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.
Remove Product & Category from URLS in Wordpress
-
Does anyone have experience removing /product/ and /product-category/, etc. from URLs in wordpress? I found this link from Wordpress which explains that this shouldn't be done, but I would like some opinions of those who have tried it please.
https://docs.woocommerce.com/document/removing-product-product-category-or-shop-from-the-urls/
-
Hi there,
I can't point you in a specific direction on how to go about doing this, but as Martijn mentioned it's important that you make sure:
- 301 redirects are setup from old URLs to new URLs (/cat-name 301s to /prod-name)
- ALL internal links are updated to /prod-name (for example, in the main navigation, footer, sidebars, etc.)
- I believe what Martijn meant with the URL depth comment was that websites (particularly ecommerce sites) should be structured logically (mainly for topical authority). So for example, if you are a site that sells electronics, it's important from both a user and bot perspective that there is a domain.com/laptops/ page (which would be the category page). Under that, it makes sense to have a product page that would live on domain.com/laptops/macbook for example. It sounds like you are considering to remove the top-level category pages, which might result in a worse user experience and possibly a less-than-ideal setup for link equity being passed down to product pages.
Martijn, is that what you were hinting at?
-
Any follow up?
-
Then when you click through to a product:
I have encountered no problems doing this in Opencart. No 301 redirects were needed because the plugin takes care of this itself.
I want to make sure that you're aware of the different internal structures in URL depth. That's probably why most people would advise you not to go this way.
I'm sorry, I'm not sure what you mean in respect to different internal structures or why the above would be an issue.
-
Hi,
You should be able to just change this in the permalinks. It's good to be reminded of some of the things that you need to take care of: redirects, making sure that all old links are pointing the new right way. But most of all, I want to make sure that you're aware of the different internal structures in URL depth. That's probably why most people would advise you not to go this way.
Martijn.
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
-
If I block a URL via the robots.txt - how long will it take for Google to stop indexing that URL?
If I block a URL via the robots.txt - how long will it take for Google to stop indexing that URL?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Gabriele_Layoutweb0 -
Will disallowing URL's in the robots.txt file stop those URL's being indexed by Google
I found a lot of duplicate title tags showing in Google Webmaster Tools. When I visited the URL's that these duplicates belonged to, I found that they were just images from a gallery that we didn't particularly want Google to index. There is no benefit to the end user in these image pages being indexed in Google. Our developer has told us that these urls are created by a module and are not "real" pages in the CMS. They would like to add the following to our robots.txt file Disallow: /catalog/product/gallery/ QUESTION: If the these pages are already indexed by Google, will this adjustment to the robots.txt file help to remove the pages from the index? We don't want these pages to be found.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | andyheath0 -
URL Injection Hack - What to do with spammy URLs that keep appearing in Google's index?
A website was hacked (URL injection) but the malicious code has been cleaned up and removed from all pages. However, whenever we run a site:domain.com in Google, we keep finding more spammy URLs from the hack. They all lead to a 404 error page since the hack was cleaned up in the code. We have been using the Google WMT Remove URLs tool to have these spammy URLs removed from Google's index but new URLs keep appearing every day. We looked at the cache dates on these URLs and they are vary in dates but none are recent and most are from a month ago when the initial hack occurred. My question is...should we continue to check the index every day and keep submitting these URLs to be removed manually? Or since they all lead to a 404 page will Google eventually remove these spammy URLs from the index automatically? Thanks in advance Moz community for your feedback.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | peteboyd0 -
Case Sensitive URLs, Duplicate Content & Link Rel Canonical
I have a site where URLs are case sensitive. In some cases the lowercase URL is being indexed and in others the mixed case URL is being indexed. This is leading to duplicate content issues on the site. The site is using link rel canonical to specify a preferred URL in some cases however there is no consistency whether the URLs are lowercase or mixed case. On some pages the link rel canonical tag points to the lowercase URL, on others it points to the mixed case URL. Ideally I'd like to update all link rel canonical tags and internal links throughout the site to use the lowercase URL however I'm apprehensive! My question is as follows: If I where to specify the lowercase URL across the site in addition to updating internal links to use lowercase URLs, could this have a negative impact where the mixed case URL is the one currently indexed? Hope this makes sense! Dave
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | allianzireland0 -
Wordpress Comments Pagination
Hi Mozzers What is your view on the following. Should you Paginate comments to increase page speed? If yes, at what # of comments would you begin pagination? (with the objective being decreasing page load times) Apply rel="canonical" back to the main article URL? eg: url/comment-page-1 => url noindex the comment pages? create a "View all" comments page? Thanks in advance for your help! 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jeremycabral
J0 -
Using WP All Import csv import plugin for wordpress to daily update products on large ecommerce site. Category naming and other issues.
We have just got an automated solution working to upload about 4000 products daily to our site. We get a CSV file from the wholesalers server each day and the way they have named products and categories is not ideal. Although most of the products remain the same (don't need to be over written) Some will go out of stock or prices may change etc. Problem is we have no control over the csv file so we need to keep the catagories they have given us. Might be able to create new catgories and have products listed under multiple categories? If anyone has used wp all import or has knoledge in this area please let me know. I have plenty more questions but this should start the ball rolling! Thanks in advance mozzers
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | weebro0 -
Removing dashes in our URLs?
Hi Forum, Our site has an errant product review module that is resulting in about 9-10 404 errors per day on Google Webmaster Tools. We've found that by changing our product page URLs to only include 2 dashes, the module stops causing 404 errors for that page. Does changing our URL from "oursite.com/girls-pink-yoga-capri.html" to "oursite.com/girlspink-yoga-capri.html" hurt our SEO for a search for "girls pink yoga capri"? If so, by how much (assuming everthing else on the page is optimized properly) Thanks for your input.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pano0 -
Multiple URLs for the same page
I am working with a client and recently discovered that they have several URLs that go to the same page. http://www.maps.com/FunFacts.aspx
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WebMarketingandDesign
http://www.maps.com/funfacts.aspx
http://www.maps.com/FunFacts.aspx?nav=FF
http://www.maps.com/FunFacts.aspx?nav=FS
http://www.maps.com/funfacts.aspx?nav=FF
http://www.maps.com/funfacts.aspx?nav=ffhttp://www.maps.com/FunFacts.aspx?nav=MShttp://www.maps.com/funfacts.aspx?nav=
http://www.maps.com/FunFacts.aspx?nav=FF#
http://www.maps.com/FunFacts
http://www.maps.com/funfacts.aspx?.nav=FF I am afraid this is happening all over the site. So, my question is: Is this hurting the SEO and how? If so what is the best way to go about fixing this problem? Thanks for your help!0