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.
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
-
Does anyone rate CORA SEO Software?
I can't really see any third party reviews of this software. Does anyone rate it?
On-Page Optimization | | AL123al0 -
City Name in URL structure
I have a client whose site was built when they only served one market, and they now have that city in the majority of their URLs. I'm suggesting we redo the URL structure to remove this location from the main URLs (think homepage, about, etc.) since they have now expanded to three markets. They are seeing a lot of great organic traffic in that original market but are struggling in the new ones they've added so I'm helping to optimize their site. How critical do you think that removing that location from the URL is? I know we would need to implement 301 redirects, but wanted to get thoughts on this.
On-Page Optimization | | maghanlinchpinsales0 -
Does homepage SEO exist at all?
hi Just read a Yoast article explaining that the homepage should never be optimized for a specific keyword and should only be optimized for its business or brand name. i have a large site that I'd like to rank (or increase traffic for as I know people get irritated with that term now) for 'Campervan hire'. It has plenty of sub pages going after 'Campervan hire 'location'' for example. it makes sense to me for the homepage keyword - my core keyword - to be 'Campervan hire' and for the homepage to be optimised for this. However, the article I've just read (https://yoast.com/homepage-seo/) suggests a separate page for this keyword. What are your thoughts pls?? thanks
On-Page Optimization | | CamperConnect142 -
How important are clean URLs?
Just wanting to understand the importance of clean URLs in regards to SEO effectiveness. Currently, we have URLs for a site that reads as follows: http://www.interhampers.com.au/c/90/Corporate Gift Hampers Should we look into modifying this so that the URL does not have % or figures?
On-Page Optimization | | Gavo1 -
How Much Does Punctuation of a Word Effect SEO?
I have a page on a site that is targeted for "mens hair cut" and I have received a F for the grade. The content on the page uses "men's" throughout the content. (proper punctuation) When I re-graded the page with "men's hair cut" the page received a B grade. My question is, does mens v.s men's make a different for on-page SEO? Should my targeted keywords include "men's" rather than "mens"?
On-Page Optimization | | Kdruckenbrod0 -
URLs and folder structure for an E-commerce
Hi there !-) I´m helping a friend who has a e-commerce about nail polish in Brazil. I´m a little in doubt about the urls and folder structure. Two questions: 1. There are 10 products per category and 50 categories. Should I put them all in the root folder or creat 2 major categories ( 25 sub-categories each one)? 2. Whats the better product page url ( the store has around 500) nailpolish.com/IMPORT/BRAND/NAME-OF-THE-PRODUCT OR nailpolish.com/COMPLETE-NAME-OF-THE-PRODUCT Whats the best recomandation?
On-Page Optimization | | SeoMartin10 -
Which is Best Practice for creating URLs for subdomain?
My website is related to education. We have created sub domains for all major colleges, universities & Entrance exams like Gre, Toefl ETC. for eg: amityuniversity.abc.com (Amity is Name of University ) Now if have to mention city name in URL as well (college is located in multiple locations) amityuniversity-delhi.abc.com
On-Page Optimization | | rohanarora536
amityuniversitydelhi.abc.com Now my Q is can we use hyphens in sub domains if we have to add city name or shall we create without using any hyphens. In Directory structure we can always separate words with hyphens, can we follow same practice in subdomain as well Which is a best URL for subdomain amity-university-delhi.abc.com
amityuniversity-delhi.abc.com
or amityuniversitydelhi.abc.com0 -
What is the most SEO friendly Shopping Cart?
What is the most SEO friendly shopping cart? I have been using zen-cart for 6 years. Seems Google doesn't like it as much as other carts. I started a new site about 6 months ago using Magento. When I build links to this site the terms move. The terms are very similar. So I would imagine the competition is the same. I am curious if anybody has tried with different carts and found anyone to be better than the others. Also the new site has about one tenth the amount of products but has a lot more pages indexed.
On-Page Optimization | | kicksetc0