Overview

If your online store has a complex categories structure with many levels of subcategories, Magento will create really long URLs for the products in these subcategories, including the full categories hierarchy in the URL.

This can be a real drag for your product SEO since Google usually pays attention only to first few words in the URL.

This FREE SEO Friendly Categories Magento extension lets you flatten your URL structure by using only the product name or the last subcategory name in the URL.

So instead of mystore.com/category/subcategory1/product_name.html you will have just mystore.com/product_name.html in your URL.

And likewise for categories, instead of mystore.com/category/subcategory1/subcategory2/subcategory3.html you will have just a mystore.com/subcategory3.html

You can even customize how that subcategory will look in the URL like by using the URL Key parameter in the category configuration.

Highlights

• Drastically improves your categories' and products' SEO
• Gives you full control over product, category and subcategory URLs
• Creates flat URL structure for categories
• Uses Magento's own URL rewriting mechanism for improved compatibility
• 100% FREE

Screenshots

Installation

Installation is very simple and now is done using the Magento Connect interface. Just follow these steps:

IMPORTANT! I f you any versions of SEO Friendly Categories extension prior to 1.0.4, you need to remove it manually by deleting all extension files from your Magento installation prior to installing the new version.

• Download the installation package by logging into your account and going to My Downloadable Products section.
• After you downloaded the installation package, log in to your store admin interface and go to System / Magento Connect / Magento Connect Manager.
• At the "Direct package file upload" section click on "Choose file" button, select the package file you just downloaded and click "upload".
• After upload is done, click "Refresh" button underneath the console screen. Then go back to the admin panel by clicking "Return to Admin" link at the top right.
• Go to System / Cache Management and refresh the Configuration cache.
• IMPORTANT! After finishing the initial installation steps above, you need to log out and log in back into your administration interface in order to see the extension configuration.
• When you log in back to your admin panel, your installation process is complete and you can now configure the Bulk Images extension.

Please read this first if you are using Apple Safari to download the installation package. By default Safari tries to open the "safe" file extensions, this includes the .tgz packages. Therefore it will uncompress the package upon download and will make it unfit for Magento Connect. To prevent this behavior in the menu bar, go Safari > Preferences. In the "General" tab, uncheck "Open 'safe' files after downloading". This will stop Safari from automatically unzipping the files. Read more on Stack Exchange here.

Please see more detailed installation instructions and a screencast here:
Installing Magento Extensions Using Connect Manager

Configuration

To configure the SEO Friendly Categories Magento extension, please go to the System / Configuration menu at your admin panel click the "SEO Friendly Categories" under ACTIVO EXTENSIONS section on the left. You will see the configuration menu, which is very simple – you can just enable or disable the short SEO friendly category URLs.

Please note that once you change this setting, you need to go to System / Index Management and reindex data for Catalog URL Rewrites.

One additional benefit – Magento will create the URL redirects from the old category links to the new, short ones, so all old links will still work perfectly fine.

Installation and Configuration Screencast:

Here IS A SHORT VIDEO SCREENCAST where we show how to install and configure the SEO Friendly Categories extension:

*Note: this screencast show the old installation process, the newer versions of this extension use the Magento Connect Manager to install the extension, which is even easier.

Release Notes

• Ver 1.0.4.1 [2012-10-23]: Fixed some compatibility issues with Magento 1.7.0. Repackaged to use the Magento Connect Manager installation process.
• Ver 1.0.3 [2012-07-26]: Added the ability to manually specify a global top level string for refined SEO control.
• Ver 1.0.2 [2012-06-21]: Fixed an issue with double slash for newer (>1.6) versions of Magento.
• Ver 1.0.1 [2012-03-01]: Repackaged for Magento versions >1.5.0.1.
• Ver 1.0.0 [2012-02-27]: Initial Stable Release.

Magento Editions Compatibility

Community Edition: 1.5.0.1 and above
Enterprise Edition: 1.8.0.0 and above

License

This extension is released under the Open Software License v. 3.0 (OSL-3.0). Please read the full license agreement here: http://www.opensource.org/licenses/OSL-3.0.

Community Support Forum

Have any questions regarding this extension? Need help with installation and/or configuration? Have some good tips and tricks about using it? Please visit the support forum for the SEO Friendly Categories extension here.