Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
What is better for SEO keywords in folder or in filename - also dupe filename question
-
Hey folks,
I've got a question regarding URL structure. What is best for SEO given that there will be millions of lawyer names and 4 pages per lawyer
www.lawyerz.com/office-locations/dr-al-pacino
www.lawyerz.com/phone-number/dr-al-pacino
www.lawyerz.com/reviews/dr-al-pacino
www.lawyerz.com/ratings/dr-al-pacino
OR
www.lawyerz.com/office-locations-dr-al-pacino
www.lawyerz.com/phone-number-dr-al-pacino
www.lawyerz.com/reviews-dr-al-pacino
www.lawyerz.com/ratings-dr-al-pacino
OR
www.lawyerz.com/dr-al-pacino/office-locations
www.lawyerz.com/dr-al-pacino/phone-number
www.lawyerz.com/dr-al-pacino/reviews
www.lawyerz.com/dr-al-pacino/ratings
Also, concerning duplicate file names:
In the first example there are 4 duplicate file names with the lawyers name. (would this cause Google to not index some)
In the second example there are all unique file names (would this look spammy to Google or the user)
In the third example there are millions of duplicate file names (if 1 million lawyers then 1 million files called "office-locations" etc (could so many duplicate filenames cause ranking issues)
Should the lawyers name (which is the main keyword target) appear in the filename or in the folder - which is better for SEO in your opinion? Thanks for your input!
-
I like all of the answers here and I would definitely focus on how the user is searching for the lawyers. If you have a site with millions of lawyers, they would each have an area of practice so it would make sense to develop a structure around this first:
lawyerz.com/practice-area/state/city/attorney-name
WIth this structure, a searcher that types in "estate planning lawyer" would be sent to the estate planning lawyers page and allowed to search further for their city and then lawyer names. I would attach the contact info, reviews directly on that lawyer's page.
Since your higher volume keywords are going be found within the "practice areas", this would seem the next step after the main domain target of "attorney" or "lawyers". Then, location can come third, attorney name is most likely a lesser searched keyword but using a url structure such as "attorney-john-doe" reinforces.
I would LOVE to hear all the expert opinions about this as I am a newbie to seomoz but am finding some great experts and advice over here.
-
while pages with such file names can be indexed, the long-term view dictates avoiding pages with filenames in the URL due to future potential conversion to other frameworks. It makes a site less than ideal for portability.
For example, if every page has index.php or whatever.asp and you change platform, you'll end up with every page needing a 301 redirect. So it's better to avoid that whenever possible.
-
Although the filename will be duplicate, the content on those filenames will be okay. Google will look more at the content on the page rather than anything else. There are sites out there that have weird file structures, like:
/index.php
/services/index.php
/products/index.php
Some CMS's will automatically do this, but they rank fine because they have quality content, even though the index.php is technically a duplicate filename.
You should be fine with this method.
-
It's about users for sure. The last set you show communicates "lawyer name" is more important/valuable. Which is the valid perspective, since all of those elements relate to that lawyer. If some users still want to find lawyers based on reviews, you can offer a filter for that in your database sorting. Same with locations.
On the other side of the coin, instead of "locations", if you had town names, you could group by those so it would be /town-name/lawyer-name/ where all lawyers in the same town fall within that town-name grouping. If it's just /locations/ that's an invalid sort hierarchy.
-
yes navigation-wise this definitely makes the most sense
www.lawyerz.com/dr-al-pacino/office-locations
i guess what I am mostly looking for an answer about is which is better for rankings, the keyword in the folder or file name and if duplicate file names will harm rankings.
thanks so much for your assistance guys.
-
Ok gotcha- well if that is the case, then think about how the user will navigate to the end result if they started from the home page. Logically, you could assume the following
If URL structure is as follows:
www.lawyerz.com/office-locations/dr-al-pacino
then /office-locations/ should contain links to all office locations of multiple lawyers.
But with this structure
www.lawyerz.com/dr-al-pacino/office-locations
/dr-al-pacino/ should contain links to the 4 other pages. **This option will probably be your best structure. **
-
If I am not mistaken it really depends on what users are searching
if they are only searching lawyers names than just find a structure that looks pretty and has the lawyer name in it.
But if there is any traffic data that points that people search the city or phone number along with the lawyer name than it might be wise to have that in the url structure
also ever thought of using subdomains? havent seen that in a lawyer directory yet but some of the major article sites switched to subdomains
-
Assume there will be enough content on these pages to not get hit by panda.
The reason for doing this is to hopefully secure more than one first page result since these are names and very low competition, we see some sites doing this successfully.
We will have locations pages too which will list all the docs in that city
-
Is there any particular reason why office location, phone number, reviews, and ratings need to be on 4 separate pages? I could see there being a lot of thin content which won't really rank well or provide a ton of user value. Can you give some more info as to why this would be? I could easily see all 4 of these pages combined into one.
With that, you can focus your URL structure into categories or local regions or both, depending on how dynamic you want the site to be. For example:
http://www.lawyerz.com/nevada/personal-injury/dr-al-pacino
OR
http://www.lawyerz.com/personal-injury/dr-al-pacino
OR
http://www.lawyerz.com/nevada/dr-al-pacino
Unless there is something that I missing, I think no matter how you structure your URLs, thin content just won't rank.
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
-
Will I loose from SEO if I rename my urls to be more keyword friendly?
As a good practice of SEO is to have your keywords in the links. I am thinking of doing some optimization and change my urls to more effective keywords. I am using shopify and there is an option (a tick) that you can check while changing the url (ex. for a category, for a product, for a blog post). This will give a redirection to the old post to the new. Is it good practice? Is it risky for losing SEO or it will help to rank higher because I will have better keywords in my links?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Spiros.im0 -
SEO on dynamic website
Hi. I am hoping you can advise. I have a client in one of my training groups and their site is a golf booking engine where all pages are dynamically created based on parameters used in their website search. They want to know what is the best thing to do for SEO. They have some landing pages that Google can see but there is only a small bit of text at the top and the rest of the page is dynamically created. I have advised that they should create landing pages for each of their locations and clubs and use canonicals to handle what Google indexes.Is this the right advice or should they noindex? Thanks S
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bedynamic0 -
Keyword Ranking Fluctuations
Hi Guys I am currently working on a website where one of the keyword targets is fluctuating. The keyword is fluctuating between page 2 and page 5. What makes this strange is that we are not experiencing the issue with any other keyword targets. They are all ranking fine. It is only 1 keyword. The keyword target happens to be the main homepage keyword target - not sure if this makes a difference? The homepage targets 2 keyword e.g. Business Offices & Accessories. The homepage ranks perfectly fine for e.g. Business Accessories but is fluctuating for e.g. Business Offices! Very strange. What makes it even stranger - the keyword variations of the fluctuating keyword e.g. office for business - these variations are all fine and not fluctuating. Its only 1 keyword. If anyone has any ideas or feedback that would be great! Thanks, Duncan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CayenneRed890 -
How to measure traffic for a keyword
Sitting in Country A I want to see how much traffic a particular keyword receives in Country B. Whats the best way to do it? Also, will the search results differ if I am analyzing the above sitting in Country A viz-a-viz Country B. In other words, will the IP of the country I am making the search from play a role in the results?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KS__0 -
Is it better to use geo-targeted keywords or add the locations as separate keywords?
For example... state keyword (nyc real estate) or keyword, state (nyc, real estate) = 2 keywords Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Cyclone0 -
Meta Keywords: Should we use them or not?
I am working through our site and see that meta keywords are being used heavily and unnecessarily. Each of our info pages will have 2 or 3 keyword phrases built into them. Should we just duplicate the keyword phrases into the meta keyword field, should put in additional keywords beyond or not use it at all? Thoughts and opinions appreciated
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Towelsrus1 -
How to Target Keyword Variations?
I have a list of keywords I'm trying to target and they are essentially different variations of each other: Example: blue yankees baseball hat yankees blue baseball hat yankees baseball hat in blue Should I be targeting all these on the same page, or should I be making a new page for each one? Thanks Mozzers!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ATMOSMarketing560 -
Migrating online store to subdomain using shopify and effects on seo and energy down the road for seo
I'm looking for some clarity... Looking at using Shopify for an existing online store that we have to migrate. Setting up the store with shopify means we will be using a subdomain such as shop.mywebsite.com instead of mywebsite.com/shop. The following are points to consider when responding The client currently has an online store, however it's a proprietary shopping store and CMS that has since gone defunct and they need to migrate to an alternative in order to survive online against new CMS systems that allow the site and its content to be better optimized. There is a lot of existing SEO done on the current site that we don't want to loose PR on. There is roughly 2000 products Client has a fixed budget, dealing with checkout issues, custom work and various other "bugs" seems to be easier controlled with Shopify...thus budget can be used more on content/strategy and migration We want to run the main site in Wordpress and are wanting to use Shopify since it supports a gateway, has great features and seems like it would allow us to get more bang for the buck and can focus more on the main site and content strategy and drive traffic to the subdomain store if needed Or main concern is the effort of migrating 2000+ products to shopify and the traffic and PR it gives the current site will have a negative effect on the main domain itself. Should we really be considering this path? The domain is diveidc.com One main benefit to the subdomain is the ability to clearly segment products from the service portion of the site in the analytics and focus 2 clear strategies and track it in a very defined manner. We're really on the fence with this...any thoughts are welcome.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MAGNUMCreative0