Best Product URL For Indexing
-
My proposed URL: mydomain.com/products/category/subcategory/product detail
Puts my products 4 levels deep. Is this too deep to get my products indexed?
-
Thanks for the advice. This was quite a while ago. I wound up going with domain/product-category/product
Works very well - every product I add gets indexed.
-
Why adding /products/ in your url? I would definatly strip that out to keep the url clean and relevant, as /products/ is just generic.
The shorter URLs you can have, but still have good "readability" for the user, the better it is, but you still want to have a good structure for inbound linking and not to deep. I would say 3 rather then 4 as the maximum.
I think, to make this fairly complex issue more simple I would say, that if you run content at your category pages, with the possibility to shop products and display of campaign information, then you really need to have the category in your URL. Same goes for subcategories.
-
One cautionary note: If the products are going to live in multiple categories (which a lot of times they do in eCom), I'd go with /product/product-detail. Avoid duplicate pages and having to canonical and get into that whole mess.
You're not going to lose a lot (or probably anything) by not having the category names in the product urls. Just my opinion though...
Magento has some great options for that if you're going in that direction.
-
They will follow any link on the page. There are a few exceptions such as no follow links and pages with hundreds of links may not have all of them crawled. Links in flash, iframes, etc will likely not be crawled depending on the coding.
-
Thanks Ryan. In your experience will an SE follow to the subcategory page if products and categories are non-clickable?
-
One click.
Keep in mind Google likely treats a link which is immediately visible such as your Products link with more weight then a link which requires a user action to appear. This is my belief and not necessarily an agreed upon SEO standard.
-
Thanks. I have a question. From main top nav, if user (or SE) hovers over Products the category menus drop down and subcategories fly out. User actually clicks on subcategory, with products, and categories being non-clickable. In this scenario, does arriving at the subcategory page count as 3 clicks, or 1?
-
My proposed URL: mydomain.com/products/category/subcategory/product detail puts my products 4 levels deep. Is this too deep to get my products indexed?
Four levels is usually the maximum depth you would want to step away from your home page. Keep in mind depth is not determined by how the pages are stored on your server nor the number of folder levels in your URL. The question is: how many clicks does it take a user to move from your home page to your product page. THAT is the determining factor.
I recommend a flatter structure whenever possible. mydomain.com/cars/ford/mustang/2012-mustang-gt would be an example URL using the layout you suggested. Some URLs to consider:
mydomain.com/ford/2012-mustang-gt
There may be a logical means by which you can drop or combine some levels.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Full title in url
Hi to all, what is the best url structure, to have all words in the url or to tweak url like Yoast suggest? If we remove some words from url , not focus keyword but stop words and other keywords to have shorter url will that impact search rankings? example.com/one-because-two-for-three-on-four - long url, moz crawl error, yoast red light example.com/one-two-three-four - moz ok, yoast ok Where one is a focus keyword.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WalterHalicki0 -
Schema for Product Categories
We have an E commerce site and we have started to implement Schema's. I've looked around quite a bit but could not find any schema's for product categories. Would there be any schema's to add besides an image, description, & occasional PDF?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mike.Bean0 -
Woo Commerce Woo Compare Urls Indexing?
Hi I am using Wordpress/Woo commerce for my site Thetotspot.co.uk http://www.thetotspot.co.uk/?action=yith-woocompare-add-product&id=1412&_wpnonce=a5560b1b07 But I am getting a lot of temporary redirects registering in Moz for things like the above - woo compare / add to cart links Anyone come across this - how did you get solve? I am using Yoast SEO currently, have no indexed archives and pages of archive etc.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kelly33300 -
How To Organise my URLS - Which is Optimal?
Hi all, I am currently in the process of re-writing my companies website URL structure. Compared to the way the website is structured at the minute, there's going to be a lot more URL's as the previous structure has missed out on a lot of search avenues that i intend to include within the rebuild. one of my issues is basically deciding under which category certain URL's come under, I can think of reasons for both sides but can't quite decide on which is optimal. My company is an automotive/car dealer so we sell cars for certain manufactures as well as offering a number of other services. what I'm curious about is what makes more sense in terms of the category that comes first in the URL. Here's what I am torn between; /(car manufacturer)/servicing OR /servicing/(car-manufacturer) To give you some more info that might influence the decision; In terms of generic keyword targeting, the majority would search in the order of '(car manufacturer) service' as opposed to 'service for (car manufacturer)'. Currently on our site, the sections /(manufacturer) are some of the most authoritative pages that we have on the website, but we've done very little work on /service in the past. For me, this would suggest that naturally the pages flowing from that URL would get an advantage in terms of authority/ranking. With either URL structure, the URL's are eventually going to cross paths - I just need to decide which one is best and should therefore feature first. Hopefully this is somewhat clear. I'd appreciate any suggestions or if you don't quite understand what I'm asking for then general URL advice is also appreciated. Many thanks Sam
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Sandicliffe0 -
Domain.com/old-url to domain.com/new-url
HI, I have to change old url`s to new one, for the same domain and all landing pages will be the same: domain.com/old-url I have to change to: domain.com/new-url All together more than 70.000 url. What is best way to do that? should I use 301st redirect? is it possible to do in code or how? what could you please suggest? Thank you, Edgars
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Edzjus3330 -
Multiple product hierarchies (creation of refurbished products section) - best solution?
Hi all, I'm in discussion with a client who wishes to introduce a 'refurbished' products section to their website. This section will effectively replicate the structure of the 'brand new' products section. Unusually the key difference will be the fact that the 'refurbished' products section will feature significantly more products than the 'brand new' section, in the region of four times as many. As a guide the website currently stocks approximately 200 products across 8 core product areas. We have recommended that the two sections should be combined in order to prevent the creation of two separate product hierarchies. With 'brand new' / 'refurbished' products segmented via filter functionality. However the client is set on having two separate product hierarchies, i.e. a 'refurbished' section within a completely separate directory. Just wanted to crowd source opinion, in additionally to gaining insight if anyone has experience of a similar request. What solution did you implement? My feeling is that there is a high likelihood over time of the 'refurbished' section growing in authority and starting to outrank the 'brand new' products section. Not to mention a key missed opportunity to group and build authority / content within one product hierarchy. All thoughts and opinions much appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 26ryan0 -
Is it a problem that Google's index shows paginated page urls, even with canonical tags in place?
Since Google shows more pages indexed than makes sense, I used Google's API and some other means to get everything Google has in its index for a site I'm working on. The results bring up a couple of oddities. It shows a lot of urls to the same page, but with different tracking code.The url with tracking code always follows a question mark and could look like: http://www.MozExampleURL.com?tracking-example http://www.MozExampleURL.com?another-tracking-examle http://www.MozExampleURL.com?tracking-example-3 etc So, the only thing that distinguishes one url from the next is a tracking url. On these pages, canonical tags are in place as: <link rel="canonical<a class="attribute-value">l</a>" href="http://www.MozExampleURL.com" /> So, why does the index have urls that are only different in terms of tracking urls? I would think it would ignore everything, starting with the question mark. The index also shows paginated pages. I would think it should show the one canonical url and leave it at that. Is this a problem about which something should be done? Best... Darcy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010 -
XML Sitemap index within a XML sitemaps index
We have a similar problem to http://www.seomoz.org/q/can-a-xml-sitemap-index-point-to-other-sitemaps-indexes Can a XML sitemap index point to other sitemaps indexes? According to the "Unique Doll Clothing" example on this link, it seems possible http://www.seomoz.org/blog/multiple-xml-sitemaps-increased-indexation-and-traffic Can someone share an XML Sitemap index within a XML sitemaps index example? We are looking for the format to implement the same on our website.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Lakshdeep0