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WooCommerce pretty permalinks are a key component of your eCommerce site, enhancing its SEO performance and user experience. Unlike generic URLs, pretty permalinks are aesthetically pleasing and more intuitive to navigate. These URLs are clean, descriptive, and easy to read, making your website’s structure more approachable and memorable for users.
However, WooCommerce’s default setup only supports top-level taxonomies. This means that any additional refinement in your website’s taxonomy structure, such as product attributes, must be done through URL parameters. For example, combining multiple top-level taxonomies like category and brand is currently unfeasible.
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The Significance of Pretty Permalinks
Pretty permalinks matter for several reasons. From an SEO perspective, they boost your website’s visibility by providing search engines with more context about your page content. They’re also more user-friendly, offering a clear and concise structure that makes navigation simpler. Lastly, they’re more likely to be clicked when users see them in Google search results and they are easier to read, enhancing the overall user experience.
Another Problem: Term Slugs Must Be Unique
Terms in WordPress and WooCommerce can be problematic. For example, if you have URLs like /clothing/t-shirts/men/ and /clothing/t-shirts/women/, and you attempt to create /clothing/shorts/men/, the URL will unfortunately become /clothing/shorts/men-shorts/.
Plugins like Permalink Manager Pro and Premmerce Permalink Manager offer a workaround, allowing users to rename these taxonomy qualifiers. These two plugins help in the case where your terms are used in your top-level taxonomy, e.g. for your category links as above, but they do not help you combine multiple terms into your URL. For example, if you have a category and a brand, you cannot use links like /product-category/clothing/brand/adidas/.
You can see above the comment from Permalink Manager Pro where they advise you of the limitations of WordPress and WooCommerce – namely that combinations of categories or multiple taxonomies is a limitation of WordPress that cannot be circumvented.
Even ChatGPT thinks combining multiple terms from the same or different taxonomies is impossible in WordPress.
It turns out they are both wrong.
Enter Super Speedy Filters
This is where Super Speedy Filters steps in. It offers a comprehensive solution to these WooCommerce permalink restrictions. This innovative plugin allows any combination of taxonomies and terms that you prefer. Whether you’re looking to use taxonomies with qualifiers removed or combined with other taxonomies, Super Speedy Filters is up to the task.
Moreover, if you enable archives for your product attributes, you can create pretty attribute permalinks. For instance, /brand/adidas/product-category/t-shirts/colour/blue can be created, or all the qualifiers can be removed to have /adidas/t-shirts/blue/, resulting in a neat, user-friendly URL.
Example Pretty Permalinks
- /product-category/t-shirts/brand/adidas/colour/blue instead of /product-category/t-shirts?brand=adidas&pa_color=blue
- /t-shirts/adidas/blue
- /category1/category2/ (for multiselect in categories)
- /category1/category2/category3/blue/red/ (for multiselect across multiple taxonomies!)
Super Speedy Filters: A Comprehensive Permalink Solution
Super Speedy Filters is not just an ordinary plugin; it’s a game-changer. It addresses all your permalink issues, providing a streamlined solution that enhances your website’s SEO and user experience.
Although it’s still in beta, this doesn’t mean it’s not usable. On the contrary, many customers are already reaping its benefits. Above all, Super Speedy Filters stands out due to its lightning-fast performance. It’s faster than any other filtering plugins available and can scale to accommodate millions of products. We will keep calling it Beta until we have updated the plugin to handle all post types, which should happen this summer, but until then you can use it to make your WooCommerce archive SEO so much better.
In summary, Super Speedy Filters paves the way for a more flexible, efficient, and user-friendly WooCommerce setup. It breaks down the restrictions of WooCommerce permalinks, offering a superior solution for your eCommerce needs.
