SEO killer – URL paignation on last Woodmart update

Hello,

Since your last big update you have decided to change the way category pages on the shop load products. Now when you click “load more” it actually changes the URL and appends “page/2” to it, rather than showing more products on the same URL. This is very bad SEO practise as it creates duplicate URL issues. Why exactly have you done this? It worked perfectly well before your update.

Also, when the user now is on “page/2” on a category page and happens to reload the page again, the majority of the products dissapear and you only some of the products. You then have to reload the page again to see all the products.

We’ve checked our traffic and this has really made a mess of our SERPS. You cannot just change category URLs like this which are listed in the SERPS. How can we revert back to how the category pages loaded products previously, where the “load more” button did not change the category URL by appending “page/2” to it?

Thank you

Hello,

Try to add the following PHP code snippet to the child theme functions.php file to disable this option

add_filter( 'woodmart_load_more_button_page_url', '__return_false' );

Kind Regards

Double products on different pages doesn’t affect SEO badly when canonical URLs are correctly configured out from Woodmart. That’s the best SEO proof solution for this.

Hello Artem,

Many thanks for that snippet. That works perfectly. Can you please explain the reason for adding the paignation to the category URL in the last update? What was the development reason behind that?

@protectionshopn – Thanks for your input about category canonicals (which of course is very important) but the main issue is that category products are now bing split across multiple pages which has an effect on the SEO juice being attributed to the main category canonical. When something is not broken and works very well (as per before the update) why go ahead and make this change which is not needed (as far as I can see) and has the potential to weaken SERP positions?

Hello,

It was a very popular feature request so that is why have added this function to our theme.

Kind Regards

Thanks for your reply Artem,

Can you kindly please explain to me the advantage of this? What feature is it exactly that you are offering here? I do not really understand so you explanation would be really appreciated.

Hi,

It is a default pagination behavior and by changing the URL it reflects the standard WooCommerce pagination. So you can share some particular pages. For example, you scrolled to the 10th page and want to copy the link to send somebody. Also, we can’t give you SEO advice but we don’t see any problems from this perspective as well.

Kind Regards

Thank you Artem for sharing that information with me.
You can close this ticket.

You are welcome!

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