URL for location pages
-
Hello all
We would like to create clean, easy URLs for our large list of Location pages.
If there are a few URLs for each of the pages, am I right when I'm saying we would like this to be the canonical?
Right now we would like the URL to be: For example
Domain.com/locations/ColumbusI have found some instances where there might be 2,3 or more locations in the same city,zip.
My conclusion for these would be: adding their Branch id's on to the URL
Domain.com/locations/Columbus/0304Is this an okay approach?
We are unsure if the URL should have city,State,zip for SEO purposes?
The pages will have all of this info in it's content
BUT what would be best for SEO and ranking for a given location?Thank you for any info!
-
Good advice again from Chas!
I think, given your situation, that the URLs you are using with the branch numbers are probably about as good as you can manage. Yes, it would be stronger for SEO if they could more keywords in them instead of just a branch number, but on a project this large, compromises sometimes have to be made.
One other item to mention - you have listed 'geosynthetic' locations. This is not a term I'm familiar with, but just in case you are talking about virtual offices, it's important to know that Google does not accept these. No P.O. boxes, no virtual offices. Each location you list in Places must have a unique local area code phone number and unique dedicated physical street address.
Hope this helps, and best of luck with the bulk upload!
Miriam
-
I feel once I obtain more information like type of service for the locations - this would be much better than the branch ID
For example we have:
Showrooms
HVAC Locations
Geosynthetic LocationsThese would be great to use like the dentist examples from above.
Thank you for the videos and info on Google Places. Great stuff for us to review!
Nick
-
F-
Google Places permits an upload of multiple business locations @ https://www.google.com/local/add/g?hl=en-US&gl=US#uploadfeed
you may want to review this help page:
Common issues that delay the bulk verification process:
http://support.google.com/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=173669
This caveat may hinder a bulk upload:
Multiple listings at the same physical location are not permitted within one feed. Please consolidate multiple services or businesses under one title.As for your example URL from an SEO perspective, underscores between words are a programming legacy from days when spaces could be misinterpreted between Unix and Windows servers and are not conducive to good SEO. With an underscore Google joins the two words and sees them that way so landing_page is seen as landingpage whereas landing-page is seen as landing page. See this Matt Cutts video http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=AQcSFsQyct8
Is there any other way to differentiate locations (branch ID) that convey more meaningful information (from an SEO perspective) and that would permit you to utilize Google Places? A suite number, even if it's superfluous?
C -
Thank you both
Yes, I found after going the street name approach we were finding long addresses, so it was looking spammy like you said.
Here is an example of our current Location Page - We are doing a huge project right now to redo the layout completely
http://www.ferguson.com/BranchPage/locations-finder/branch_landing_page.jsp?R=298&branch=0511as you can see the URL is long and this is why we want to make it user friendly and easier, so the Locations can easily give them out to their customers.
An approach I am taking right now is
Ferguson.com/locations/Goshen/NY/0304 0304=the branch IDThis reason is because I am finding a few branch IDs have the same address, so the only difference they have is the Branch ID
Does this look clean? It's not the approach we want to take. I would like to differentiate them with their service, but I am not provided at this moment with this info. There are over 1500 locations, but we are in the process of obtaining this info.
Somewhat off topic - Google Places, would one account allow for us to insert all of these locations? We should utilize Google Places Correct? My question is what is the approach for that?
Thank you all for your input - it is great help!
Nick
-
Hello Ferguson!
I agree with Chas on this that it's a little harder to answer without knowing the exact content. Most typically, I write URLs for city landing pages something like this:
whatever.com/city-state-service
For example, let's say the business is a mobile notary public in Berkeley, California. The URL might look like:
joenotary.com/berkeley-ca-mobile-notary
This would be for a business, and the landing pages might be for the different cities in which the business serves. Your situation is a little more complex with a single business with multiple locations in the same city and zip. Is your site a directory website? Or are you simply dealing with a single franchise's website? Perhaps you can give us a little more information.
At any rate, it sounds to me as if the only distinct items about the businesses would be their street addresses. How long are they? Would using them make them hugely long? What I'm describing would be something like this:
directory.com/joe-notary-123-centre-st
directory.com/joe-notary-39-brown-ave
a longer version would be:
directory.com/joe-notary-123-centre-st-boston-ma
It's not horribly long...but some businesses have really long street addresses with suite numbers and the like, so you'll have to judge whether an approach like this would start to look spammy.
Would this work for you? Has your question been answered? If not, please feel free to provide further details.
Miriam
-
Ferguson-
Hard to answer definitively without knowing your content/target. Numbers in your URL don't mean anything to SEs unless it's a keyword (like a ZIP, area code or model) - what does 0304 tell me or Google? You mention the possibility of multiple pages for a location, so if I assume the nature of the content for these pages is different I'd say you'd want to optimize the URLs to bolster your on page SEO. Let's say you have a site for dentists and the like, then your URLs might be:
Domain.com/locations/Columbus/OH/orthodontists
Domain.com/locations/Columbus/OH/dentists
Domain.com/locations/Columbus/OH/oral-surgeonsIf the differences are purely location within a ZIP code for nearly identical stores (think Starbucks) then I'd let Google Places do the SEO work for you.
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
-
Unsolved Should I combine pages?
Hi, Im not sure of the correct route to take here... We are a training provider and I manage the website. The main course offered is the transport manager CPC. Currently, I have a "catch all" landing page which links to each different course option: Landing page > Classroom Online Self study Distance learning The main keyword revolves around "transport manager cpc" I want searchers to land on the online page is they search "online transport manager CPC" for example but I think its confusing Google. I'm wondering if I should de-index the store pages (although some perform very well) and increase the content on the main landing page to rank for every related keyword on that page. Initially, I wanted to devalue the landing page in favor of the store pages but I'm unsure if that's the right way to go. I've stripped out the bulk of the keywords and content and shifted it to each individual page. but as above, Im now unsure if that's the right route to take. Any help would be greatly appreciated 👍 Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | dunbavand
Rich0 -
Sitelinks to internal pages
Hi Moz Community, Is it only possible to get sitelinks to your main domain in the SERPs or can you also get them to internal pages in the SERPs? i.e. if this were to pop up in the SERP: www.mysite.com/page1
On-Page Optimization | | Brian_Dowd
Can I get sitelinks such as the examples below:
Sitelink1: www.mysite.com/page1/page1a
Sitelink2: www.mysite.com/page1/page1b
Sitelink3: www.mysite.com/page1/page1c
etc. Just curious and I haven't really find anything like that on the internet. How can I set them up? Thanks.0 -
How to Structure URL's for Multiple Locations
We are currently undergoing a site redesign and are trying to figure out the best way to structure the URL's and breadcrumbs for our many locations. We currently have 60 locations nationwide and our URL structure is as follows: www.mydomain.com/locations/{location} Where {location} is the specific street the location is on or the neighborhood the location is in. (i.e. www.mydomain.com/locations/waterford-lakes) The issue is, {location} is usually too specific and is not a broad enough keyword. The location "Waterford-Lakes" is in Orlando and "Orlando" is the important keyword, not " Waterford Lakes". To address this, we want to introduce state and city pages. Each state and city page would link to each location within that state or city (i.e. an Orlando page with links to "Waterford Lakes", "Lake Nona", "South Orlando", etc.). The question is how to structure this. Option 1 Use the our existing URL and breadcrumb structure (www.mydomain.com/locations/{location}) and add state and city pages outside the URL path: www.mydomain.com/{area} www.mydomain.com/{state} Option 2 Build the city and state pages into the URL and breadcrumb path: www.mydomain.com/locations/{state}/{area}/{location} (i.e www.mydomain.com/locations/fl/orlando/waterford-lakes) Any insight is much appreciated. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | uBreakiFix0 -
How can I find these pages?
Hi there! the SEOMOZ software has shown some warnings related to two pages that I can't locate in my WP plattform http://www.tarifakitesurfcamp.com/contacto/estrella/ http://www.tarifakitesurfcamp.com/equipo/equis Any ideas? Many Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | juanmiguelcr0 -
We have 5 postions on page 2 in a google search, but none on page 1\. How can we fix this?
For one of our most important key phrases we have 5 listings on page 2 but none on page 1. We are an ecommerce company, the key phrase we're trying for is a Top Level Category name for us, so the 5 links we have on googles second page for the key phrase (in order) are the appropriate top level category page, the sites home page and than three sub categories of that top level category. So while that all makes sense, can't we convince google to concentrate all that link power/juice into just the top level category page? Hopefully bumping it to first page rank? The 5 ranks are 11-15
On-Page Optimization | | absoauto0 -
URL extensions naming
I have always wrote URL extensions as www.mysite.com/two_words.html .... when I need to separate two words, I use _ as the separator ... I am a first time SEO Moz user ... I While looking around the tools on SEO Moz, I happened to stumble across the on-page analysis. A great tool indeed, rather worryingly though, one issue it flagged to me was my URL extension "Characters which are less commonly used in URLs may cause problems with accessibility, interpretation and ranking in search engines. It is considered a best practice to stick to standard URL structures to avoid potential problems." Can someone advice me if this really is a problem, its just not this project, its tons of sites I have already developed that I am also worried about ... I always write file extensions with more than one word using _ to separate the words. How should I write the extension, I am almost embarrassed to ask this question ... Surely, even Google's algorithms are not smart enough to decipher two words without some some sort of spacing .... Regards J
On-Page Optimization | | Johnny4B0 -
Only 1 Page Being Crawled
I have a website I'm tracking www.alhi.com. But my report is saying that only 1 page is being crawled each update. My campaign is set up for the sub domain www.alhi.com, so I'm not sure why I would have this issue. Can you help? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | LeslieVS0 -
Why home page ranks higher than keyword-optimized page
We have a page that is optimized for the keyword "job scheduling". A search on the keyword "job scheduling" results in this page not ranking at all, while our home page (uc4.com) ranks third. Could you provide some ideas/suggestions as to why this would be the case and how to make our job scheduling page rank higher? Thanks, claudia
On-Page Optimization | | claudmar0