Hello,
Thank you for contacting Rank Math and bringing your concern to our attention.
The risk in stripping the category base is if you have pages with the same slug. They would conflict with the links if ever that happens.
Before doing it, ensure that you don’t have pages/posts/post categories that will have the same URL as your product categories (without base).
Moreover, the presence or absence of the category base in your permalinks should not have a significant impact on your website’s SEO. While it is true that some SEO experts believe that shorter URLs are better for SEO, there is no evidence to suggest that having a category base in your URLs will hurt your rankings.
To ensure that it will not affect your indexed pages, you may need to test some of the previous URL if they are already redirecting without their base.
Hope that helps.
Thank you.
Hello,
Since we did not hear back from you for 15 days, we are assuming that you found the solution. We are closing this support ticket.
If you still need assistance or any other help, please feel free to open a new support ticket, and we will be more than happy to assist.
Thank you.
