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
-
To create extra pages, or not to create extra pages?
I'm responsible for a site where we cater for all kinds of medical & legal problems. I recently conducted keyword research that shows a lot of questions being 'asked' in relation to the conditions we cater for. Naturally, I want to create content to answer these questions. We have a page for 'Cancer compensation' - the 'possible content' that answers questions won't necessarily help someone claiming compensation for cancer mistreatment, BUT someone who asks a question relating to cancer, answered in the 'possible content' may find the 'cancer compensation' page useful. SO! Do I: Add this content to the existing 'cancer compensation' page? Create individual pages of content answering each question, linking to the 'cancer compensation' page? or do I amalgamate all the answers into one heafty 'resource' page that sits elsewhere on the site? What do you think? Thanks in advance. John King
On-Page Optimization | | Muhammad-Isap0 -
Spammy page titles
Over the last couple of weeks, I have noticed that Google aren't showing the page titles for my online shop anymore. They're set up with a third party plug-in piece of software, and while it's an old version of the software, the developer said it wouldn't be causing issues. They have suggested that I re-write my page titles to be less spammy. The thing is, Google haven't attacked just spammy looking titles, they're just taking a swoop through my whole site and not showing any of my page titles in their search results. I'm getting "Category Name - Shop Name" showing. Here's some of the page titles no longer appearing and I honestly have no idea how to rewrite these to not be spammy. Are there any good articles on what's spammy and what isn't? "Coconut oil - best tasting in Australia. Buy online from <my business="" name="">"</my> "Discount Vitamix Blender. Best deal in Australia. Buy online from <my business="" name="">."</my> "Natural & Organic skin care for the face | buy online in Australia from <my business="" name="">."</my> There are others that are showing the real page titles, but I think it's only a matter of re-indexing before they're all not showing. Any clue?
On-Page Optimization | | sparrowdog0 -
Form Only Pages Considered No Content/Duplicate Pages
We have a lot of WordPress sites with pages that contain only a form. The header, sidebar and footer content is the same as what's one other pages throughout the site. Each form page has a unique page title, meta description, form title and questions but the form title, description and questions add up to probably less than 100 words. Are these form pages negatively affecting the rankings of our landing pages or being viewed as duplicate or no content pages?
On-Page Optimization | | projectassistant0 -
To Reduce (pages)... or not to Reduce?
Our site has a large Business Directory with millions of pages. For examples' sake, let's say it's a directory of Restaurants. Each Restaurant has 4 pages on the site, each tied together through a row of tabs across the top of the page: Tab 1 - Basic super 7 info - name, location, contact info Tab 2 - Restaurant menu Tab 3 - Restaurant reviews Tab 4 - Photos of food The Tab 1 page generates 95% of our traffic, and 90% of conversions. The conversion rate on Tab 2 - Tab 4 pages is 6 - 10x greater than Tab 1 conversions. Total Conversions from search queries on menus, reviews and food are 20% higher than are conversions resulting from searches on restaurant name & info alone. We're working with a consultant on a redesign, who wants to consolidate the 4 pages into one. Their advice is to focus on making a better page, featuring all of the content, sacrifice a little organic traffic but make up any losses by improving conversion. My counterpoint is that we shouldn't scrap the Tab 2-4 pages just because they have lower traffic - we should make the pages BETTER. The content we display is thin, and we have plenty of data we could expose to make the pages more robust. By consolidating it will also be hard to optimize a page for people searching for name/location AND menu AND reviews AND photos. We're asking that one page to do too much, and it's likely we will see diminished search volume for queries on menu, reviews and food. I think the decline will be much more significant than the consultant estimates. The consultant says there will be little change to organic traffic. since Tab 1 already generates 95% of traffic. Through basic math, they're saying the risk is a 5% decline in organic traffic. Further, they see little chance of queries for menu, reviews, and food declining because most of those queries tend to send people too the home page or Tab 1 page anyway. Finally, the designer of the new wireframes admitted that potential organic traffic risks were not taken into consideration when they recommended consolidating the pages. I sincerely appreciate your thoughts and consideration! Trisha
On-Page Optimization | | lzhao0 -
How to Define Best URL Structure for Product Pages?
I am working on my website to edit structure with help of Google's search engine optimization starter guide. There is really good instruction to define URL structure which help us to perform well over Google's organic search. I have resolved issues regarding category pages but, I have confusion to define best URL structure for product pages. My website's product page URL structure is as follow. http://www.vistastores.com/marketumbrellas-californiaumbrella-slpt758-f13-red.html http://www.vistastores.com/homefurniture-winsomewood-93630.html URL structure is constructed with following terms. 1. Root Category Name (Market Umbrellas or Home Furniture or ....) 2. Brand Name 3. Manufacturer Part Number I am not happy with this structure and also not performing well over Google's organic search. I am thinking to include product name or title tag in URL after root domain. But, it may create very long URL and create issues in organic search display. Does it really matter to perform well over Google's organic search? How can I define best URL structure for product pages?
On-Page Optimization | | CommercePundit0 -
Page title
So if we have a main category page on our site (mines an ecommerce site), do we go for more than that main keyword phrase for that category of products, or is it better to just keep it by itself, and not utilize the 65-70 characters available?
On-Page Optimization | | azguy0