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

[alwayspaws]

@DavidP Thank you for the advice. It's good to be a member here. :)

[alwayspaws]

In my future, this would definitely be part of my essential SEO tools: Repeating what @Ulrich said: “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/

[DavidP]

@alwayspaws whilst it's good at looking at competitor on-site SEO, it can't tell you about backlinks. Also the price of it is a one year licence, after that it expires and you need to re-new it. I'd suggest sticking with the free 500 url version and just running that on some competitor sites, it's enough to hit most of the comparable competitors to you.

I'd also highly recommend SemRush, it's very expensive but you get 5 free uses a day though this shows only 5 to 10 bits of info but it's free and you can sort it to view the data differently. It's worth paying for a one month go at this at $99.95 and just spidering the hell out of your top 5 competitors and putting it all in a spreadsheet - it gives you a good snapshot of where you stand with them and most importantly, what information you need to steal from them :) Obviously SEO changes constantly but a 1 month go will give you a lot to get your own website in order.

[alwayspaws]

@DavidP This excellent information for the future. For now I want to focus on fixing the breadcrumbs.

I'm sure all of this is great for our thirty bees community. I always welcome new insights and tools.

Thank you!

[alwayspaws]

@DavidP I can't find this: Google Search Console - indexed page section.

[MockoB]

In - google index/index status you could see how many pages are indexed but which exactly are indexed and their ranking you can't see. If you have sitemap setup on your store and submitted in webmaster tools, then most probably all submitted pages are already indexed. In crawl errors you could find links missing from index. If you find such, you may fetch as google the new link to the product missing and it will do the redirect. After you make all the changes on your site don't forget to regenerate the sitemap and resubmit it in webmaster tools.

[DavidP]

@mockob Google has recently pushed out an update to the Search Console, which is in Beta. If you go to the Index Coverage page under Status then click the valid tab it shows you links that are submitted and indexed. If you then click that link it'll show all of your urls, from there you can click the download button and get the complete list in a csv file. It also shows you when the page was last crawled.

If you've not already been sent an email from Google for it then just search for Google Search Console beta and login from there.

[MockoB]

I tried it once but it looks incomplete yet and that's why I continued using the old style one. Thanks for the information @DavidP i will have more detailed look into it.

[alwayspaws]

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

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

I couldn't find it in the BO so I Googled and found your free htaccess editor module! Thank you @lesley :)

https://dh42.com/free-prestashop-modules/prestashop-htaccess-module/

What I did:

1. Old breadcrumbs do not reflect the sub subcategory: old breadcrumbs before using Lesley of dh42 free htaccess editor module 2-24-18.jpg

1. Breadcrumbs fixed with htaccess editor module: updated urls to fix breadcrumbs using Lesley of dh42 free htaccess editor module 2-24-18

Saved and regenerated. "Settings Updated". Cleared cache.

1. Correct breadcrumbs are now shown: new breadcrumbs generated with Lesley of dh42 free htaccess editor module 2-24-18

[alwayspaws]

@lesley how long do I leave the redirects in the htaccess editor? Forever? Or how long, please?

[lesley]

I would assume forever.

[alwayspaws]

OK, thanks!

[hfxracing]

Wish i had seen this sooner don't over complicate your life. Good rule of thumb. First question why did you decide to change the category around? I think I would have just created the new categories and then re associated my products to that new location. Then went into my webmaster tools on bing & goggle & told the bot to re crawl the new location. I am not saying that anything above you were told is wrong but think about all the time you spent teaching yourself about SEO 301 Redirects and how to code your htaccess file. All this time could have been spend trying to sell your product & fix the SEO issues with just the product(If Any) When people take to a browser to search they search by specifics Meaning exactly want they want the category is not important at that point it is if they want other items from your store. Easy navigation. Best of Luck hope my comments help in the future. Sell Sell Sell!

[alwayspaws]

@hfxracing Thanks and don't worry about it.

I didn't change or switch categories around. I didn't have the products pointed to the correct subcategories.

For instance, instead of all the tee shirts being under dog clothes > tee shirts, they were all under the main dog clothes category.

[hfxracing]

@alwayspaws not worried at all I guess I was just pointing out that people will not be searching google for your categories they will however be looking for your product. Once they find it maybe then the category might be important to Nav around your site. The less steps or clicks a customer has to take is way better(people are lazy). I guess I failed to see why having the product underdog clothes was not as good as having a section called tee shirts. Better yet you could associate the product under both category's it would then not upset anything. Just my thoughts.