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I want to include certain field values in my URL's first segment. Since the first segment is the template file's name, I'm not sure how to do this. For example, say I have a template products. If the template is showing a "new" product, I'd like like the first segment to be new-products. And if the product is "old", then old-products. Assume there is no different in the output of the new and old products; I just wan the URL to be different. I don't want to do something like this products/new/ because I "think" (I don't know for a fact) that is not as effective in SEO terms.

Is there a way to make segment one dynamic?

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  • You might be able to do it with with Freebie. Have /oldproducts/myitem & /newproducts/myitem just show the same page, but have a little if-check (wherever the URL gets written) to show the right string... What determines which products are old and new? Something like a checkbox or a date field?
    – SamC
    Jan 2, 2015 at 17:51

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Your default template group index can catch these URLs and embed the relevant template you want to display to list products.

But I'd be cautious on the amount of effort it will involve for little benefit and more complexity elsewhere - not to mention the usability from visitors.

Shallow/flat "directory" structure is good (source: numerous web articles and numerous SEO agency advice), but shouldn't be to the sacrifice of logical structure and usability. But compare that with loading keywords into the URL, which is more beneficial for SEO.

Also balance that the parent gains more weight from it's child pages - so "products" SEO value is diluted by having alternatives like "new-products", whereas "/products/new" maintains that value and is logical from build perspective and visitors.

SEO Investment would be far better placed in unique content text for the listing landing pages and what SEO agencies call "hub" pages. Don't forget to remove any unique content for paginated pages - better still ensure that the paginated links are no-follow and no-index. So based on this, remember that your products shouldn't be indexed on the listing page - as that's not what you want the Google index to point at, but the product page itself, so a short URL for the listing is irrelevant (in SEO terms) for the product itself, just the landing/hub page (the same as any other content page).

In all ecommerce builds I've worked on, they've all been heavily category based for listings, so "new" is just another category and translates/identifies (seg2cat) to the correct channel:entries output.

Lastly, think about the duplicate development code (although you can use embeds to create a single source) and how difficult that would be to maintain, track changes and for others/client to maintain.

Good answers and article links: https://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/60280/does-amount-of-url-parameters-affect-seo

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  • Some very good points raised in this answer. I'd agree wholeheartedly with using categories such as "new".
    – foamcow
    Jan 7, 2015 at 12:47

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