SEO woes. multiple URLs or each product, sh404sef breaks site.

[bbbecker]

hi guys.  i am having some SEO problems at the moment with my virtuemart store.

for each product there are multiple URLs, which google/bing see as duplicate pages.
for example:  mydomain.com/vm-products/collection-1/product-1/ and mydomain.com/collection-1/product-1/ go to the same page.

in my webmaster tools i have over 500 duplicate description and title tags because of this, which is bad for ranking.

what is the vm-products part for? how can i get rid of it?

also, some products are in multiple categories and so have even more URLs directed to them.

when i try to us sh404sef to rewrite URLs so that each product has a static URL everything gets messed up.  all my category links in the side menu become links to my base URL (homepage).

if anyone has a solution to create search engine friendly static URLs for products please let me know 


EDIT: i did some more experimenting.  apparently the only menu that breaks when sh404sef is enabled is the sidebar menu which is made up of modules.  this menu is only broken when you are at the homepage or viewing a product.  when viewing a category, the links direct toward the desired category.  when at the homepage or viewing a category all the menu links direct back to the homepage.  my "responsive menu" which is a joomla menu created using the menu manager works fine.  i realize this is probably a sh404sef problem so ill ask them, but if anyone has any insight into getting rid of duplicate pages and getting static URLs let me know!

[PRO]

having multiple urls to the same product is OK, virtuemart uses a canonical url tag.

404sef, and other sef components are usually worse for your site as a whole. create problems with the cart etc.

RE:
vm-products

is that your main shop link? you have to recognize the alias somewhere?

[bbbecker]

just realized this thread is in the wrong category, sorry

the canonical URLs are nice for people to see the categories an stuff but all the duplicate title and description tags are bad for SEO.

about the vm-products thing.  i have no idea where that is coming from.  i've been through the virtuemart settings many times and see nothing about the shop URL.  also, what does recognize the alias mean?

thanks for the reply.

[PRO]

just realized this thread is in the wrong category, sorry

the canonical URLs are nice for people to see the categories an stuff but all the duplicate title and description tags are bad for SEO.

about the vm-products thing.  i have no idea where that is coming from.  i've been through the virtuemart settings many times and see nothing about the shop URL.  also, what does recognize the alias mean?

thanks for the reply.

amazon has sometimes 50 urls for each product


an alias is the url segment.
It's usually chosen in your menu links
https://docs.joomla.org/Help34:Menus_Menu_Item_Menu_Item_Alias

or in category names etc.

so, in your menu manager. Do you have menu links pointing to vmart ? if so, is that one of the aliases?