SEO-URLS not pasing a number in the url

[freakystreak]

Hi guys,

 

I know that may have been asked before but I was just wondering if there was anyway to have URLS that follow this format?

 

Instead of 

 

http://www.my-website.co.uk/category/subcategory-c-1.html(as it currently is)

 

to this...

 

http://www.my-website.co.uk/subcategory.html

 

In essence not passing the category_id in the url.  I would also like the products to follow this too. Incidentally I'm using 2.3.4 Bootstrap and have installed Header Tags SEO URLS 5 Pro R205. I understand that you need the category_id in some way to match the query but can't you mask it through .htaccess in some way? URL rewriting is not my strongest suite.

 

Cheers.

 

 

 

[MrPhil]

It's possible, but labor-intensive and error-prone. SEO URI's keep category numbers, etc. in them because they can 1) be automatically generated, and 2) can be automatically processed (by stripping off everything but the numeric data, and using that to generate the dynamic URI). The category or subcategory name is just redundant "noise" for the benefit of humans. To get rid of the category number, for instance, you would have to keep a mapping in the system between the category name and the category number. You could not automatically handle this in .htaccess*, but would have to pass the category name on to some general lookup PHP code. In addition, names can be ambiguous or duplicate, and you would have to check whether a category name is already in use (more of a problem with product names). If you are willing to do a lot of manual labor, you can write .htaccess code to map category or subcategory names to dynamic URI's, but it will require constant maintenance.

 

* Technically, you could, but it would involve osC rewriting the .htaccess file with each store change.

[freakystreak]

What is the overall effect of the SEO URLS and Google. Does Google prefer a cut down, shorted url or does it not care? Just so I can explain to my boss as it's he who wants this in the first place

[MrPhil]

I haven't heard anything about Google preferring a shorter URI, but then I'm not an SEO expert, so you might want to get another opinion. My point is that whatever minor gain there might be from a slightly shorter URI is likely to be offset by increased problems on your end, from extra labor in creating or maintaining such a scheme and/or processing it, to accidental duplicate names. I'll repeat: a category name without a number would have to be looked up somewhere, to map it to a number for use in osC. With a number, it's easy for .htaccess to grab the number and use it.

 

Note that hyphens (-) in a URI separate keywords, in Google's world, while underscores (_) combine separate words into single terms. So long as your name(s) are hyphen-separated, they should be indexed as keywords. Category letters and numbers should preferably be underscore-separated so that Google doesn't get upset about seeing single letters and numbers such as -c-1 (it should just ignore c and 1 because they're so short/numeric, so in this case it doesn't really matter).

[freakystreak]

Thanks for the reply. Appreciate it

[Hotclutch]

I doubt removing the Ids at the end of the URL would give any advantage at all.

[MrPhil]

If it's just a matter of aesthetics, and the Boss doesn't like the -c-1 code "mixed in" with the actual category name (or a product name), I would think that the SEO code could be modified to move it to the false directory:

http://www.my-website.com/category-1/category_name.html

That's a possibility. It would be a modification of both the PHP code producing the link, and the .htaccess code to create the dynamic URI.

[♥toyicebear]

You would have to remove Header Tags SEO URLS 5 Pro R205 and create your own clean url modifications. Its fully possible I have made that for several clients.

 

There are a few addons for "clean" urls you can look at, but they are all fairly old.

 

SEO-G - http://addons.oscommerce.com/info/5080

 

Search Engine Friendly Url's - http://addons.oscommerce.com/info/2796

[clustersolutions]

For that kinda trouble...Magento? Woocommerce?

[Hotclutch]

This is really not worth the effort, unless your IDs are running into the tens of thousands. Google in many cases does not even show the url anymore in listings.

[freakystreak]

Thanks guys. I will definitely take a look at your suggestions toyicebear.