Blogs - BT Business products & services

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Your online shop and each of its categories and product pages has its own address, the so-called URL. The browser uses this to identify and locate the individual pages of your online shop. The URL also shows the browser where the contents of the pages to be displayed are located. As Internet user, you see the URL in the address line of your browser, for example.

 

Let's assume your customer is currently located in the shoes category of your shop. The corresponding URL of your shop would then have looked something like this up to now:



With the new short URLs, you can now give these categories an address that's easier to read. e.g.: http://www.btdemo.de/Shoes.


What do short URLs do?
You can use the new short URLs to present self-explanatory and easy-to-understand links to your customers.

An example: You are starting a special 10 % discount for customers who make a repeat purchase. You set up a special page, which gives your customers all the details about the sale. You can now give this page a short URL like www.btdemo.de/existing-customer-rebate and promote this address on all invoices, enclosed flyers or by using a newsletter campaign.

Short URLs are also practical as "meaningful address" in the scope of an Adword campaign. You can transport an additional message or offer with the linked landing page of the Adword advertisement, for example. Here's another example: www.btdemo.de/SPECIAL-SALE-Dell-Laptops

Short and succinct URLs also have a positive effect on the conversion rate and thus the success of the positioning of your shop in the Google search results. A short and simply formulated, descriptive short URL will more likely be clicked on by users than a cryptic, long URL with incomprehensible database parameters.

 
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Activating the short URL in your shop

There is no need for activation. BT has deployed Patch 6, sa you will be queried automatically as to whether you want to activate the "Short URLs" feature the next time you log in to the Merchant Back Office. You confirm this. The system now creates a unique short URL for every page. The naming of the short URL is based on the content of the respectively created titles for homepage, categories and product pages.

 

Adapting short URLs in your shop

After the "Short URL" feature has been activated, you now have the option of editing the individual address pages. This may be necessary if, for reasons of search engine optimisation, you want to work with the full length of 60 characters for the page titles. Thus, relatively long URLs sometimes arise such as http://www.my-t-shirt-store.com/cotton-t-shirt-with-v-neck-and-tiger-print. Consider whether this URL is too long and adapt it accordingly. But when doing so, observe point 4 of the important information on short URLs below.

 
To do this, either click in the menu on "Content/Categories" and select "Datasheet view", if you would like to modify the URL of a category or a page, or click in the main menu on "Products" and select the product whose short URL you want to adapt.
 

 

On the "General" tab in the "Settings" submenu of the respective category, you will now find the short URL currently selected by the system. By clicking on "Edit" you can now adapt this to your liking.

Please make sure that the short URL you have chosen is as self-explanatory as possible without being too long.

After you have clicked on "Save", the respective page can now be reached by your customers under the short URL.

 Proceed accordingly for products. You can find the input field for changing the short URLs that were automatically suggested by the system on the "General" tab of the respective product under the "Price/Stock/Shipping" section

 

Important information about short URLs

1. Short URL with its own domain only
   
   In order to use short URLs, your online shop must have its own domain (e.g. www.myshop.de). If your online shop is running under the URL of your hosting provider (e.g. www.hostingproviderXYZ.de/myshop), you will not be able to activate the short URLs. For search engine optimisation reasons (SEO), we therefore recommend that you absolutely get your own domain.
2. Long URLS continue to be used
   
   After you have entered a short URL for a category page, for example, this category will then be reachable by entering this address in the browser. But the "old", long URLs are still active and are also shown in the browser address line under certain circumstances. The short URLs are simply routed to the well-known long URLs.
   
   There are several reasons for this:
   
   Without the routing to the "old", long URLs, all links that were ever set in forums, e-mails, newsletters, search engines, bookmarks etc. on your shop would become invalid. To prevent this, the "old" URLs maintain their validity.
   
   Unique links that were passed from the system, e.g. to shopping portals like Shopping .com are then transferred using the short form, earlier links can, however, still exist with the long URL and must continue to function.
   
   The linking within the shop - like with cross selling or in the menu structure - are still based on the "old" database URLs. The system must therefore continue to use the long URLs.
3. The "new" short URLs replace the "old", long URLs at the search engines
   
   You have given your categories and product pages a short URL optimised for marketing needs. Naturally, you want Google to record these "new" addresses and display them in its results. To ensure that these "new" URLs are stored and not the "old", long URLs, your bt rental shop uses <canonical> metatags introduced at the beginning of 2009, a command hidden in the <head> area of your website.
   
   The <canonical> metatag solves the problem of the "duplicate contents" for search engines by determining what is original and what is copy when content appears in duplicate on a server. The search engine is notified where the identical content is located and under which address this should be gathered in the future. If you would like to know more about the <canonical> metatag, we recommend you watch this explanatory video from Google: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cm9onOGTgeM&feature=channel
   
   Above all, there is one important thing for you to know: If a search engine scans your website after the activation of the short URLs, it is notified of the "new" URLs and which "old" content is hidden behind it. It will update its database accordingly and output the short URL for future search requests.
4. Once scanned, short URLs should no longer be changed - if possible!
   
   After activating the short URLs, you should check all newly generated URLS to make sure they suit your preferences. Until Google indexes your website the next time, you will easily have time to adapt all your URLs to your preferences. Once the search engine has scanned your site once and recorded all "new" URLs, you should no longer make changes to these URLs.
   
   This reason for this is as follows:
   
   A change to a short URL overwrites the former short URL. This, however, is still stored as link and will first be changed by the next indexing of your shop. You should therefore seriously consider each retroactive change because you could end up having incorrect links in the search engines under certain circumstances. A potential visitor would then be prevented from entering your shop.
   
   This also applies if you have already published a short URL, for example, in a newsletter. If you subsequently change something about the URL, this link will no longer function.
   
   How can you check whether Google has already indexed a short URL? Call up Google and enter the relevant page as phrase - enclosed in quotes - in the search field. "http://www.btdemo.de/Shoes"

Message Edited by eShop on 06-11-2009 02:58 PM