Issues with Remove Category Base – 404’s ocurred.

#605508
  • Resolved Anonymous

    2 years, 2 months ago

    Rank Math free

    I removed the category base in the RankMath WooCommerce settings for my site trustedmats.co.uk.

    After a while, I noticed that certain product category links were returning 404s in the admin site. I then noticed it happening on live. I have a caching plug in and CDN, so perhaps these masked the issue on live for a few hours.

    Some other strange things started happening too for example https://trustedmats.co.uk/product-category/entrance-mats/, started pointing to https://trustedmats.co.uk/entrance-mats-complete-guide/, which is a post, not even a category.

    The following day, Google also notified me of page indexing issues, (Duplicate, Google chose different canonical than user), where they had decided that my old URL was the correct one, not the new one.

    I reverted back to the old structure by deselecting the remove category base in RankMath settings and everything seems to be fixed again.

    Please let me know what I need to do to achieve this correctly and without hurting existing Google rankings for the original URLs (or is this unavoidable?).

    I can grant you admin access if need be.

    I would like the UX that shorter URLs give, but if it causes issues, I’m inclined to think it isn’t worth it, but would appreciate your advice and support.

    Many thanks,
    Mark

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
  • Reinelle

    2 years, 2 months ago

    Hello,

    Thank you for contacting Rank Math and bringing your concern to our attention. I’m sorry for any inconvenience this issue may have caused you.

    If the remove category base option is returning a 404 error, please go to your WordPress Dashboard > Settings > Permalinks and click save changes without making any changes. This will flush out any old permalink settings.

    Also, please clear your website caches including any server-level caching services.

    Let us know how this goes.

    Thank you.

    Anonymous

    2 years, 2 months ago

    Rank Math free

    Hello,
    Ok that makes sense and I’m willing to give it a go.
    Before I do, I’m a bit wary about it having a negative impact on our SEO. We have many links pointing to the old category URLs. Will the benefit of these simply be passed to the new redirected URLs?

    Reinelle

    2 years, 2 months ago

    Hello,

    Thank you for your patience.

    Yes, since the old category URLs will be 301 redirected to the new structure, their link juice will be passed as well.

    The link juice is passed from the source to the destination URL with time once the search engine bots realize that it is a redirection.

    Looking forward to helping you.

    Thank you.

    Anonymous

    2 years, 2 months ago

    Rank Math free

    Hello,
    Just to confirm I made the changes and followed your permalinks advice which did the trick for me. I had to do it twice for some reason, but after a few days of monitoring the site, all seems well and it has worked.
    Thanks for your help.

    Reinelle

    2 years, 2 months ago

    Hello,
    
    You’re welcome.

    We are super happy that this issue is already resolved. If you have any other questions in the future, know that we are here to help you.
    
    If you don’t mind me asking, could you please leave us a review (if you haven’t already) on https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/seo-by-rank-math/reviews/#new-post about your overall experience with Rank Math? We appreciate your time and patience.
    
    If you do have another question in the future, please feel free to create a new forum topic, and it will be our pleasure to assist you again.
    
    Thank you.

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)

The ticket ‘Issues with Remove Category Base – 404’s ocurred.’ is closed to new replies.