Product page canonical question

[BBIchris]

I'm working through some SEO issues for product page indexing after migrating from OScommerce. One of the issues I'm tackling is duplicate content. I see that I can view the product as both:

- mysite.com/product_id

- mysite.com/category/sub-category/product_id

I've found some canonical tutorials but they say to make the shorter path (without the categories) the main destination. The problem with doing that is that Google now sees the shorter path as the main page, and the shorter path lacks the breadcrumb with all of the category and sub-category navigation that keeps all of the content cross linked. That seems backwards to me.

[OST Agency]

Please Follow this link:

http://siteolytics.com/enable-the-canonical-meta-tags-in-magento/

It would help you.

[BBIchris]

Thanks for the reply, but that article doesn't mention anything about breadcrumbs and their relation to canonicals. I know how to turn them on. My question is about the ideal page to show Google based on the breadcrumbs - and isn't it better to show the user a page with the full breadcrumb? I guess I can always just install a breadcrumbs extension if necessary. 

[Amasty]

Hello @BBIchris

If you need to control which path should be canonical, you can do that with this Unique product URL extension. In your case you can add the longest path as canonical, 301 redirects from the shortest path will be created automatically. There is also an option to apply redirects from a product URL without any category indication, so that:

- mysite.com/product_id

will be redirected to:

- mysite.com/category/sub-category/product_id

Breadcrumbs may be generated in 2 ways:

• current url: Home -> Pants -> Classic -> Black pants
• last visited category: Home -> On sale -> Black pants

Hope that helps!