There is a problem that I can see happening that will cause seo problems and cause a google penalty and thus lower site rankings. The problem is duplicate content.
The way Magento assigns products is the problem. For instance, if you have one product but place it in 2 or more categories, Magento creates a new url for each category product.
They are both one product that I assigned to the root catalog as well as in a category ‘wedding favors’. When I get spidered by google and it sees the 2 pages with the same content I will get a duplicate content penalty. Imagine if I place this product in 5 or 6 different categories.
You might want to consider this method to fix this problem: . When creating a product have the ability to assign it to a main category as well as place it other categories, but the products that are listed in the other categories (not as the main category) are linked to the product in its assigned main category.
Other than the duplicate content issue, this is probably one of the best shopping carts from a seo standpoint I have worked with, and its still just a preview release!
In admin panel, you can set the parameter “Use categories path for product URLs” to “No” so that you don’t have the category url key in your product url.
But this means you won’t take benefit from your category url key in your product url…
Even if you have your product in only one category, it will have 2 distinct urls possible:
- with its own url key only
- with its url key + its category url key
Examples of non-malicious duplicate content could include:
* Discussion forums that can generate both regular and stripped-down pages targeted at mobile devices
* Store items shown or linked via multiple distinct URLs
* Printer-only versions of web pages
I understand that this kind of “duplicate content” is not considered as malicious, and won’t cause penalty.
Am i right ?
If so, we can let the option on “yes” and we won’t have any problem with ranking.
I dont ‘ think so and can’t follow your arguments, SeL. Using SEO URLs by mod_rewrite and including category key in product url doesn’t give a site any relevant benefit only by using it. If your are going to take benefit from your category url key in your product url, you or other interests need to link it with the complete url to the site, like the following example will show you.
This kind of duplicate content is also not malicious in the way google explain duplicate content. But there is a really good chance, the robot is going to scan your site and index all different url by one product. And now you can ask yourself - which url you would like to rank in serps?
The second problem by using cateory url in product url is that you build a bad internal link structure. If you use it, every category link “to another” product (in fact it is the same, but you show the robot different ones). Look at following example:
2) No use of category URL
Category 1 > .../product1.html
Category 2 > .../product1.html
Category 3 > .../product1.html
In the previous example you see how it works. The link structure in example 1 (using category url) is really bad, because you link 3 times to “different” products. Example 2 shows you how to build the internal link structure a better way. Three links to the same product.
Last but not least - if you build up your shop by using link structure one, you also can only rank one of that products in the serps. So why you are going to the let robot find out, which is the preferred one. Espaccially if you are working to optimize your long tail - google will benefit version 2.
First, create the categories and products like you normally would; however, on the category setting make sure the setting “Is active” is set to “no” . The reason being is your goal is just to create a catagory number. Place your product in as many categories as you would like.
Second, go to the CMS tab and click on “manage pages” . There, create a new page and fill in the info as you would like to include the url and end it with .html
In the content section use the following: {{block type="catalog/product_list" category_id="PLACE THE CORESPONDING CATEGORY NUMBER HERE"}}
If you do, no matter which category the user navigates to, the product link will always by the same.
To see an example of how this will work, go to www.theweddingstandard.com
I created a html menu on the left side that links to the cms pages.
That should alliviate any concern regarding duplicate content.
Great piece of software here. I do hope though you will reconsider the attributes system. Treating each as seperate product is way too laborous for stores with more than just a few products. Also, the gift message does not work as well. I look forward to your upcoming releases as well as the Magento 1.0 stable.
You’re better off worrying about whether your product descriptions are the same as other sites on the web, rather than worrying about duplicate content penalties from having multiple listings for a product on your own site.
Maybe you don’t have to worry about duplicate content penalties, but having multiple urls to the same content is wrong on so many levels.
First of all, on big sites linking structure is very significant factor for ranking on search engines. You won’t be able to take advantage of this since different url’s are considered different pages, and thus you split your internal link equity between the 2 different url’s of the same content.
Not to mention if people deeplinks to your pages and products, some may link to:
http://domain.com/category/sub-category/product.html - and others may use
http://domain.com/category/product.html
Again splitting the link equity between multiple url’s of the same content.
The Magento product trully is magnificent, but seo friendliness is more than just keyword urls and the ability to customize titles.
I hope the Magento team, will prioritize a fix on this, since this really is a big problem in terms of seo and rankings.
Besides, to have categories keywords is not really appropriate.
Another thing to point out is if you sort product or change view mode, the url is not rewrited !
Maybe you don’t have to worry about duplicate content penalties, but having multiple urls to the same content is wrong on so many levels.
First of all, on big sites linking structure is very significant factor for ranking on search engines. You won’t be able to take advantage of this since different url’s are considered different pages, and thus you split your internal link equity between the 2 different url’s of the same content.
Not to mention if people deeplinks to your pages and products, some may link to:
http://domain.com/category/sub-category/product.html - and others may use
http://domain.com/category/product.html
Again splitting the link equity between multiple url’s of the same content.
The Magento product trully is magnificent, but seo friendliness is more than just keyword urls and the ability to customize titles.
I hope the Magento team, will prioritize a fix on this, since this really is a big problem in terms of seo and rankings.
this post is spot on. This issue does need to be addressed - if a store has thousands of products it is going to get to be a real issue if the store owner takes SEO seriously.
The only solution I can think of is to have some mechanism of assigning products to a 2nd category as a ‘duplicate’ product - so the url / links always point to the original product / category url.
Besides, to have categories keywords is not really appropriate.
Another thing to point out is if you sort product or change view mode, the url is not rewrited !
I have noticed that one too, but since those sites really won’t make sense to have indexed in the search engines - the better solution would be to nofollow those links. This also has a possitive effect on rankings, since this will lower the number of pages linked to from within the site retaining more link equity for the pages which would make sense to rank.
In short you would, again, split your link equity between fewer sites.
The effect of this though would require some amount of valuable incoming links to be noticeable, but again, in seo it’s the little thing that makes the advantage.
I woulden’t consider it practical to have this implemented in the magento core though, since it may only be relvant so some stores and not to others.
Also its a very easy fix to implement in your theme, and you could nofollow the layered navigation links also, which wouldent make sense to have indexed either.
I guess the easiest way to incorporate this would be to pick a main category for the product… Then for any additional categories Magento could automatically append the text “Disallow: /2ndCategoryName/Product” to the robots.txt file.
I guess the easiest way to incorporate this would be to pick a main category for the product… Then for any additional categories Magento could automatically append the text “Disallow: /2ndCategoryName/Product” to the robots.txt file.
Will work for spiders, but will not help with page rank or serps. If you have a product with 3 different links that people are linking to from there sites or blogs your losing link juice..
