SEO Firendly URLs and Custom query strings

Mikkel Høst

Posted on 14/07/2011 15:04:18

Hello everybody.

I have a question about how to accomplish something the best way and / or get friendly urls.
Maybe someone has a better approach than my current one and I would love to get your ideas on how we could solve this in another way.
We use the new Filters to give our site some filtering functionality. Currently we have a page(group) with one ecom catalog attached to it. We use a XSLT navigation template to generate the ecom menu with all subgroups from this group in the menu. This works fine. But on the group page, after u click on a subgroup in the navigation, we have 2 filter options Brand and Designer on that group page. These filters works across the main group and not only the current group I’m on. This is properly because we only have one catalog module attached to the page, but I’m not sure.
I wanted to make the Filter only work on the current group, so the user could selected “perfume” group from the main group “Bathroom” and then filter this group by designer / brand.
My solution to this was to add another filter to the page. The “groups” filter and then alter the XSLT that renders the ecom menu to add this new filter to the url when the user click in the menu.

http://illumsbolighus.net.dynamicweb.dk/Webshop/Bad_-_velv%C3%A6re/Parfumeri_tilbeh%C3%B8r.aspx
http://illumsbolighus.net.dynamicweb.dk/Webshop/Bad_-_velv%C3%A6re/Parfumeri_tilbeh%C3%B8r.aspx?groupfilter=95103@@SHOP1

This works as intended, the group filter is applied when the user click the pages and the brand and designer filter now only shows brands and designers from this group. But now we got a ugly url with ?groupfilter=ID
My questions are then, should I approach this different or should I write s URL provider that handles my customs urls? Or is there any other way to make url “friendly”.

Also when we apply the brand or designer filters the url is not friendy - http://illumsbolighus.net.dynamicweb.dk/Webshop/Bad_-_velv%C3%A6re.aspx?groupid=95103%40%40SHOP1&groupfilter=95103%40%40SHOP1&BrandFilter=Twinox+Twin&DesignerFilter=
Any suggestions would be nice! Thanks

Replies

Peter Bille Larsen

Posted on 14/07/2011 15:29:38

Wasnt all that SEO URL stuff fixed with the latest hotfix? I have upgraded my latest solution and all those special characters are formatted now in Customized URLs. Maybe that can help?

Mikkel Høst

Posted on 14/07/2011 16:11:15

I think so. But i dont think my problem is realted to special characters.

Peter Bille Larsen

Posted on 14/07/2011 16:15:36

ok. let me just show you the URL from my latest shop, I have just build an exact search such as yours.

/products/vvs-til-kjoekken/kjoekkenarmatur.aspx?ProducentType=&Price=2.000,00-4.000,00

Mikkel Høst

Posted on 14/07/2011 16:56:46

Yearh, and the question is then how to we get these querystring to be "firendly" - Custom URL provider?

Mikkel Høst

Posted on 15/07/2011 12:59:22

6529: Improvement
Area: Search (Extended)
Title: Filter availability settings on product groups
Description: It is now possible to control and customize the various filter options on individual product groups.

- Does this mean that i dont need the groupfilter=GroupID in my case?

Anyone - or is this forum dead :)

Peter Bille Larsen

Posted on 15/07/2011 15:02:54

I havent read the 6529, but in my constructed search query I have the groupid, but it is not shown in the final URL.

/Default.aspx?ID=6&GroupID=GROUP22&ProducentType=Duravit&Price=

becomes:

/products/vvs-til-bad/badekar.aspx?ProducentType=Duravit&Price=

Anyway, you should be able to take out the filter you have made, if you can insert the groupid based on the Ecom:Group.ID, that's how I have made mine.

The rest is friendly enough for everyone. Remember to set a nofollow on your submit-button, so its not crawled by Google. then you non-friendly URL would be a real pain. And also give a lot of duplicate content.

good luck.

Mikkel Høst

Posted on 20/07/2011 15:16:55

Hi Peter.

Thanks for the input. The problem is that the filters don't "accept" the GroupID as a filter. So by having the GroupID in the url doesn't make, in my case, the two filters "design" and "brand" only show designs and brands from this group. To accomplish this i need the group filter hence i need that in the URL.

I guess i got my answer, only way to make this more friendly is to write my own URL provider.

You must be logged in to post in the forum

Developer forum

SEO Firendly URLs and Custom query strings

Replies