More and more business owners are opting for Content Management Systems or eCommerce products. One of the big resulting problems we see more and more is an inadequate URL structure. All too often the URL shown in the address bar has raw parameters, for example www.mydomain.com?prodid=123&opt=2

This technically works but loses you points in the search engine optimisation game. Thus, it is much better to have a human understandable URL, for example www.mydomain.com/menswear/jumpers

However, this can create problems where the same end page can be reached through multiple navigation paths. This can result in what the search engine sees as duplicate content. A search engine flags duplicate content when it sees the same content at more than one URL.

You need to have a careful naming strategy to ensure this does not happen. For example in an ecommerce web site:

Categories: www.mydomain.com/category

Subcategories: www.mydomain.com/category/subcategory

Products: www.mydomain.com/products

The key element of the above strategy is that the products are not listed under categories. This means that if multiple categories have the same product they will point at the ONE product page, helping with much valued internal links.

The example above refers to an ecommerce site like oscommerce or OSCMax but the problem can also occur in blogging software like WordPress or web site builder packages.

Praeparo can work with you and help you understand the correct strategies for your web site and also help with an implementation plan that will have limited risk on your current search engine rankings.