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Which URL structure for SEO?

mowax

By mowax
in Online sales and SEO

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mowax Enthusiast

mowax

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Sorry for the basic question but I'm setting up a new site and want to get it right...

Should the default product category be 'Home', so the page sits closer to the root? They will still be sorted into other categories for ease of navigation. I am under the impression that pages closer to the root perform better in search results.

Hope someone can offer advice

Thank you for any help!

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Ewonta Collaborator

Ewonta

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You should not set the default category to "Home." Instead, create a main category for your products (e.g., "Catalog") and organize products into relevant subcategories. This will improve navigation, site structure, and SEO. The default category is for technical purposes, not optimization. 

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Knowband Plugins Veteran

Knowband Plugins

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pages closer to the root perform better in search results

Yes, that's correct but that doesn't mean that all the products should be in the home category. The statement means the pages that are easier to navigate from the homepage have better search visibility.

To achieve the same you always have the option to link the different categories in the Top menu so that navigation of the pages is easy. 

 

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mowax Enthusiast

mowax

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Thanks for your replies, I appreciate the input.

I will indeed use a menu with all categories and subcategories reachable from the homepage (and all other pages). With that in mind, which of the following should be used?

a) domain.com/id-product

b) domain.com/catalog/id-product

c) domain.com/catalog/category-name/id-product

d) domain.com/category-name/id-product

 

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@diegofrancesco Collaborator

@diegofrancesco

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On 2/22/2025 at 1:44 AM, mowax said:

Thanks for your replies, I appreciate the input.

I will indeed use a menu with all categories and subcategories reachable from the homepage (and all other pages). With that in mind, which of the following should be used?

a) domain.com/id-product

b) domain.com/catalog/id-product

c) domain.com/catalog/category-name/id-product

d) domain.com/category-name/id-product

 

D is the best choice.

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  • 1 month later...
axelstone Newbie

axelstone

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Posted (edited)

Setting the default product category to "Home" won’t directly impact SEO. What matters more is a clear and structured URL hierarchy. Keeping products closer to the root (e.g., example.com/product-name instead of example.com/category/product-name) can help with rankings, but proper internal linking and navigation are more important. Use categories for organization and user experience, but don’t force everything under "Home" just for SEO.
https://viscoapk.com/

Edited by axelstone (see edit history)
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Mediacom87 Grand Master

Mediacom87

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Hi,

For PrestaShop version 9, we've modified the native structure of product URLs to remove the reference to the category, in order to stabilize product URLs over time and avoid the accumulation of SEO-damaging 301 redirects.

The new structure thus becomes : 

domain.com/p/id-product

The fact of having the category name in the URL is also a human problem, since some users were manually deleting the part corresponding to the product, hoping to come across the category URL when this is not the case.

For all new projects, I strongly advise you to use this new URL structure.

Afterwards, if you wish to reintroduce the default category reference in product URLs, this can be done without changing anything else, whereas the reverse requires you to set up a custom redirection in the htaccess file.

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  • 5 months later...
Gkstiel Newbie

Gkstiel

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I see it’s been a while since you’ve posted, but I just wanted to ask—has anyone here noticed if changing URLs to remove IDs and include only the product name had any real SEO impact over time? I’m curious if anyone compared traffic or crawl behavior before and after. I'm setting up a new store and would love to hear some updated experiences.

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@diegofrancesco Collaborator

@diegofrancesco

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4 hours ago, Gkstiel said:

I see it’s been a while since you’ve posted, but I just wanted to ask—has anyone here noticed if changing URLs to remove IDs and include only the product name had any real SEO impact over time? I’m curious if anyone compared traffic or crawl behavior before and after. I'm setting up a new store and would love to hear some updated experiences.

It's too small a change to have any real impact.

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El Patron Mentor

El Patron

Posted
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On 10/1/2025 at 6:09 AM, Gkstiel said:

I see it’s been a while since you’ve posted, but I just wanted to ask—has anyone here noticed if changing URLs to remove IDs and include only the product name had any real SEO impact over time? I’m curious if anyone compared traffic or crawl behavior before and after. I'm setting up a new store and would love to hear some updated experiences.

Friendly URLs were handy back in the day so customer service could easily read a product link over the phone — not really for SEO reasons.

If you remove IDs completely, you’re using a module that changes PrestaShop’s core behavior, since this option isn’t part of the native SEO & URLs settings.

From experience:

  • There’s no real SEO benefit to removing IDs — Google handles canonical URLs just fine.
  • It can create upgrade issues later if that module isn’t maintained or compatible.

So, while it looks cleaner, it’s more of a cosmetic tweak than a performance or SEO improvement. I’d keep the native friendly URLs — stable, supported, and safe for future updates.

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Ewonta Collaborator

Ewonta

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On 10/9/2025 at 6:39 PM, El Patron said:

There’s no real SEO benefit to removing IDs — Google handles canonical URLs just fine.

I completely agree that it's not necessary to remove the ID from the URL, but SEO experts still recommend it. 🥲

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