SEO: category and product path (URL) - Magento

Question

I have one or two categries in magento but these are not always showing up in URL.

Example:

When I navigate to a product page the path looks like this:

.../cat/subcat/product.html

However, when I click a product directly from the frontpage (newest, featured), then the URL structure looks like this:

.../product.html

My first thought was to deactivate, that the category is showing up within the URL (backend seo tab).

Well, I'm trying to seo the shop and not very happy with this solution. I'd like to have always a clear structured URL.

Any ideas?

Solution

If your website has a complicated structure, you will have multiply URL for a single product, just like you mentioned. This situation may damage your website's profile to the customer, but it won't be any problems to Search Engine. The latest version of Magento provides canonical URL support for product and category. You may access the configuration under

System -> Configuration -> Catalog -> Search Engine Optimizations -> Use Canonical Like Meta Tag for Products

If you are going to eliminate this situation throughly, you can create URL writes to the URL you want through a 403 status code, which also will tell search engine that the content has been permanently migrate to the target URL and user can only access the URL you want to present to them.