Default Category ? with products

[clayton29657]

Hi everyone as I am kind of new here. I am building a very large website for my pet store. The question I have is where is best to use a default category for products for seo.

 

Ok I have a Dog as a main category. The a sub-category for Beds. Then a 2nd sub-category for the dog beds broken down which you can see in the picture below.

 

When I create a product in the 2nd sub-categories is it best to leave the product for default under this or under the actual Beds category.

 

I am putting the product in both places and need to know what it the best way to use the default category for seo purposes.

 

Some products that I have can be used in many categories but i need to know if it's best to use in 2nd sub or just under the regular sub-cat.

 

Also when I put a product in multiple categories what do I need to do when the seo is done? I am using ps 1.4 right now is there a module I should get or anything like that or will doing this cause issues in the seo?

 

Please someone help with this? I am all new to this and I use Apache. My web designer tells me to use default under the Beds and not the 2nd sub but he's not sure what is best

[Mark Hesketh]

On all of the Prestashop stores I have worked on, I put the products in the 2nd sub-category (i.e. 'Beds'). And then featured products from within the 2nd sub-categories in the 1st categories (i.e. 'Dog').

 

This is much better for customers actually viewing your store, which is much more important than thinking about Google as they won't be overwhelmed with hundreds of uncategorised products for Dogs.

 

As for SEO, I'd put the 'default' to be Beds, but I'd change the category name to 'Dog Beds'. So you would have Home > Dog > Dog Beds.

 

I'd then call the others 'Cool Dog Beds', 'Heated Dog Beds' etc. It's better for SEO and still doesn't sound robotic and forced.

 

The default category should be as specific as possible, as it affects things such as the URL and the breadcrumb links, but by calling the category Dog Beds, you're still getting the 'Dog' part of things in your SEO which is what I assume you're worried about?

 

Hope that helps,

 

Mark

[clayton29657]

HI Mark,

 

Thank you for your input I appreciate all your help. Yes I will use dog alot in keywords such as dog food and dog houses. So you think like for the beds I need to have Dog as main cat. then for beds use Dog Beds?

 

Ok yes I have started to change all the defaults already to the actual bed instead of like bolster beds.

 

Do you think it will be easier just to buy a URL rewrite?

 

Thanks again

Clayton

[Mark Hesketh]

Hi Clayton,

 

Sorry I'm not sure what you mean by buy a URL rewrite?

 

And yeah, I'd change 'Beds' to "Dog Beds' etc and go from there. Just create stuff for your customers rather than Google and it works out So say I came to your category page and it said 'Beds' I might be a bit confused, but 'Dog Beds' would be exactly what I'd expect, and thats better for your SEO too.

[clayton29657]

http://addons.prestashop.com/en/seo/2456-URL-Rewriting-.html

 

Thanks for all your help above is the link for the module to rewrite url's to better the seo

[clayton29657]

Hey Mark can I ask a question will the page #'s in the url change to the actual name of the category when the seo is done?

[Mark Hesketh]

I'm not sure which bit you're referring to, but the category in the URL is taken from the default category.

 

Like: http://demo-store.pr...ning-dress.html

 

That product must be in the default category of Evening Dresses, but you can actually see it in the 'Fashion' category too, which is it's parent http://demo-store.pr...m/en/15-fashion

 

As you can see, the numbers show up for the categories in the URL when looking at the category. On product pages the categories number isn't shown as its not needed, because the product number is there. Prestashop shop then knows Product #25's default category is Evening Dresses, so adds 'evening-dresses' to the URL.

 

This is just how Prestashop handles URLs by default, plugins like the one you've linked to can remove the numbers, but I've never used these myself. In the past I've used an override to move the numbers to the end of the URL, for example one of my old stores:

http://www.dahlesales.com/dahle-cutter-deals-352

and

http://www.dahlesales.com/shredder-oil/shredder-oil-250ml-dropping-bottle-524.html

 

 

The extra numbers won't make or break your SEO. My problem with modules to do this is if they ever break or become outdated, all of your indexed links will be dead. It's unlikely to happen, but it would be a HUGE problem if it did.

 

Hope that makes sense?

 

Mark

[clayton29657]

Thank you just one more question please. When you click on the fashion link in the demo you sent then to evening dresses

 

should the url have something like ; http://demo-store.pr...ning-dress.html fashion-evening-dress somehow it's hidden in the link

 

instead of the one thats there. like below. It's not showing the main category?

 

http://demo-store.pr...ning-dress.html

 

my shop is a lot different I've lets say

 

dog as main

Beds as sub-category

then heated beds, cooling beds, bolster beds

 

So what I asking is I am going to make the dog beds my default category is what you said before correct? and use that 3rd sub-category just to help breadcrumb it down to types

 

i am just wondering what the url will look like if I do it this way

[clayton29657]

www.petco.com/n_22_109/dog-beds.aspx?CoreCat=MM_DogSupplies_Beds

 

look at this one how it show their main category and then beds this is what I am trying to accomplish

 

how can I get this done

[clayton29657]

nevermind Mark I figured it out in the top menu just now I can actually change the name of sub-categories. Dog will just be hidden from menu but show up in url as dog-beds

[Mark Hesketh]

Glad you've sorted it

 

The default category affects the URL and breadcrumb. So if you needed:

 

'http://www.exam ple.com/dog-beds/1-dog-bed-product.html' - the default category would be 'Dog Beds'

'http://www.exam ple.com/heated-beds/1-dog-bed-product.html' - the default category would be 'Heated Beds'

 

You can't have 'http://www.exam ple.com/dog-beds/heated-beds/1-dog-bed-product.html' as it doesnt put all the category layers in the URL, just the default. I think this is where your problem lies I think?

 

As I say, I would rename 'Heated Beds' to 'Heated Dog Beds', you would then have:

'http://www.exam ple.com/heated-dog-beds/1-dog-bed-product.html'

so you have 'dog beds' in the URL still for SEO. You could even change the URL rewrite in the category so it is called 'Heated Dog Beds', but had 'dog-beds-heated' as the URL (switched the wording) if you wanted 'dog beds' before the word 'heated'.

 

This actually works out better become having the URL longer and buried in lots of categories like this /category1/category2/category3/1-product.html makes the URL longer, and Google gives much less weight to the keywords the further along they get in the URL.

 

Hope thats clear,

 

Mark