Product urls that make Google happy?

Hi

I'm looking at HikaShop for a new shop I'm building. Just about everything seems doable and I just want to dive in and get started!

I have one major concern, though:
I need to place some of the products in several categories. Obviously I'm not interested in getting 5 urls for the same product, as Google would see that as duplicate content.

As I see it, there are at least 2 different ways to solve this, but it appears from your forum that Hikashop don't support any of them? (Please prove me wrong.)

Solution 1: Product url should simply be domain.com/product-alias (and not contain category).
Apparently this would cause problems with breadcrumbs (according to posts in this forum), but it is done in osCommerce, so I can't see why that should not be doable in HikaShop? In osCommerce both breadcrumbs and navigation (not being taken to a different category) is working just fine.
In this case it is important to be able to define the product alias used in the url, so the shop owner can put important keywords in the url without having to put them in the product name.

Solution 2: Canonical urls - ability to choose which category is the "important" one that should be set as canonical when Google views the page.

Can it really be true that none of this is possible in HikaShop? It is SO important to search engine optimise, and I have a hard time believing that this part is just ignored...?
Please prove me wrong and help me find a solution so I can dig into HikaShop?


Gipa

Best approach is (IMHO and what I do) to use joomsef and then edit your SEF urls.

See here:
www.hikashop.com/en/forum/4-how-to/76923...good-breadcrumb.html

Hi Sambob

Thanks so much for answering!

Does this mean that every time I add a new product in the future, I will have to lock the new url and then edit it in phpmyadmin?
And won't it affect the breadcrumbs and the sites knowledge of which category the user came from?


Gipa

Hi Gipa,

When you add a new product, you can just edit via joomsef, no need to go in myphpadmin, that is just if you want to batch edit.

****| NB, when doing ANYTHING in myphpadmin, be sure to back up |****

Wont affect breadcrumbs.

While it seems like a bit of manual work, SEO should never be assured to be automatic and this is the best combo of shop and sef.

(This is not guarantee of of SEO success, just the method that I use)

Perfect! Sounds like just the thing I need...!

And yes - I prefer manual over automated when it comes to things like SEO.

Thanks so much!

No prob!