seo rewrite issue

[adibranch]

hi all.. first off, great jobon prestashop.. looking good and a definite reason for me to drop my many oscommerce sites. I've got a test shop currently running to see how it performs

Anyway, i do a large amount of SEO contract work, and have noticed a prob on the SEO rewrites that could cause indexing issues.

The url system can have many different versions of the same page... ie..
http://www.shop.com/5-cast-iron-big-garden-benches
http://www.shop.com5-cast-iron-*anything

go to the same page. Now this is going to cause probs, especially when renaming pages, iet lets say i change the title of a category from 'large benches' to 'big benches' . This obviously created two active pages with the same content. This isnt ideal...

is there any way round it? it seems like a big issue thats possibly been overlooked..

[matbennett]

Just wanted to add another voice to this. Duplicate URls like this can be a big problem. SEO wise it is a pain, but it effectively means an infinite number of URLs as well, which can end up in huge bandwidth usage by some spiders.

Would imagine that it's an easy fix (we wrote one for osCommerce): Just test the "correct" url at the top of the page and 301 it to the new URL.

[adibranch]

yeah, i'td be good if this could be done in the rewriting though, to save having potentially hundreds of 301's. I know it works well in osc, it would be great to see it here, as currently without it, its preventing me from using prestashop, which is a shame.

[adibranch]

no one know a solution , or if one is planned?

[matbennett]

yeah, i'td be good if this could be done in the rewriting though, to save having potentially hundreds of 301's.

It would actually be an infinite number of 301s, so that's a solution out of the window.

This is an important issue. An underhanded competitor could actually exploit this in a couple of ways. I take it that this is on the bug report?

[Paul C]

It's actually one of the reasons Google have recently gone to the extent of advising that rewriting urls is not such a good idea for dynamic sites. Many SEO bods claim it's too powerful a feature to "give up", but in saying that there are many high ranking sites that don't use the technique....

I would have though a technique similar to the one used in osCommerce would work fine with PrestaShop. It really should be added as a "bug" if it hasn't already.

My preferred route to take though is to 404 the incorrectly named page. If done this way from the outset there's no penalty. If you're in the habit of changing the rewrite urls frequently you should have you hands nailed to the keyboard anyway ...

Paul

[matbennett]

Not sure what the current "stock" solution in on osCommerce as we use a heavily in-house modified version based on an older released.

Our solution is just to rebuild the "correct" URL on category and product pages. This checked against the requested URL and a 301 redirect made if they are different. About 2 lines of code I think.

[Paul C]

Mat the current one for osCommerce (and ZenCart for sure, not certain about CRE) has the same problem as described in this thread. I've got my own "fixed" version

Paul

[adibranch]

there is a fix for the OSC issue in the forums, which redirects automatically to the correct page.

Paul, this isnt an issue for most ecommerce shop owners who know what they;re doing, as they will be careful about renaming and implement 301's or 404's where necessary. But, for people like myself who are optimising for other people, the clients are far too trigger happy in renaming the categories without thinking about it or without consulting me first. This is where the problems are going to arise.
The issue of them not being essential for SEO is of course true, and you do get ranking pages which use dynamic url's, but it will be for other reasons. Every little bit helps, and visitors are known to prefer friendly url's too.

This issue will stop me and other savvy users from using prestashop.. no question. I'll submit a bug report now.

[Paul C]

I agree with you, and understand what you're saying. I was being a bit tongue-in-cheek. :down:

I've got a hammer and nails if you'd like to borrow them for your clients

I would also add that if the functionality is there for someone to turn on, then it should most certainly work to their advantage, so support you 100% in raising this as an issue that requires attention.

Good man for submitting the bug report!

Paul

[matbennett]

I'd argue that it is an issue - even if you are careful as there is always a risk that someone will stitch you up.

It only takes someone adding a couple of external links to find that http://www.prestashop.com/demo/1-we-offer-really-bad-service.html is suddenly indexed. Literally 2 external link like that to a new product page could see it as the preferred page in the search results. You'd also then find that you could have a duplicate content issue as well.

Of course having "we offer really bad service" as one of your search results is nothing compared to what you could do. I've had to recover sites that have had this done to them before, and it can be a suprising PITA if the protaganist knows that they are doing.

[Cédric Girard]

Hello

Sorry for my bad english (frenchie inside :-) )... I propose a technical solution for duplicate content problems in Prestashop.

* HTTP 301 redirection to the theorical good URL for products
* HTTP 301 redirection to the theorical good URL for categories (I take care of the sort and pagination...)
* GSitemap module correction (URL doesn't match with theorical URL...)
* Optimisation of internal linking (put Meta robots tag to "noindex,follow" in several useless pages for SEO)
* Creation of the new META Canonical tag for products and categories

And for 1.1 versions of Prestashop :
* reboot in v1.0 version of URL Rewriting for products (because of the duplicate content latent risk on products which have several categories !!!)


It works on my "in work" shop (see below) and lots of Prestashop shops ;-)

If you want some informations, contact me.

[adibranch]

nice work cedric exactly whats needed.

Much work involved in doing it?

[Cédric Girard]

Modifying header.php file (at the root of shop), header.tpl of the template, link.php class...

It's a prestation I send for 120 €, where I do optimisations on your shop (with the list of modified files and what I done exactly... because if you update the Prestashop version, you must take care of these files !)

You can find some basic informations (in french, sorry) in my blog here ; the code of my blog is awful but gives some informations about technical solutions ;-)

[gbaby]

Can anyone translate Cedric's header php file to english?

<?php

require_once(dirname(__FILE__).'/init.php');

/* CODE A INSERER A PARTIR D'ICI */

/***** Test et correction des URL non valides *****/
if (isset($_GET['id_product']) AND Validate::isUnsignedId($_GET['id_product']))
{
   // Nous sommes sur une page produit
   $cookie = new Cookie('ps');
   Tools::setCookieLanguage();
   $product = new Product(intval($_GET['id_product']), true, intval($cookie->id_lang));
   if (Validate::isLoadedObject($product) AND $product->active)
   {
       $goodurl=$_GET['id_product']."-".$product->link_rewrite.".html";    // URL theorique
       $currenturl=basename($_ENV['REQUEST_URI']);                // URL courante

       $redir=strcmp($goodurl, $currenturl);
       if($redir!=0)
       {
           // Pas la bonne URL donc redirection HTTP 301 vers l'URL correcte
           header('HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently', false, 301);
           header("Location: http://" . $_SERVER["SERVER_NAME"] ."/". $goodurl);
           exit(); 
       }  
   };
}

if (isset($_GET['id_category']) AND Validate::isUnsignedId($_GET['id_category']))
{
   // Nous sommes sur une page Categorie
   $cookie = new Cookie('ps');
   Tools::setCookieLanguage();
   $category = new Category(intval(Tools::getValue('id_category')), intval($cookie->id_lang));
   if (Validate::isLoadedObject($category) AND $category->active)
   {
       $paramurl="";

       // Detection d'un eventuel numero de page
       if (isset($_GET['p'])) {
           $varpagenumber=$_GET['p'];
           if($varpagenumber>1) {
               $paramurl="?p=$varpagenumber";
               $smarty->assign('nobots', 1);    // variable Smarty de Prestashop qui appose la valeur "noindex,follow" dans la balise META Robots
           };
       };

       // Detection des variables eventuelles de tri de produits
       if (isset($_GET['orderby'])) {
           $varorderby=$_GET['orderby'];
           $paramurl.=(empty($paramurl)?"?":"&")."orderby=$varorderby";
           $smarty->assign('nobots', 1);        // variable Smarty de Prestashop qui appose la valeur "noindex,follow" dans la balise META Robots
       };
       if (isset($_GET['orderway'])) {
           $varorderway=$_GET['orderway'];
           $paramurl.=(empty($paramurl)?"?":"&")."orderway=$varorderway";
           $smarty->assign('nobots', 1);        // variable Smarty de Prestashop qui appose la valeur "noindex,follow" dans la balise META Robots
       };

       $goodurl=$_GET['id_category']."-".$category->link_rewrite.$paramurl;    // URL theorique
       $currenturl=basename($_ENV['REQUEST_URI']);                // URL courante
       $redir=strcmp($goodurl, $currenturl);
       if($redir!=0)
       {
           // Pas la bonne URL donc redirection HTTP 301 vers l'URL correcte
           header('HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently', false, 301);
           header("Location: http://" . $_SERVER["SERVER_NAME"] ."/". $goodurl);
           exit(); 
       }
   };
}

// FIN DU CODE A INSERER

[tomerg3]

I have just created a module that redirects all old or incorrect URLs to the default Friendly URL version of them (using a search engine friendly 301 redirect) for all products, categories, manufaturers, suppliers and cms pages.

For more info check out http://www.prestashop.com/forums/viewthread/39736/

[nutbuster]

I have just created a module that redirects all old or incorrect URLs to the default Friendly URL version of them (using a search engine friendly 301 redirect) for all products, categories, manufaturers, suppliers and cms pages.

For more info check out http://www.prestashop.com/forums/viewthread/39736/

I've got this module on my site and all is good now! I can see from the code that a lot of time and effort went into to this...thanks tomerg3!

[tomerg3]

If you google “site:www.your-website.com” you will see a list of all the pages google indexes from your site, you may see links like http://www.your-website.com/shop/product.php?id_product=6 and http://www.your-website.com/shop/category.php?id_category=10.

Even though your shop has Friendly URL enabled, the old URLs are still working, and do not redirect to the Friendly URL.

This can cause google and other search engines to give your site a penalty for duplicate content (two URLs that have the same content)

My module fixes this by creating a 301 redirect to the Friendly URL version.

[outlet.ee]

Does your module fix the webmaster tools suggestions about duplicate tags, I mean pagination p=1 and n=30 etc. I would like to have it written in the title and desc, like bla-bla-bla for page 1 and bla-bla-bla page #2 for page 2 etc. Or is it better SEO-wise to have it as one page for google?

[tomerg3]

Does your module fix the webmaster tools suggestions about duplicate tags, I mean pagination p=1 and n=30 etc. I would like to have it written in the title and desc, like bla-bla-bla for page 1 and bla-bla-bla page #2 for page 2 etc. Or is it better SEO-wise to have it as one page for google?

I does not handle duplicate tags, only URL redirection.

My site has an SEO tip about duplicate page titles when using multiple languages, you can do something similar to avoid the pagination duplication (just add something like Page #x, where x is the pagination page value)