How should I structure my product URLs?
-
How should I structure my product URLs for the best SEO results? Lets say my product is "American Apparel 2001". Would it be better to run the URL together or use a "-" between each word. Here are two ideas I had, but feel free to suggest others.
realthread.com/products/americanapparel2001
or
realthread.com/products/american-apparel-2001
Thanks for the help!
Dru
-
You guys are awesome, thank you so much!!!!
-
if you will use "-" between word you will increase the resanbalety that Google will understand that thare are seperate words in the URL and it's not just one word.
-
I'd recommend using hyphens as its better for humans when the URL is punctuated. So this version
-
Hi Dru,
Look at this from visitors point of few. realthread.com/products/american-apparel-2001 is much easier to read, looks better in SERP and backlinks .
As we know Google goal is searcher satisfaction, so what is good for visitors is good for Google.
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
-
Canonical URL Tag Usage
I have a large website, almost 1500 pages that each market different keywords for the trucking logistics industry. I don't really understand the new Canonical URL Tag USAGE. They say to use it so the page is not a duplicate but the page that MOZ is call for to have the tag isn't a duplicate. It promotes 1 keyword that no other page directly promotes. Here is the page address, now what tag would I put up in the HEAD so google don't treat it as a duplicate page. http://www.freightetc.com/c/heavyhaul/heavyhaul.php 1. Number 1 the actual page address because I want it treated like its own page or do I have to use #2 below? 2. I don't know why I would use #2 as I want it to be its own page, and get credit and listed and ranked as its own page. Can anyone clarify this stuff to me as I guess i am just new to this whole tag usage.
On-Page Optimization | | dwebb0070 -
Product content length & links within product description
Hello, I have questions regarding content length and links within descriptions. With our ecommerce site, we have thousands of products, each with a unique description. In the product description, I have links to the parent category and grandparent category (if it has one) in the main product text which is generally about 175 words. Then I have a last paragraph that's about 75 words that includes links to our main homepage and our main product catalogue page. Is the content length long enough? I used to use text that was 500 words, and shortening it I still rank when launching new products, so I don't think an increase in text length will have any additional benefit. I do see conflicting information when I do searches, with some people recommending a minimum of 300 words and some saying to try and go a 1000 for category pages. In regards to the links, I noticed a competitor has stopped following this format, so I'm unsure if I should keep going too. Is it too many links to have each of the products link back to the main catalogue and homepage? Is it good to have links with anchor text to the categories a product is in? There are breadcrumbs on the page with these links already. There are already have heaps of links on our pages (footer, and a right sidebar with image links to relevant categories), so my pages do get flagged for too many links. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | JustinBSLW0 -
Site Structure. Which is better?
Ideally, which model is better for site structure: 1. Homepage -> Categories -> Individual Pages (See example here http://www.wordtracker.com/attachments/bead-site-structure.gif) OR 2. Homepage -> Categories -> Sub-categories -> Indicidual Pages In the 2nd model, are the individual pages too far away from the homepage?
On-Page Optimization | | brianflannery0 -
Changing URL Structure From Flat to Pyramid Theme
Hello Mozzers, I have an on-page SEO question regarding URL structure. A few months back we hired a full-time SEO person who is working on-page right now and she really wants us to completely re-due our URL restructure from a flat to pyramid style (example below). Current URL structure / page title is: Dog training Collars - K9electronics.com
On-Page Optimization | | k9byron
http://www.k9electronics.com/dog-training-collars/ Small Dog training Collars - K9electronics.com
http://www.k9electronics.com/small-dog-training-collars/ Einstein ET-300TS Mini Dog Training Collar - K9electronics.com
http://www.k9electronics.com/einstein-et-300ts-mini-remote-dog-trainer.html Suggested URL structure / page title change: Quality Dog Training Collars - Lowest Price Guarantee - K9electronics
http://www.k9electronics.com/dog-training-collars/ Dog Training Collars - Small Dog - K9electronics.com
http://www.k9electronics.com/dog-training-collars/small-dog/ Einstein ET-300TS Mini - Dog Training Collars - K9electronics.com
http://www.k9electronics.com/dog-training-collars/small-dog/einstein-et-300ts-mini I guess you could say we are the poster-boys for Google penalties and have received just about every penalty in the book. Panda, penguin algo penalties and a partial manual action for unnatural links. Several months ago we removed 1000's of in-bound links and had our manual action lifted a few months back and are now hovering around the top / mid 2nd page for all our big terms ...we used to be top 3 for everything. As we were removing bad links, we also completely redesigned the site and removed lots of categories and products and 95% of all our old, low quality content and replaced it with new, high quality content. The site was really slooooow, so we optimized it and moved it to a big dedicated server and tripled page load time. Added rich snippets, Google authorship, increased our FB and other social presences and much more ... I had also considered this URL structure change during the redesign because I had heard and read that it was good to do, but it required redirecting practically all our URL's which I know can hurt the site even more so then it already has been ... Our SEO says that as it sits now, our pages are competing with each other and really seems to think this is going to improve our rankings a lot ...after several weeks. My question is, at this stage in the game, is it really going to help a lot and give us more benefit compared to the 301 redirect link juice loss? Any comments and/or suggestions are very much appreciated!1 -
Similar URLs
I'm making a site of LSAT explanations. The content is very meaningful for LSAT students. I'm less sure the urls and headings are meaningful for Google. I'll give you an example. Here are two URLs and heading for two separate pages: http://lsathacks.com/explanations/lsat-69/logical-reasoning-1/q-10/ - LSAT 69, Logical Reasoning I, Q 10 http://lsathacks.com/explanations/lsat-69/logical-reasoning-2/q10/ - LSAT 69, Logical Reasoning II, Q10 There are two logical reasoning sections on LSAT 69. For the first url is for question 10 from section 1, the second URL is for question 10 from the second LR section. I noticed that google.com only displays 23 urls when I search "site:http://lsathacks.com". A couple of days ago it displayed over 120 (i.e. the entire site). 1. Am I hurting myself with this structure, even if it makes sense for users? 2. What could I do to avoid it? I'll eventually have thousands of pages of explanations. They'll all be very similar in terms of how I would categorize them to a human, e.g. "LSAT 52, logic games question 12" I should note that the content of each page is very different. But url, title and h1 is similar. Edit: I could, for example, add a random keyword to differentiate titles and urls (but not H1). For example: http://lsathacks.com/explanations/lsat-69/logical-reasoning-2/q10-car-efficiency/ LSAT 69, Logical Reasoning I, Q 10, Car efficiency But the url is already fairly long as is. Would that be a good idea?
On-Page Optimization | | graemeblake0 -
Modify URL, how to re-index
hello, I have just modified URL, do I need to re-submit sitemap or something else to search engines?
On-Page Optimization | | JohnHuynh0 -
Should I rewrite all my URLs ?
Hi all, I'm pretty new here and this is a question I'm struggling with since years ! All my URLs are very long. Years ago I wanted to put as many keywords as possible but today I'm not sure anymore it was such a good idea. Example: http://www.spirit-of-metal.com/album-groupe-Take_Me_To_Janus-nom_album-Ripping_the_Heart_from_the_Chest_of_the_Earth-l-en.html The problem is I have more than 300K of these pages. I'm afraid to create a huge mess even if I 301 them all to the new pages. What's your opinion ? Is it worth the effort ? Many thanks in advance for your precious help !
On-Page Optimization | | kivanSOM0 -
Altering site structure
I work for a business that operates several sites that were developed a very long time ago. We've been making many different changes over the past 12-18 months to improve these sites in several different ways. One area that we've never discussed or attempted is general site structure. Its pretty obvious that when the business was started they had never heard of information architecture or usability design. To make matters worse, the internal linking strategy appears to have been link everything to everything. Well after being told that it couldn't be done - I'm getting our team to say we must focus on this, if for no other reason that to help consumers figure out how to navigate through our site. Today we essentially have a series of category / information pages. In some cases, we hang more detailed topical content related to a category /informational page in a hub and spoke manner. Although remember what I said about linking everything to everything. In reality there are a series of subtopics that should been designed for every category / informational area. Instead, what happened is in some cases the subtopic is integrated into the hub or category page, in other situations is hung off the page as a spoke page and in others the subtopic isn't even covered. The plan is to standardize - each category will have 'n' subtopics (~10-12, we're still working this out). From a navigational standpoint users will be able to easily navigate both across categories as well as subtopics within a category as well as between categories within adjacent/similar subtopics. This is essentially a grid if that makes sense. The question is this - we have some keywords that do well in SEO and many many more that do not and the trend has not been our friend. We're considering keeping the URLs of the pages associated with strong keywords the same within the nav structure, even though this might mean the URL for a spoke page will be inconsistent with the spoke page name from a different category. I don't see any real danger for pages that either are not associated with any ranking keywords or only very weak keywords. Maybe I'm wrong. What things should we consider in this change? We believe that this standardization should help consumers find the information they are looking for in a much more efficient manner, so page views/visit should go up. Additionally, this prepares us for category and subtopic comparison pages and other added functionality being added in a logical manner. We also think that as we add depth about a subtopic, it will be easier for us to acquire links to our site because the subtopics within a category will appeal to different websites. This is by no means a small project. We have hundreds and hundreds of pages. Do folks think this is a worthwhile endeavor? We've spent a lot of time cleaning up H1 tags, structure of our pages, anchor tags, page load order and speed, image caching, etc. Site structure, URL length and internal link structure are essentially what is left. Once these are done we intend to really get going on better and more organized content on our site. Thoughts?
On-Page Optimization | | Allstar1