Regarding breadcrumbs, will changing products default categories affect SEO?

[alwayspaws]

Will changing products default categories affect SEO?

The breadcrumb paths are wrong so I will need to edit all my products' default categories. For example:

In a tee shirt product I have to edit the product by going to associations and scroll to the bottom to change DEFAULT CATEGORY from Dog Clothes to Dog Tee Shirts.

The background on this:

My breadcrumbs path doesn’t show the subcategory I clicked on when I arrive on the product page. I click main category “Dog Clothes” and click subcategory “Dog Tee Shirts”. Then I click the tee shirt product and I get this breadcrumb path:

Home> Dog Clothes>Funny Dog Tee Shirt with 3 dog obedience commands

The path should be: Home> Dog Clothes> Dog Tee Shirts> Funny Dog Tee Shirt with 3 dog obedience commands

How do I fix this, please?

Jonny answered:

The breadcrumb of a product is always the path of the product’s default category.

The default category of all your products in “Dog Tee Shirts” category is “Dog Clothes”, not “Dog Tee Shirts”. You have to edit them to change their “Default category” to “Dog Tee Shirts” to make their breadcrumbs be “Home> Dog Clothes> Dog Tee Shirts”.

If it will affect whatever SEO I may have, should I leave them alone? It will make the UX more difficult and I do not like this.

Here is where to fix this:

Thanks, Stephanie

[MockoB]

Since then your site is live? If it's a few months, it will be not such trouble if you change some of your categories path. Better do it now than watching it like that for years, because your positioning in search results will only improve from now on and it could be really late after some time. There is 301 redirect you could use to avoid loosing any ranking but I think @lesley is the man to explain it better.

[zimmer-media]

@alwayspaws Hi Stephanie. I always first click on the subcategory into which the product is supposed to go. Then I click the next higher level up to the start category. I deactivate the start category briefly and activate it again immediately. Then the category below automatically changes to the one I clicked first.

[alwayspaws]

@mockob The site has been live for months.

@zimmer-media I do not understand. Are you saying that if I change it like that for each product, one at a time, then I will NOT lose any SEO?

Thanks!

[lesley]

If it changes the final url, yes, it will affect SEO.

[alwayspaws]

@lesley said in Regarding breadcrumbs, will changing products default categories affect SEO?:

If it changes the final url, yes, it will affect SEO.

I thought so. Is there a way to get around this by keeping the products as they are and also duplicating but rephrasing them and putting them in the right breadcrumb path?

[lesley]

Not that I am aware of. But if the page is ranking well anyways, then not much is lost by changing it. Just put in a 301 redirect and all the link juice will pass.

[alwayspaws]

I'll google how to put in 301 redirects. I don't want to say what page my dog shirts are on but it is way past page 10. :(

[alwayspaws]

@lesley Is there a free module I can do this with? Or is there some other way besides doing them one product at a time?

[lesley]

There is not, redirects need to be done by hand.

[alwayspaws]

Ok, I'll do the redirects. Thank you @lesley

[alwayspaws]

@lesley updated to remove the link that is not for this particular question.

[lesley]

I have never seen them done like that before. this is how I have seen them done

Redirect 301 /old-url/page.html https://site.com/new-url/page.html

[alwayspaws]

In the htaccess file? @lesley I'm also reading this now: https://help.disqus.com/customer/portal/articles/912757-url-mapper

[lesley]

Just use the htaccess editor in the back of your shop.

[alwayspaws]

OK, is there a way I can export just my URLS? It will be a lot easier if it works right (lol). I got that idea from the link I pasted above.

[lesley]

Not that I know of.

[alwayspaws]

So I go to each page and copy the friendly URL from the SEO section of each product and paste it into the htaccess editor along with the updated URL?

[MockoB]

I think in ps 1.5 if I change the associated product category from the product page it automatically adds 301. But I'm not sure how it is on thirty bees, and I'm not able to check it because I don't have access to pc at the moment.

[alwayspaws]

@MockoB that would be terrific. I haven't started yet.

[Ulrich]

@alwayspaws

OK, is there a way I can export just my URLS? It will be a lot easier if it works right (lol). I got that idea from the link I pasted above.

try "Screaming Frog SEO Spider", it's free for crawling (and exporting) up to 500 URLs at a time https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/ https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/user-guide/general/

[alwayspaws]

@ulrich I'll check it out. Thanks very much.

[alwayspaws]

Hi @Ulrich I checked it out and will add new post to the end of this conversation.

[alwayspaws]

@mockob said in Regarding breadcrumbs, will changing products default categories affect SEO?:

I think in ps 1.5 if I change the associated product category from the product page it automatically adds 301. But I'm not sure how it is on thirty bees, and I'm not able to check it because I don't have access to pc at the moment.

I'm going to try this now. Wish me luck! :)

[alwayspaws]

Thank you @Ulrich I installed and tried this app on my Mac. Contacted them about how to crawl just one category.

They said "Due to your set-up (lack of a trailing slash on the subfolder), you'll need to use the include, but that's only available in the paid version. :-)"

Any other suggestions, please? In the meantime, I'll test @MockoB's suggestion.

[DavidP]

@alwayspaws you can export your urls from the Google Search Console, it's got every indexed page there, just go onto the indexed page section and download them. Screaming Frog is a fantastic tool but it's really more suited in that scenario to downloading competitor urls, for your own the search console is the best bet.

I know you can use the sitemap as well but the Search Console is better as it shows you what's actually indexed, rather than just submitted.