URL Structure for Product Pages

[IceIcebaby]

Hi Moz Community.

I'm in need of some URL structure advice for product pages. We currently have ~4,000+ products and I'm trying to determine whether I need a new URL structure from the previous site owners. There are two current product URL structures that exist in our website:

1.http://www.example.com/bracelets/gold-bracelets/1-1-10-ct-diamond-tw-slip-on-bangle-14k-pink-gold-gh-i1-i2/ (old URL structure)
2. http://www.example.com/gemstone-bracelet-prd-bcy-121189/ (new URL structure)

The problem is that half of our products are still in the old structure (no one moved them forward), but at the same time I'm not sure if the new structure is optimized as much as possible. Every single gemstone bracelet, or whatever product will have the same url structure, only being unique with the product number at the end.

Would it be better to change everything over to more product specific URLS. I.e. example.com/topaz-gemstone-dangle-bracelet.

Thanks for your help!
-Reed

[IceIcebaby]

Thanks for your help.

[thebaron24]

Hello again Reed,

Thats exactly how I would recommend doing it. I should have mentioned canonicalization in my first response because you will probably have each product in multiple categories.

[IceIcebaby]

Hi Barry,

Thanks for the response. That leads me to give you more examples...

Let's say we have a heart-shaped pendant/locket product. This product would now have three different URLs for each of the appropriate categories...
1. example.com/pendants/hearts/gold-heart-locket-12345
2. example.com/pendants/lockets/gold-heart-locket-12345
3. example.com/gold-heart-locket-12345 (our current platform always puts a rel="canonical" to the URL with no sub-directories, which tends to be the ranked URL every time)

Would it be best to keep up with this practice of canonicalization for one preferred product pushed into multiple categories? Still using the above method of URL organization you just gave me of course.

[thebaron24]

Hello Reed,

I think the best thing to start with would be organizing your products into categories that both bots and humans can semantically understand that will eventually lead to the actual urls you will use. What I mean is it would be better to have some form of:

example.com/bracelets/dangle-topaz-gemstone

example.com/topaz-gemstone-dangle-bracelet

example.com/dangle-bracelets/topaz-gemstone

It would be best to not go past the 3rd level if you can help it but if you have over 4,000 products it might be hard. When I did this for a company I found that the more time I spent on the organizational structure of the products, the better and more organized the URLs ended up.

Good luck!