beginner in seo and virtuemart

[Grisu74]

hello, I need a helping hand, recently I'm getting close to Seo, I would like advice about virtuemart, url duplicate the problem, I use the site in two languages ​​in tandem with Joomla 2.5.9,I want to know what better solution exists and guide me in this, thank you very much for the help

[jjk]

If you mean that different urls can point the the same product, I would suggest to ignore the "duplicate" problem. Search engines nowadays know that shops frequently do that. Google doesn't complain (at least it doesn't complain about my own shop - and lists my products in top positions when searching for these products). However, Google recommends to use a sitemap to tell it which urls it should crawl. (There is no good sitemap extension yet for VM shops, but it's on the ToDo list...)

But if the site you are talking about is the one in your forum signature, your english category menu items don't have a match for each of your italian ones.
On a multilanguage website, it's better to have the same menu structure for all languages, because the Joomla language switcher relies on menu items. If the user looks i.e. at a certain category and switches to a different language, he will be redirected to the next higher category or homepage if the language switcher doen't find the category in the other language.

Other considerations:
You seem to have 'Use Product and Category IDs' in the VM configuration > SEO settings, which are usually not necessary.
In Joomla configuration you seem to have enabled 'Adds Suffix to URL', which I would recommend to disable. It's useless (The only reason it's there is that many people still think that an url requires an htm or html suffix, like maybe a decade ago). However, VirtueMart needs a suffix in the VM SEO settings. But if you enable both, you get duplicate suffixes like in this url: .../tende-plisse-20-mm-colore-home-comando-a-corda-preventivo-acquista-detail.html.
A menu structure with many subcategories produces long urls, which is not very good for SEO. Short urls are usually better for good rankings.

[Grisu74]

ok so for the duplicate url to google there are no problems, but for 404s of google webmaster tool that detects what can I do? are penalized?
because my virtuemart product pages do not appear optimized to search? url too long? if you like I can solve? I attach pictures to virtuemart and joomla seo settings so can you please indicate what should I select on or off.
sorry I asked too many questions but I need someone to help me understand!
thanks for his kindness

my site is in the signature

[attachment cleanup by admin]

[jjk]

My recommended SEF settings are here:
http://forum.virtuemart.net/index.php?topic=111756.msg375836#msg375836

404 errors normally don't have a negative effect on your ranking. It just means that the requested page does not exist or is not found and therefore the search engines normally don't index this page.

There is plenty of information about this kind of stuff in Google's Webmastertools help pages, like i.e. these:
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=76329&topic=2370420&ctx=topic
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=181708

[lindapowers]

I agree with all the settings of jjk and what he told you except the Adds Suffix to URL: No

I believe Yes is the correct setting although nowadays they say is not that important, still is easier for robots to read the content correctly.

Also although SEO gurus may flame me for it I believe adding the website name to every URL is important but AFTER the title.

http://www.venezianeplisse.com/it/virtuemart/tende-veneziane-foto-legno/8-tende-veneziane/57-veneziane-legno-25-mm

This URL from your website: change "virtuemart" remove ID's and add suffix, that is what I will do but there is no 100% correct rules to follow, I guess everyone does what it worked for them in the past.

BTW your products in english return a 404, maybe you are working on them.

Also make sure you have a unique H1 per page in your website, even better if you use h2 too also.

Regards

[jjk]

I agree with all the settings of jjk and what he told you except the Adds Suffix to URL: No

If you prefer to have a .html instead of VM's default -details at the end of your urls, I would recommend to place that one into your VM SEO suffix field and set the Joomla suffix to No. This way you don't get duplicate suffixes like -details.html. I don't think that the additional -details in your urls are helpful in any way.

Also although SEO gurus may flame me for it I believe adding the website name to every URL is important but AFTER the title.

Personally I think that's not a good idea, because basically it adds something like 'duplicate content' to your urls and just makes them longer.

[lindapowers]

I agree with all the settings of jjk and what he told you except the Adds Suffix to URL: No

If you prefer to have a .html instead of VM's default -details at the end of your urls, I would recommend to place that one into your VM SEO suffix field and set the Joomla suffix to No. This way you don't get duplicate suffixes like -details.html. I don't think that the additional -details in your urls are helpful in any way.

http://comenaranjas.com/es/tienda/naranjas/naranjas-de-mesa-10-kg-detail.html

That is how we do it using both, Looks SEO correct but just my opinion

Didn't mean to add the page name at the URLS but at the "title" tag in the metatags.

For the example I used:

Naranjas: Naranjas de mesa 10 kg || Comenaranjas

[jjk]

@lindapowers
I suppose you misunderstood my previous post a little bit. 
You currently have ...comenaranjas.com/es/tienda/naranjas/naranjas-de-mesa-10-kg-detail.html
Better SEO would be if you would configure it to read:
...comenaranjas.com/es/tienda/naranjas/naranjas-de-mesa-10-kg.html
The "-detail" is pretty much useless for SEO in your case. I would place the .html into the VM SEO suffix field instead of letting Joomla adding it.

BTW - Google and Bing usually don't use any suffix on their own pages. In some cases they use a /

[PRO]

the correct way for multiple languages per same content is using    hreflang

<link rel="alternate" hreflang="es" href="http://es.example.com/" />




http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=189077




It's more or less canonical for different languages

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Igbrm1z_7Hk

[jjk]

@Pro
I happened to read that Google article about hreflang a few minutes before you posted it here. Makes me think whether or not I could use hreflang to increase the number of my pages in Google's U.S. Since I use the en-GB tag for my english language translation, Google U.K. lists all my pages, but Google U.S. currently lists only a quarter of the existing english language pages, while all pages are also in the canadian index. However, I don't want to drop out again of Google's U.K. and Canada index again. Maybe Google U.S. just limits the number of indexed pages in order to give competing pages a better chance to be found...

[lindapowers]

@lindapowers
I suppose you misunderstood my previous post a little bit. 
You currently have ...comenaranjas.com/es/tienda/naranjas/naranjas-de-mesa-10-kg-detail.html
Better SEO would be if you would configure it to read:
...comenaranjas.com/es/tienda/naranjas/naranjas-de-mesa-10-kg.html
The "-detail" is pretty much useless for SEO in your case. I would place the .html into the VM SEO suffix field instead of letting Joomla adding it.

BTW - Google and Bing usually don't use any suffix on their own pages. In some cases the use a /

I agree but it was at VM config so I left it, don't see the harm at the url where it appears, doubt is has any negative effect.

But you are right, thanks for making me have to make 10 billion redirects from my old urls for products

the correct way for multiple languages per same content is using    hreflang

<link rel="alternate" hreflang="es" href="http://es.example.com/" />




http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=189077




It's more or less canonical for different languages

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Igbrm1z_7Hk

True but we used the sitemaps to avoid all that, as the same article describes submiting the siitemap poiting to each language with the language prefix in the URL.

[lindapowers]

@lindapowers
I suppose you misunderstood my previous post a little bit. 
You currently have ...comenaranjas.com/es/tienda/naranjas/naranjas-de-mesa-10-kg-detail.html
Better SEO would be if you would configure it to read:
...comenaranjas.com/es/tienda/naranjas/naranjas-de-mesa-10-kg.html
The "-detail" is pretty much useless for SEO in your case. I would place the .html into the VM SEO suffix field instead of letting Joomla adding it.

BTW - Google and Bing usually don't use any suffix on their own pages. In some cases they use a /

I have read dozens of articles and comments that agree with you jjk  but in real practice after several webs build I still think .html suffix rank better and was told the same by several SEO experts, which obviously I'm not.. so with the doubt in mind you know .html will rank well or wont have any negative effect but you don't really know what happens if you remove it... so we preferr to keep it. Not saying is better or worst, just that for us it worked better.

I Just remembered why I didn't remove the "-detail" after testing in my local installation, cause I couldn't find out how to, if you remove the -detail at the SEO parameters of VM your detail pages are redirected to the shop main page and the only solution was to leave a "-" which would leave an ugly url as "-.html" so I decided to leave it as it was.

Regards

[jjk]

But you are right, thanks for making me have to make 10 billion redirects from my old urls for products

lol - but don't misunderstand me again  there definately has to be a suffix in the VM SEO settings. Otherwise the router will frequently redirect the user to wrong pages. VM needs a suffix (which can be .html instead of the default -details), to tell the system that it is on a product page, because in VM you can have different urls pointing to a certain product.

[lindapowers]

But you are right, thanks for making me have to make 10 billion redirects from my old urls for products

lol - but don't misunderstand me again  there definately has to be a suffix in the VM SEO settings. Otherwise the router will frequently redirect the user to wrong pages. VM needs a suffix (which can be .html instead of the default -details), to tell the system that it is on a product page, because in VM you can have different urls pointing to a certain product.

You dammit! ok now I understood, you meant disabling the joomla suffix and adding just that suffix to VM but I don't like that setting... cause is at joomla webpages exactly where I want the suffix .html and also at products, so detail.html seems fine for me

[Grisu74]

as you apply the rel canonical in virtuemart? I want to insert the rel canonical category of products to all products that belong to that category. Thanks