /productname as canonical instead of /category/category/productname, since Magento says so.

The idea is now to redirect to /category/category/productname and there will be a canonical URL on these pages pointing to /productname, loosing some link juice twice. So in the end indexation will take place on /productname … if Google picks it up the 301 + canonical. Would be more adviseable to direct straight to /productname (http://moz.com/community/q/is-link-juice-passed-through-a-301-and-a-canonical-tag), but I prefer to point to one URL with categories attached. Which has more advantages(?):

• clear menustructure
• able to use subfolders in mobile searchresults
• missing breadcrumb

What would you say?

[renehansen]

Most often the problem with Magento is DC and the recommendation is to use /category/subcategory/ for breadcrumbs and normal navigation and then use /product for the actual product page.

I agree that common UX dictates that it should more like, /category/subcategory/product, but Magento (and other e-commerce CMS) have issues with making more than one URL for a product.

I would stick to /product and make the necessary 301 redirects.

[LynnPatchett]

HI,

If the 301s are mainly to redirect the old site to the new then I would redirect to/category/category/productname.

Since individual product pages rarely pick up a lot of external links (your case might be an exception) then you are not really losing any 'link juice' anyway. If you have some super products with loads of external links to a /category/product page then that page might well appear in the serps anyway regardless of the canonical (canonical is a suggestion not a hard rule).

There are ways to fiddle with the magento setup to allow for more customization of the canonical url for any given product and/or to 'create' breadcrumbs for /product pages but it will  need a fair amount of custom coding and might not be worth the effort.

If it all gets to be too much - I would go with the /category/category/product 301s and then canonical to /product and be done with it. My two cents!

[onlinetrend]

Thx René! so glad with your professional point of view! Glad to know we are working in the correct direction. pfoeh.

[onlinetrend]

HI Lynn, thx for your time and effort to reply and share your professional knowledge as well.

and especially thx for the extra bit of knowledge ... did not know you could really influence that "If you have some super products with loads of external links to a /category/product page then that page might well appear in the serps anyway regardless of the canonical" ... knowing that canonical is a suggestion

[onlinetrend]

To your opinion, could this be a solution to keep the categories in URL's ... as canonicals?
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/14476579/seo-category-and-product-path-url-magento

what do you mean, might not be worth the effort? will it take something like one work week to accomplish this?

[LynnPatchett]

Hi,

The magento extension mentioned in the stackoverflow link above might do what you need. If you have thousands of products it can get time consuming planning and setting it all up and then keeping an eye on them all to make sure the canonicals are working as expected - thats what I meant by might not be worth the effort. If you are ready to put in the initial work then no reason not to give that extension a try and see if it does what you need (I don't think that extension was around the last time I set up a magento shop!).

[renehansen]

Sure no problem. That is what I would do ín that case. The best theoretical thing is to redirect all URLs to the best matching page and use /category/subcategory/page and make sure that DC is not an issue. However, with Magento, I have seen many issues with redirects going bad, and my strategy is now more time focused

[Everett]

Not to muddy up the conversation too much, but I wouldn't try to keep the category paths in product URLs as the canonical. What happens when you have one product in multiple categories? I would make .com/products/product-name as the canonical URL in the rel canonical tag. What you choose to show in the URL bar for the purpose of user experience and breadcrumb consistency is a different story. I hope I am understanding your situation correctly.