Basic URL Structure Question
-
Hi,
Putting together a URL for a product we are selling. We sell IT Training courses and the structure is normally
Top Folder=Main Courses section
Sub Folder=Vendor
Page Specific=Course Name + Term
An example is
courses/microsoft/mcse-training
However I have a product where the vendor and course name are the same. How should I best organise the URL - double mention or single mention
So a)
courses/togaf/togaf-foundation-training
or b)
courses/togaf/foundation-training
-
Pranav, I suspect you are misinterpreting what has been said and you are also getting your words confused.
Characters are different to words. For example the url http://www.this-is-an-example.com has four words (this is an example) and 33 characters. What you have been saying is that character number 1 has more weight than character 33. This is inaccurate.
What I believe you are trying to say, is what Matt Cutts mentions in the interview you posted, that multiple keywords in a URL are given less weight after about the fourth or fifth keyword. I suggest that you read the articles you quote more carefully before offering erroneous advice.
-
Crimson,
John Doherty is one of the foremost authorities in SEO.
And please find below my comment where Google's Matt Cutts says that after 5 words Google gives less weight to the other words.
-
**1. If you see Google's blog you'll realize that keyword value decreases with each character in the URL. **
http://www.johnfdoherty.com/lessons-from-google-about-url-lengths/
Pranav, I fail to see where you are getting this information from. Firstly, the link you posted is not from Google's blog, it is a blog post from an SEO. Secondly, he does not provide hard evidence to support your claim that keyword value decreases with each character.
-
Also you can check out this resource -
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/seo-best-practices-for-url-structure/7216/
According to Google’s Matt Cutts if there are more than 5 words…
Algorithms typically will just weight those words less and just not give you as much credit.”
-
Does the order of the words in the URL matter?
-
Irving,
1. If you see Google's blog you'll realize that keyword value decreases with each character in the URL.
http://www.johnfdoherty.com/lessons-from-google-about-url-lengths/
But your point is also correct that the file name has more value than the folder name.
3. Agree that it's important to put all required keywords into the URL. And sites like Quora have really long URL's.
But one should try to keep the URL length to a minimum I feel as shorter URL's tend to have higher click through rates.
-
Crimson, The URL is not the only factor in the ranking.
Many other factors including -
1. Off pages SEO
2. Content
3. Domain authority
Etc.
The points in my answer above display how to optimize your URL.
But you can't just optimize your URL and reach the top of the rankings.
-
i personally wouldnt entertain subfolder/aftersubfolder/aftersubfolder but look at how you may be able to do something like /subfolder-productx-examplez. Dont bury the pages too far in your url structure.
-
I'm going to thumbs up Irving's response on this. I will add that my preference would be to use this URL structure if you only have one type of training per vendor:
/courses/togaf-foundation-training
/courses/microsoft-msce-training
And if you have multiple training courses per vendor, I would use the following:
/courses/togaf/foundation-training
/courses/microsoft/msce-training
Hope this helps!
-
This information is misleading and inaccurate.
A search for [car insurance] in google UK returns a moneysupermarket page at number 1 that contains 39 characters in the URL. Looking further down the results there is a post office result with over 50 characters in the URL.
Also, your theory about the 'value of the keyword reducing with each character' is total nonsense.
-
Personally, I would go with the second option:
courses/togaf/foundation-training
Mainly because it looks a lot neater and you don't really need to mention 'togaf' twice in the URL.
Really you should try to keep your URLs as neat and user friendly as possible whilst keeping the relevant keywords. I generally try to keep them as short as possible without sacrificing essential keywords and pay no attention to the advice about keeping the length of your URL to 35 characters because google only displays 35, this is incorrect.
Hope that helps,
Adam.
-
1. The value of the Keyword reduces with each character. The first character has highest value and the last the lowest. where did you hear that? the file name is more important than the folder name for SEO
2. Google only counts the first mention of a Keyword and the 2nd mention of Toga doesn't add any value. Agree, more than one instance is stuffing. This is exponentially true when you create URLs that have a keyword mentioned twice in the URL, and then if the page is linking several times to these sections you create too high of a keyword density. Google prefers less and doesn't want keywords shoved down their throat.
3. Plus Google only displays 35 characters of the URL so one should aim to keep the total length of the URL below 35 chars. I respectfully disagree, just because Google only shows 35 characters in the display doesn't mean they disregard the keywords in the remainder of the URL - they are just doing that to keep the display looking clean - 35 characters is nothing. Most blogs go WAY over that with autogenerated filenames, it's all a matter of making sure you don't keyword stuff.
-
B. courses/togaf/foundation-training
1. The value of the Keyword reduces with each character. The first character has highest value and the last the lowest.
2. Google only counts the first mention of a Keyword and the 2nd mention of Toga doesn't add any value.
3. Plus Google only displays 35 characters of the URL so one should aim to keep the total length of the URL below 35 chars.
Hope this helps.
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
-
Question Regarding Website Architecture
Hello All, Our website currently has a general solutions subdirectory, which then links to each specific solution, following the path /solutions/ => /solutions/solution1/. As our solutions can be quite complex, we are adding another subdirectory to target individuals by profession. I would like to link from our profession pages to the varying solutions that help. As both subdirectories will be top level pages in the main menu, would linking from our professions to **solutions **be poor architecture? In this case the path would look like: /professions/ => /professions/profession1/ => /solutions/solution1/. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Tom3_150 -
WP URL issue - Concatenated URLs (LOTS of them)
WP is doing this somehow, and creating URLs for hundreds of pages that don't exist. HOW is this happening, and how do I stop It? I have many, many URLS like this: https://www.atouchofrust.com/terms-of-use/atouchofrust.com/vendor-news. Of note, atouchofrust.com/terms-of-use, and atouchofrust.com/vendor-news are both legit pages on the site. Why they are being concatenated is beyond my limited understanding of WP. Please, somebody, help. Cori
Technical SEO | | FlyingC0 -
Canonical Url Structure Vs. Google Search View
I recently set up a new site and set the "preferred" domain in Google Webmasters to show URLs WITHOUT the WWW for google search purposes. In the confirmation email from google, this confused me: "This setting defines which host - www or not - should be considered the canonical host when indexing your site." In the website, we have cononical URLS at the top of every page in the header, but still have the WWW in those. Any issues with that?
Technical SEO | | vikasnwu0 -
How to delete specific url?
I just ran drawl diagnostics and trying to delete pages such as "oops that page can't be found" or "404 (not found_ error response pages. Can anyone help?
Technical SEO | | sawedding0 -
URL Structure
I'm going through the process of redesigning our website, and the URL structure was brought up. We currently have our URLs structured as domain.com/keyword. It seems that some people think setting your URLs up to look like: domain.com/directory/keyword makes more sense from a user's perspective, and from a search engine's perspective. With our directories labeled as services, solutions, clients - I see no value in adding directories as it dilutes the keyword and brings the keyword further away from the domain. Are there situations where adding a directory before the page in the URL makes sense? If anyone has data showing the difference between the two that'd be great! Thanks, Brian
Technical SEO | | PrasoonGoel0 -
Old URL redirect to New URL
Alright I did something dumb a year a go and I'm still paying for it. I changed my hyphenated URL to the non-hyphenated version when I redesigned my website. I say it was dumb because I lost most of my link juice even though I did 301 redirects (via the htaccess file) for almost all of the pages I could find in Google's index. Here's my problem. My new site took a huge hit in traffic (down 60%) when I made the change and even though I've done thousands of redirects my old site is still showing up in the SERPS and send much if not most of my traffic. I don't want to take the old site down in fear it will kill all of my traffic. What should I do? Is there a better method I should explore then 301 redirects? Could the other site be affecting my current rank since it's still there? (FYI...both sites are built on the WP platform). Any help or ideas are greatly appreciated. Thank you! Joe
Technical SEO | | kaje0 -
Canonical URLs and screen scraping
So a little question here. I was looking into a module to help implement canonical URLs on a certain CMS and I came a cross a snarky comment about relative vs. absolute URLs being used. This person was insistent that relative URLs are fine and absolute URLs are only for people who don't know what they are doing. My question is, if using relative URLs, doesn't it make it easier to have your content scraped? After all, if you do get your content scraped at least it would point back to your site if using absolute URLs, right? Am I missing something or is my thinking OK on this? Any feedback is much appreciated!
Technical SEO | | friendlymachine0 -
Use of + in url good or bad?
Hi, I am working on a SEO project for a client.
Technical SEO | | MaartenvandenBos
Some of the urls have a + between the keyword.
like www.example.com/make+me+happy/ Is this good or bad for seo?
Or is it maybe better to use - ? Thanks!0