Prestashop and Canonical URLs

The canonical URLs indicate to search engines which is the “original” page: they are used to avoid duplicate content within the ecommerce site.

In short it is a code added to the page of the site, invisible to users, to indicate to search engines if the page is the “original” or a duplicate.

Duplicate Contents

On an ecommerce Prestashop you can have duplicate contents or similar versions of the same content accessible from different web addresses (URLs).

For example, a category of products, a product search page, a list of products filtered according to certain attributes, could propose the same list of products and therefore the same content.

Another case could be that of a product that can be accessed either from the its category or from one of the Prestashop modules such as, for example, Featured Products, Special Products, etc.

So we will have different URLs that have the same content (or similar content).

SEO: the risk of penalties

If your ecommerce site has several similar versions of the same content, accessed via different URLs and does not use canonical URLs, search engines may penalize it because these pages would be considered as duplicate content.

Your site may therefore lose (many) positions within search results.

The solution: canonical URLs

There is a simple and quick solution to avoid duplicate contents and penalties. Using canonical URLs, pages that were previously considered “duplicate content” (different URLs with the same content) are considered by search engines as one page.

Prestashop: enabling canonical URLs

In Prestashop it is really easy to activate canonical URLs.

Prestashop 1.7

Follow the instructions below:

1. Log in to your administration area
2. From the main menu click: Configure > Shop Parameters > Traffic & SEO
3. Scroll to “Setup URLs”
4. For the “Redirect to canonical URL” function, select “301 Moved Permanently” from the drop-down menu
5. Click the “Save” button

Prestashop 1.6

Follow the instructions below:

1. Log in to your administration area
2. From the main menu click: Preferencese > SEO & URLs
3. Scroll to “Setup URLs”
4. For the “Redirect to canonical URL” function, select “301 Moved Permanently” from the drop-down menu
5. Click the “Save” button