Permalink Issue – ?seq_no=2

Hi,

Thank you for your feedback. We continue to improve our plugin and add new features.

The seq_no is used, as you noted, when an article belongs to two or more categories. The seq_no changes for each location of the article in the Sidebar where we list categories and articles. Since the article is shown in more than one location, the seq_no is used to mark the location of the article.

So the seq_no serves as a reference to the location of the article within the category hierarchy so that if user comes back using the same URL, they see the same category opened and highlighted, and the article shown.

If you have further questions please contact us so we can hep you with further questions:
https://www.echoknowledgebase.com/technical-support/

Thank you,
Dennis

Hello Dennis,

thanks for the update.

understood why its being used however we would like to remove that. How can that be achieved???

Psting here so that it also helps other users who MAY or may not be aware of this and also require it to be removed.
It would be greatly appreciated if you can advise on how to remove OR deisable those URLs. We want optimised URLs and these type of URLs will just create more problems for us on our projects…

Regards

Hi,

Since the seq_no is used only for articles that have multiple categories, the following is applies to these articles:

If the user is on the Category Archive Page and clicks on an article link the user might not be directed to the correct location in the Sidebar on the Article page. The Sidebar will have multiple instances of the same article so we need to know which one to use.

For good user experience, when coming from the Category Archive Page, the user should see the related category opened in the Sidebar. This does not work if we do not have some way to indicate which category should be used.

Do you have another solution? If we change the seq_no to this format: /?category=test would that work for you? If not, what is the issue with the parameter?

Thanks,
Dennis

Hello Dennis,

thank you for trying to clarify.

however somewhat confused. We dont use a sidebar on the article page. The only thing thats used on the artile page that looks like a sdebar is where the article navigation is where it pulls the H tags from the article (table of contents) BUT those URLs are not used when an article is added to 1 or more categories.

The default setup of your plugin uses a home page to display categories ( 3 grid format) and the respective article links diplayed (articles which can then be added to multiple categories).

You seem to be stating that for UX and navigation once an article is clicked on which has that parameter its good for navigation used in a sidebar BUT no sidebar exists (and we in the many instaces of using this plugin dont ever use a sidebar).

WHat is happening is that this parameter is unnesserily creating URLs which are getting crawled by googlebot (think of multiple articles i.e. 100 added to 10 categories which is going to create hunderds of URLs!). Thats not only wasting crawl budget but these URLs would significantly dilute any internal linking that may be required to do and also have no purpose from an SEO point of view.

Yes we could add them into robots.txt file or in google search console BUT its much better if they are not created in the first place.

The option to have: ?category=test is much better than the current way BUT again our argument is that they shouldnt be present in the first place OR at the very LEAST have an option to not use them as no sidebars are being used.

Hope that all makes sense…
Regards

Hi,

We will add a new option to remove the seq_no from the URLs. This will cause issues with the Sidebar if you have one which is not your case. Also it will default the breadcrumbs to the primary category, just like how the default WordPress behavior works ( Yoast is the same ).

This new change will be available on the next update. If you wish to have an earlier version, please contact us via our website: https://www.echoknowledgebase.com/contact-us/

Please note that typically articles belong to only one category. The seq_no is not used for those articles. If article belongs to more than one category, then WordPress / Yoast SEO adds a canonical link tag that clearly indicates this is a duplicate content.

Thank you for the feedback, If you need further support please use our contact form: https://www.echoknowledgebase.com/contact-us/

Dave.

Hello Dave,

Thank you for the update and many thanks for pushing that update through. It will help greatly.

>> If article belongs to more than one category, then WordPress / Yoast SEO adds a canonical link tag that clearly indicates this is a duplicate content.

NO idea what you are going on about here. An article will always have a canonical tag. Its irrelevant if that article is associated with multiple categories to display a link as the article itself will always have a canonical tag. So where is there duplicate content???

Yes, maybe IF a category is set to diaply the all the FULL articles on a category page BUT highly unlikely this is going to be the case for majority of users…

In any case look forward to the update.

Regards

Hi,

When the change is released we will add information about how to remove sequence to this article:
https://www.echoknowledgebase.com/documentation/various/

Regards,
Dennis

Hello Dennis,

Thank you ??