We have run XENU, a link checker against our site and are seeing it render 2 URL's for our K2 items for the same page.

www.exampledomain.com/our-news-category/10-our-news-category/sign-on-bonus
www.exampledomain.com/our-news-category/10-our-news-category/sign-on-bonus/78-sign-on-bonus

XENU shows these as 2 different valid URLs (one is in the base url, the other is in the canonical tag), but we want to make sure from an SEO standpoint this is not causing issue.

Does k2 generate these 2 URLS and if so, why are they different?

Do you have any SEF extensions installed? K2 does not generate duplicate URLs as long as you create menu links for the categories.

We appreciate your response.

We have the overall "System - SEF" enabled, and in the Advanced Parameters for K2 we have the "Advanced SEF Settings" turned on. (please see screenshot of current settings on that parameter)

For the user side, we have not created Menu links for each of our categories, we are just using the Categories list Menu Module.

Your additional feedback about this issue will be helpful, thank you!

If you have a small number of categories i strongly suggest to create menu links for them. You didn't answer my question regarding third-party SEF extensions. Do you have SH404SEF, AceSEF or anything similar installed in your site? Is there a link to your site?

I do not see SH404SEF installed as a component on the site.

Can you let me know the steps and advantages to setting up the Menu Links for our categories. Also, what is the long term SEO benefit and will it affect the links in my site that currently go to our blog items.

Thank you for your input, it has been very helpful, just need a little more direction on this item.

The benefit of creating menu links are:

1. You get nice URLs for categories like your-site.com/menu-link-alias
2. You get nice and unique URLs for items of this category like your-site.com/menu-link-alias/item/23-item-alias
3. You save server resources since K2 will not have to apply it's advanced SEF settings for links that already exist in menus.

To create a menu link you can use the Joomla! menu manager. If you don't want to have these new menu links displayed in your site menu, then you can create a new menu in Joomla! and create them in this menu. If you don't set up a menu module to display this menu you will not see it in your site. However it's links will get used throughout K2.