URL Path. What is better for SEO
-
Hello Moz people,
Is it better for SEO to have a URL path like this:
flowersite.com/anniversary_flowers/dozen_roses
OR
Is it better to have the full trail of pages in the URL?
-
There is no golden rule but generally yes, the page higher in a structure would be considered slightly more important, especially if your sitemap indicates page importance automatically, but a proper structure has far more benefits.
As long as you don' overcomplicate your structure it wouldn't make much difference whether your roses are at:
or
domain.com/anniversary-flowers/roses
as for no 4 - could it be that roses would fit many of the categories and therefore have been taken out of the structure to avoid duplicate content issues?
I often see pages deeper in the category tree ranking just as high if not higher than top categories for their respective keywords. At the end of the day Pete, it's the content that will rank your page not the url.
Using common sense, do you think Google would promote a model of websites where all pages and categories are always in the root? Would you use a library where all books are stuffed into 1 section? I don't think so.
-
Hi All,
I am no expert but we have just done redone our url structure and these are points we had to weigh up.
- I thought the closer to the root domain the more important the page ?
- However, it's always not feasible to have every page only one level from root so what we did , is have the url structure follow the bread crumb structure of our site and I believe this works well
- That makes it consistent and easy for the user/crawlers to understand
- Saying that though, if roses are one of your best sellers all year round , then it may warrant to have that url as closer to root as possible still have others using a category structure. I have seen that done on some large sites that sell alot of a particular item
Pete
-
This is very often overlooked but in my opinion the right URL structure is critical for any site, because the on site optimisation and content creation for landing pages will be very much determined by the structure of your URL's. Logical structure also helps users understanding and navigating the site.
I always suggest a "library" approach, so creating a logical structure similar to a library where a book (or a product/service/article etc.) falls under one parent category, which falls under a higher parent category, similar to:
science-books/physics/newton-inventions
entertainment-books/childrens-books/harry-potter
I your case the first example of URL path makes more sense, but the question is - are dozen roses only anniversary flowers? Spend a few hours organising your products into categories that make logical sense and create a URL structure to reflect that but keeping in mind the keywords people are searching for to find your products. It's not easy so don't rush it.
Ah and use hyphes (-) rather than underscores (_) in your urls...
-
Hi Garrettkite,
There are 2 things that I would answer:
- Firstly, don't use underscore (_) in the url. Instead, use hyphens (-). E.g. domain1.com/inner-page.aspx
- Secondly, whether to have a longer url or shorter version is totally your call. It is better to have a flat structure as much as possible. Never go for very long urls e.g. domain1.com/directory1/directory2/this-is-the-inner-page.aspx. On the other hand, focus on the structure of the website from user's point of view. Is it intuitive? Can a user reach to the inner page easily? But in some cases you may have to use longer urls which is again conditional.
Till date I have successfully worked on more than 100 sites by following the above standards.
Regards
-
I have read a lot about how it is important to keep URLs as short as possible, but I have also seen first-hand how longer, descriptive URLs have performed really well.
You'll probably get different answers from different people, and I don't know that either is right or wrong. In my opinion the longer URL would be more beneficial, assuming that trail of URLs isn't going to continue on and get too long - /anniversary_flowers/dozen_roses/red/bouquet - you get the idea.
My reasoning behind going with the longer URL structure is because you get the benefit of having both potential keyword search terms, anniversary flowers & dozen roses, in the page URL. Hope that 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
-
Url too long
Hi we have a wordpress website for Office Furniture Our domain name does not have office furniture in it. So we went from having domain.com/shop/category/second-sub-cat to domain.com/office-furniture/category/second-category However we now have 509 products flagged with too long urls I am wondering whether we should change back : For example domain.com/office-furniture/office-corner-desks/beech-corner-desks Should I go back to domain.com/shop/office-corner-desks/beech-corner-desks Or am I going to confuse matters even more? I should say this only affects categories as the products themselves are /shop/product I am just concerned that changing the re-direct in place originally will just make matters worse and confuse things - would I get more value changing back? Or should I stick with it and just try to shorten urls individually by product titles etc
On-Page Optimization | | KellyDSD860 -
Optimizing a URL/menu structure
Hi Mozzers, I'm working on Content Strategy at my job, and I'm close to making some recommendations on short/long-term direction. While I'm there, I want to tackle the URL/menu structure (correct term?), which is a bit of a mess as pages have been created without any consideration for it over time. For ease, let's just say we have 3 main subdirectories of the site (Section A-C), and let's also say that section A also has 3 important subdirectories. From a UX perspective at least, we want a page to look like: example.com/sectionA/subsectionAA/page1 but currently it's example.com/page1 We have dozens and dozens of these examples. To complicate matters a little further, Sections B and C have been earmarked to be consolidated into a new section (D), as they're currently confusing and overlapping, and create roadblocks in user journeys. So a page that is, say: example.com/sectionB/page2 may well want to be: example.com/sectionD/subsectionDA/page2 I'm comfortable enough with technically doing this, as I'm experienced enough in Drupal and have an agency on hand too, BUT - I don't know if there are any SEO pitfalls I need to be wary of when I'm doing this, beyond resubmitting sitemaps, and the trickle-down effects of redirects. Any advice, wise forum? thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | joberts0 -
Need advice on the better URL structure to go with
I am rebuilding our existing website on a new platform and need advice on which URL structure would be the most ideal. The following examples are of a product that we have with a very long page title. Not all of our products have titles this long, but enough of them do to cause some concern. I was also wondering if I should end the url with file type .html or if leaving it out is better. Thanks in advance! OPTION 1. this example just uses the root domain and the entire product title separated by dashes http://ewheels.nextmp.net/staggered-full-set-br-2-20x9-ace-alloy-aff01-metallic-silver-machined-face-flow-formed-br-2-20x10-5-ace-alloy-aff01-metallic-silver-machined-face-flow-formed OPTION 2. this example uses the crawl path as well as the entire product title http://ewheels.nextmp.net/wheels/ace-alloy-wheels/ace-alloy-aff01-metallic-silver-machined-face-flow-formed/staggered-full-set-br-2-20x9-ace-alloy-aff01-metallic-silver-machined-face-flow-formed-br-2-20x10-5-ace-alloy-aff01-metallic-silver-machined-face-flow-formed OPTION 3. this example uses the crawl path and just the part number at the end since the folders already contain all the keywords necessary http://ewheels.nextmp.net/wheels/ace-alloy-wheels/ace-alloy-aff01-metallic-silver-machined-face-flow-formed/ace-2090aff01silace-20105aff01sil
On-Page Optimization | | elementmotor0 -
On-page SEO optimization
hi there! Is it possible not to be in the first 20 or 30 positions in the SERPs after executing onpage SEO actions (keyword optimization, metatags, ....) even for keywords for which there's not "too much" competition? Is there a way of visualize the pages indexed by the google bot? (the pages especifically, not the number) in order to discard indexing problems? Thank you!
On-Page Optimization | | juanmiguelcr1 -
URL Extensions (with or without??!!)
Hello, SEOers~ Today I have a question about URL extensions. Which one is more search engine friendly between URL with extensions and without extensions? e.g. URL with extension : www.example.com/tv/lcd.jsp URL without extension : www.example.com/tv/lcd I heard that URL without extensions is in trend considering user experience. User experience is also important but I would like to know from SEO perspective. Please people~ Help me out with this~! Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | Artience0 -
Which method should I use for my URL structure?
I have an existing site that is currently utilizing a structure that is like this: http://www.mysite.com/Ohio/City-of-Cleveland-PRODUCT-NAME Should I restructure it like: http://www.mysite.com/Ohio/City-of-Cleveland/Product-Name We are doing very well with very specific searches already but are sometimes coming in 2nd and 3rd place. For example: If I search for CLEVELAND PRODUCT NAME I always come up in the top three and about 60% of the time I am #1. I want to make it better. We have only launched in 4 states but plan on launching an additional 4 states over the next few weeks and I want to make sure we are building things properly. Any feedback would be wonderful. As usual, thanks everyone!! -Alex
On-Page Optimization | | dbuckles0 -
Is it good to have dashes in url's
When using keywords in url's for internal pages, isn't it a good idea to use dashes or underscores in the url between the keywords?
On-Page Optimization | | BradBorst0 -
Is it worth changing urls with underscores?
A few pages on one of my sites have underscores linking keywords rather than hyphens (keywords_and_keyword rather than keyword-and-keyword). Possibly from a time before I knew hyphens were preferred... One of the pages ranks well, and drives a good amount of traffic. The others do not do so well, but are still within the top 10 landing pages for the site. Is it worth me changing the underscores to hyphens (setting up 301 redirects first of course) or doesn't it make that much difference?
On-Page Optimization | | Jingo010