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Can I edit article URLs?



Edited Jul 26, 2023


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7 comments

There is an issue with the Guide content editor when trying to add a link to the internal article. Instead of adding a link to the canonical URL (the original content), one gets to the canonicalized URL (duplicate). This causes SEO issues because most canonical URLs never get any links, which leads to them not being indexed. 

Here is an example: 
https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408894164634 has a canonical link tag to https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408894164634-Can-I-edit-article-URLs- .

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wow. as an SEO, this is probably one of the worst things i've ever encountered on any CMS. the amount of duplicate pages you're going to produce is pretty crazy.

Also, if I'm reading this correctly, you're saying that if a title gets updated, the canonical tag now gets changed to the URL with the title in the slug? this now results in google having to reindex a page IF they choose to (because they don't always obey canonicals).

Such a big oversight - why not just apply a 301? or better yet, don't change the URL whenever someone changes the title. This technical implementation is more detrimental than any SEO or UX benefit of adding keywords into a URL structure. ZD, I would highly recommend you find a solution to this problem.

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I need to change the URL to sentence case. I changed the article title to sentence case as the slug in the URL is generated from the article title. However, there is no change in the URL. please find the below snapshot for reference.

Thanks!

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Ravi K

Try the URL without the sentence case. What you'll notice is that both URLs are still live (sentence and title), but the one with title case will update the canonical to the most latest version. If you just changed the URL to the sentence case, then that is the most updated version. You can then try to redirect all the other version to the canon page, but Zendesk limits you to redirects inside the same tech stack. I'm still pretty frustrated about this issue and your reply made me remember why I'm so upset.

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image avatar

Ivan Miquiabas

Zendesk Customer Care

Hi Ravi K,
 
Good day! Can you provide some screenshot of the changes you made on the title of the article? I can't see it. 
 
In general when you update the title of an article, the canonical URL changes to include a new slug that matches the new title. However, your end users can still navigate to a URL with the old slug, or with no slug at all. 
 
 
Cheers! 

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I have changed the CSS property in the h1 heading to sentence case. This is working, and I can see all article titles in the sentence case, but the URL slugs are still showing the title case. Just like this: https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408894164634-Can-I-edit-article-URLs

I changed the article title manually without touching CSS property, and then the URL slug has been converted to sentence case like this: https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408894164634-Can-i-edit-urls

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image avatar

Ivan Miquiabas

Zendesk Customer Care

Hi Ravi K,
 
Thanks for providing more context, this issue needs further checking and investigation. Can you please send us a ticket with the issue and questions that you have? We'll be happy to assist you realtime. https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408843597850-Contacting-Zendesk-Customer-Support
 
 
Cheers!

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