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
-
Changing Urls
Hi All, I have a question I hope someone can help me with. I ran a scan on a website and it has a stack of urls that are far too long. I am going through and changing the urls to shorter ones. But my question is regarding redirections. Wordpress seems to be automatically redirecting the old urls to the new ones, should i be adding a more solid 301 in as well or is the wordpress redirect enough? I ask as they dont all seem to stay redirecting Thanks in advance for the help
Technical SEO | | DaleZon2 -
URL Redirect
Hi All, So we have employees who can own their own domains for business, however, one employee has a domain that links back to our main site, but when it does, the URL and Page title of our main site, still say his own domain. IE: www.johndoe.com links to www.mysite.com except the url and itle still say www.johndoe.com What are the implications of this? Thank you
Technical SEO | | PeteEllard0 -
Disavow questions
Pretty sure I know the answers to these but someone asked me to make absolutely sure so here goes, any opinions welcome: If i disavow a whole domain does it include all sub-domains on the domain also?- my answer is clearly yes. If i have network of links really bad linking to my website that are already nofollow but awful websites to be linked on, is it worth putting them in the disavow list anyway to basically tell Google literally no association? I know the whole point of disavow is to essentially nofollow the link. Opinions much appreciated, thank you guys.
Technical SEO | | tdigital0 -
Question about creating friendly URLs
I am working on creating new SEO friendly URLs for my company website. The products are the items with the highest search volume and each is very geo-specific
Technical SEO | | theLotter
There is not a high search volume for the geo-location associated with the product, but the searches we do get convert well. Do you think it is preferable to leave the location out of the URL or include it?0 -
Mobile URLs in the desktop SERPs
Our real estate website URL is listed on desktop search as well as the mobile URL. I've read several blogposts on this subject but I still don't understand the fix for this. I've read to use rel=canonical tags. But does that stop Google from listing it in the desktop SERP? Is there a way to stop this without blocking the mobile site which is what our programmer wants to do? Or is this something we have to live with until Google fixes this issue?
Technical SEO | | MassMedia0 -
URL Structure: When to insert keywords?
I read the SEOmoz beginers guide and it said that it's beneficial to place keywords in the URL as long as you don't overdo it. However, this seems awkward for common pages, such as "Home", "About", "Contact" etc.... I've currently targeted a specific keyword for each page on my site, as follows: Home: "Green Screen" Work: "Greenscreen" About: "Event Photography" Pricing: "Green Screen Photography" Should I rename the URLs as: Home: ...com/green-screen-home.html Work: ...com/greenscreen-work.html About:...com/about-event-photography.html Pricing:...com/green-screen-photography-pricing.html
Technical SEO | | pharcydeabc0 -
Multiple URLs
I'm trying to check the URLs of this site- http://www.ofo.com.au, and I see that their old site has 301 re-directed to it...but the site http://ofo.com.au and http://outdoorfurnitureoutlet.com.au are both still up and I can't see any 301 redirects from them. Is it a problem even if when I do a site: search for them I get no results?
Technical SEO | | UnaRealidad0 -
Can URL re writes fix the problem of critical content too deep in a sites structure?
Good morning from Wetherby UK 🙂 Ok imagine this scenario. You ask the developers to design a site where "offices to let" is on level two of a sites hierachy and so the URL would look like this: http://www.sandersonweatherall.co.uk/office-to-let. But Yikes when it goes live it ends up like this: http://www.sandersonweatherall.co.uk...s/residential/office-to-let Is a fix to this a URL re - write? Or is the only fix relocating the office to let content further up the site structure? Any insights welcome 🙂
Technical SEO | | Nightwing0