Categories URL and SEO

-- HikaShop version -- : 3.4.0
-- Joomla version -- : 3.8.8
-- PHP version -- : 7.0
-- Browser(s) name and version -- : Chrome 67

Hello,

I know that one of HikaShop good features is multicategorisation (1 product can be in many different categories).

Normally, however, most of shops use "flat" structure, where 1 product is in 1 parent category only. Due to SEO and to keep order.

So if I have such a shop:
- Category A:
--- Category AA: product1, product2
--- Category AB: product3, product4
so now product1 can have URL
myshop.com/category-a/product1
or
myshop.com/category-a/category-aa/product1
or even
myshop.com/all-categories/product1
and all of them are working.

I prefer this URL: myshop.com/category-a/category-aa/product1
as it is most descriptive.
Now i know, that I can force it via "Canonical URL".

---

After this long introduction, now my question:
is there a way to make HikaShop to automatically force the url to
DIRECT_PARENT_CATEGORY_URL/product1 ?
So that in the above example all will land at
myshop.com/category-a/category-aa/product1
Or if I have 300 products, I should insert canonical URL in each of one them manually?

Thanks

Hi,

With the "force canonical URL on listing" setting of the HikaShop configuration, you can set it to "Use canonical URL and generate it if missing".
In that case, HikaShop will automatically fill in the canonical URL of the product the first time a listing of products needs to generate the URL of the product.
So you can set it like that, and then simply browse your shop the way you want the URLs to be generated and you'll get the canonical URLs you want which will then be used elsewhere.

Great, that was the answer I was looking for. Thank you!

BTW, although some of my canonical URLs were already created, I could easily renew them with Mass Action. That saved me a lot of time.