URL Structure on Category Pages

[viatrading1]

Hi,

Currently, we having the following URL Structure o our product pages:

• All Products Pages: www.viatrading.com/wholesale/283/All_Products.html
• Category Page: www.viatrading.com/wholesale/4/Clothing.html
• Product Page: www.viatrading.com/wholesale/product/LOAD-HE-WOM/Assorted-High-End-Women-Clothing-Lots.html?cid=4

Since we are going to use another frontend system, we are thinking about re-working on this URL Structure, using something like this:

• All Products Pages: www.viatrading.com/wholesale-products/
• Category Page: www.viatrading.com/wholesale-products/category/
• Product Page: www.viatrading.com/wholesale-products/category/product-title/

I understand this is better for SEO and user experience. However, we already have good traffic on the current URL Structure.

1. Should we use same left-side filters on Category Pages as in All Products Page?
2. Since we are using Faceted Navigation, when users filter the Category (e.g. Clothing) they will see same page as Clothing Category Page. Is that an issue for Duplicate Content?
3. Since we are a wholesale company - I understand is using "/wholesale/products/" in URL for all product pages a good idea? If so, should we avoid word "wholesale" in product-title to avoid repeated word in URL?
4. For us, SKU in URL helps the company employees and maybe some clients identify the link. However, what do you think of using the SEO-friendly product-title, and 301 redirect it to www.viatrading.com/BRTA-LN-DISHRACKS/, so 1st link is only used by company members and Canonicalized 2nd is the only one seen by general public?

Thank you,

[WebElaine]

1. Which filters you use really depends on which filters apply. This shouldn't really affect SEO at all. Just focus on what will be easiest for your user base.

2. This could potentially cause an issue, but depends on how it is implemented. More info straight from Google: https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2014/02/faceted-navigation-best-and-5-of-worst.html

3. If you don't sell retail products, don't include "wholesale" in the URL. Google and users prefer shorter URLs. Don't put them in the product titles or slugs either (slugs being the last part of the URL, i.e. /products/my-product-name = my-product-name is the slug).

4. Couldn't you put the SKU right on the PDP, so if employees search by SKU they find the correct product anyway? Seems like a lot of extra overhead setting up 2 URLs for every product and then redirecting and canonicalizing everything. There's a lot of potential for mistakes.

[viatrading1]

Thank you RedSweater,

#1 In general, in our case same filters would apply for all / unique categories. So I assume we would use them all

#2 For the issue about having same content on All Filtered vs Category page.
Wouldn't this be solved with Canonical URLs?

e.g. we currently have this URL: https://www.viatrading.com/wholesale/2/Electronics.html?hideSearchBox=false&keywords=&cid=2&facetNameValue=Category_value_+Electronics

with the same content as: https://www.viatrading.com/wholesale/2/Electronics.html
But both have Canonical for the 2nd.

Just to make sure, is that SEO-friendly?

#3 Isn't including keywords in URL a best practice though?
See point 3 here: https://moz.com/blog/15-seo-best-practices-for-structuring-urls

Also considering URLs wouldn't be too long, e.g. less than 100 characters
See point 6 here: https://moz.com/blog/15-seo-best-practices-for-structuring-urls

#4 I think that could work. Just to make sure, what is PDP?

Cheers,