I just turned off “display category urls” to fix the duplicate urls issue. But after that magento automatically changed the URL-key for each product. For example, www.mysite.com/telephones/sony-6.html turned into www.mysite.com/sony-7.html. Notice the changed number in the url!
So i went back to the manage products page, but the url was still mentioned as sony-6 instead of sony-7. I changed all the old url keys to the ones magento generated, and reloaded the home page. Now in the recently viewed products box, each product has a different url again! sony-7 became sony-8, etc. While the url-key in the admin product page is still sony-7!
How do i fix this issue? With turning off the category urls, i didn’t fix the duplicate url issue.
Unfortunately, I do not see any of this mentioned in the release notes for 1.1. However, I understand they are coming out with a release shortly after 1.1, so my there will be a fix in that release. I personally would like to see the ability to set your own pre-defined URL’s at the product and category level. This is handy when switching from another cart.
This has been mentioned many times and is a BIG SEO downfall. Were still waiting / praying for a fix…
big? it’s completely anti-SEO. My productpages are nowhere to be found in google since i migrated to magento..... Magento really needs to fix this problem before they can call it seo-friendly.
There are now so many seo issues with magento we have stopped development of new sites and have just reverted back 3 of our sites that we went live on magento with to an older in house platform. We may start again with magento when these url/duplicate content issues are fixed.
Magento is a fantastic product, but it has some serious shortcomings with regard to SEO and as most of you who have an ecommerce operation know most of our livelihood comes from the search engines - our company for one cannot afford to use a product that is not 100% spot on with on page optimization factors and general url architecture.
On the positive side the functionality of magento and the back end is nothing short of superb.
Issues to focus on:
Duplicate product pages - seperate url for same product if placed in more than one category
Changing urls - as per this forum thread
Views causing multiple urls for products
Layered navigation causing many duplicate urls for each product
etc.
Forum threads worth highlighting:
http://www.magentocommerce.com/boards/viewthread/11500/
http://www.magentocommerce.com/boards/viewthread/5738/
http://www.magentocommerce.com/boards/viewthread/3008/
http://www.magentocommerce.com/boards/viewthread/6002/
etc
Just so everyone is aware there is no problem with search engine bots finding or crawling your site - it is just that they find each product page several times each with a different url - this causes on site duplicate content issues (different from off site duplicate content) and general link dilution. There are ways to limit some of this (but not all) as I and a few other people have posted in other threads - but the issue is still big even with the workarounds in place.
If Magento hope to capture market share from existing store with SEO concisous owner’s i agree with extremec defining urls for products and categories would be a real plus.
That is assuming all the duplicate issues that still linger get resolved.
Instead of waiting until the magento team fixes all SEO related problems, maybe we can hire a freelance SEO conscious programmer to create some sort of SEO-plugin which eliminates all current shortcomings.
I don’t know if it’s possible, and how much work/time it takes, but i sure would like to donate money to get it fixed.
It doesn’t look like the magento team is going to take action soon, the problem has been addressed multiple times, and i don’t see any team member participate the dicussions in the SEO forum.
Golles, i’ve also reverted all my stores (except one) back to a different cart software. The store which is using magento, is just to test how friendly or unfriendly magento is for the SERPS.
I would be happy to go with this however I am not a coder myself, surely future updates would break the work done by the coder ? Which would not really be an option.
Instead of waiting until the magento team fixes all SEO related problems, maybe we can hire a freelance SEO conscious programmer to create some sort of SEO-plugin which eliminates all current shortcomings.
I don’t know if it’s possible, and how much work/time it takes, but i sure would like to donate money to get it fixed.
It doesn’t look like the magento team is going to take action soon, the problem has been addressed multiple times, and i don’t see any team member participate the dicussions in the SEO forum.
Golles, i’ve also reverted all my stores (except one) back to a different cart software. The store which is using magento, is just to test how friendly or unfriendly magento is for the SERPS.
Sure they have to read this topic, I wonder why nobody from the development team is giving us some inside on this (hot) issue?
I would be happy to go with this however I am not a coder myself, surely future updates would break the work done by the coder ? Which would not really be an option.
Alex
Yeah that’s a problem. There is a SEO plugin available for OScommerce, and afaik it doesn’t break when updates are applied. But i’m neither a coder, so maybe i’m wrong.
A Dutch moderator sent a PM to a magento team member about the SEO issues, let’s hope he receives a reply soon and share the answer with us.
This has been mentioned many times and is a BIG SEO downfall. Were still waiting / praying for a fix…
big? it’s completely anti-SEO. My productpages are nowhere to be found in google since i migrated to magento..... Magento really needs to fix this problem before they can call it seo-friendly.
The ONLY REAL SEO cart is SearchFit......use them if you want a good PR, you cannot expect a great SEO cart from open source.
Maganto does not have to be the greatest in SEO but at least the SEO should be right, I mean without errors. And let the Magento team also at least be clear about this. Now the users are left alone in the dark not knowing if Varien is going to solve this and when. I still did not hear anything from Varien yet, I hope the going to mail or call me as they promised to let us know what they are planning. Or maybe even post it on the forum.
This has been mentioned many times and is a BIG SEO downfall. Were still waiting / praying for a fix…
big? it’s completely anti-SEO. My productpages are nowhere to be found in google since i migrated to magento..... Magento really needs to fix this problem before they can call it seo-friendly.
The ONLY REAL SEO cart is SearchFit......use them if you want a good PR, you cannot expect a great SEO cart from open source.
Did you only register here to tell us that? Magento is still in it’s early phase, and it’s known that v1 releases are not really suitable for live evironments. the backend and frontend are superior to any other cartsoftware i have ever used, but yes the SEO is bad..... They never should have launched it as a “SEO” friendly shopping cart by screaming it from the rooftops, without some good SEO testing. I primarily chose magento because they mentioned it as SEO-friendly. I don’t regret that i have spent many hours in trying to learn magento, i’m sure we or the team will find a solution for these SEO problems.
I’m with XPSM1730 on this. I would be more than willing to hire a coder to fix this problem by a module or whatever means. SEO should be a number 1 priority. PM me if anyone is interested in the same thing. Maybe we could find a coder (if Varien is not going to fix it). I would have to believe that Varien is planning on doing something. I can remember reading a tread of a guy that was able to make some modifications that ‘seemed’ to work. I need to know its gonna work 100%, so it may be worth spending a couple of bucks. And if we can pull together enough people, then the cost wont be bad at all.
Most of the issues mentioned above should go away once you set ‘Use categories path for product URLs’ (System -> Configuration -> Catalog -> Search Engine Optimizations) to ‘No’.
Please let us know if there are any problems there.
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