How to use Custom URL option

[krittleb]

I checked the Able Help section on their site and did not see the new SEO options listed in the help section yet.

We do not like the extra numbers automatically assigned to the end of every product and category page and want to specify new URLs for all products and categories without the extra numbers. I assume we need to use the custom URL option to do this.

However, we have very good Google index rankings on many of our pages and have a significant amount of revenue from organic search traffic and cannot risk any drop in rankings on any of our pages. So, do we also need to set 301 redirects on every product and category at the same time as well or does AC automatically do this when we set a new custom URL?? It would be extremely time-consuming to have to set both the new URL and the re-direct as well but we will do what we have to do.

Kristi

[david-ebt]

I believe the old URLs with the Pxxx and Cxxx will continue to work with your custom URLs. I'd suggest you add a custom URL to one of your products and then try the Google link just to make sure.

[krittleb]

If they both work, would this cause duplicate content issues? Do we need to use the 301's to get the Pxxx and Cxxx out of the indexes?

[david-ebt]

You should be okay. Take a look at the source code for both the Pxxx page and the custom URL page. They should both have a canonical meta tag in the HEAD and the meta tag URL should be the same for both URLs. I think it will end up being the custom URL.

This canonical tag tells the search engines that the two pages are actually one page of content with two URLs for getting to it. The search engines should eventually get rid of the Pxxx version of the URL from their search index and just display the custom URL in their search results. But both the Pxxx and the custom URL should continue to work.

[efficiondave]

Using Custom URL will generate a Canonical tag for the page so Search Engines should recognize various URLs for the page are all the same page. But, from the SEO research I've done, you should still setup 301 Redirects. AbleCommerce also added a new feature for creating 301 Redirects but it doesn't seem to work with Extensionless URLs (without .aspx) so we're using the IIS7 Rewriter Module to do the redirects.

[NC Software]

David,

I never got the IIS 7 rewriter to work properly with 7.0.7. Did you have to do anything to make it work? Care to share your rewriting config without including all of your redirects such that others could adopt it in IIS 7 as well?

Thanks

[efficiondave]

Neal, here's the applicable section which goes in System.webServer. This is from a IIS7 box, not IIS 7.5 (not sure if that makes a difference).

Code: Select all

		<rewrite>
			<rules>
				<rule name="Redirect rule1 for Site rewrites">
					<match url=".*" />
					<conditions>
						<add input="{Site rewrites:{REQUEST_URI}}" pattern="(.+)" />
					</conditions>
					<action type="Redirect" url="{C:1}" appendQueryString="false" />
				</rule>
			</rules>
			<rewriteMaps>
				<rewriteMap name="Site rewrites">
					<add key="/Toddler-Gifts.aspx" value="/Toddler-Gifts" />
					<add key="/Toddler-C18.aspx" value="/Toddler-Gifts" />
					<add key="/Default.aspx" value="/" />
					<add key="/default.aspx" value="/" />
				</rewriteMap>
			</rewriteMaps>
		</rewrite>

[NC Software]

Thanks - I'll give it a try.

[efficiondave]

Working with this further I figured out that while you can't use extensionless urls with AbleCommerce's static redirects, they do work fine with the Dynamic Redirects.