: Permalinks: Are there any SEO, Bookmarking, or Sharing Best Practices? So we have permalinks in place all over our site. Basically any product, category, article, etc with a "clean url" with
So we have permalinks in place all over our site. Basically any product, category, article, etc with a "clean url" with canonical such as example.com/green-fidget-widget also have permalink ID references such as example.com/index.php?product=7546. This is done so that we + other people can link to an entity without worrying about the canonical changing in the future (causing a 404). We try to 301 the old canonicals, but inevitably we miss them sometimes.
Are there things I can do or add to make utility permalinks more effective? Would the following thoughts be feasible, and/or would they hurt canonical momentum?
Adding some sort of meta/link in <head> or a header stating it should be used as an alternate or util entrypoint?
Forcing browser "add bookmark" action(s) to use the permalink instead of the current url? (note: rel="bookmark" on a link does not force this)
Making sharing widgets, social posts, and certain feeds use these permalinks instead of the canonical url?
Adding a "nofollow" on permalink to [possibly] preserve canonical juice?
Always making permalinks HTTP: mode even on SSL always site in order to prevent lockout if domain, browser, or OS SSL error...or we turn it off by default?
It seems like such a simple thing, but there isn't much info about any less known permalink practices/standards. Maybe that means that there are not any, but figured I would ask.
Please note: I am not referring to Wordpress "permalinks"...those are not really util route permalinks, they just named their whole URi system that.
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If your clean URLs can't be relied on permanently, they are not worth having. There is a lot more SEO and usability benefit from having URLs that are not going to break when a product name changes than any benefit you might get from having a clean looking URL.
There are benefits for having keywords in URLs. If nothing else it gives somebody who sees only the URL some idea of what they are clicking on.
I would stop using "clean" and "permanent" URLs and just start using a compromise: URLs that have an ID and a slug: example.com/7546-green-fidget-widget. That way if the product name changes, you can do automatic redirects based on the URL. You don't have to worry about which URL the user bookmarks. You get 95% of the SEO benefit with none of the hassle.
In this sort of a situation the best bet would be to actually add the rel=canonical meta to the head of the permalinked pages. So in /index.php?product=1234 there would be a meta canonical tag pointing to /cat-1/product-1234. Whenever the canonical link changes you would simply change the meta canonical on the permalinked page to the new canonical URL.
Another option is to use a 301 redirect on the permalink URL which will forward the user to the canonical page and present the friendly URL to them as well.
Either way should keep you safe with Google's duplicate content penalties.
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