URL Structure & SEO - Should we be using sub-folders?
-
Hi all,
As part of our content marketing efforts we have run a number of initiatives in the past and created pages on the website to go along with them (also where the links for these particular projects point to).
However, the URL structure isn't actually a reflection of where the pages sit on the site. Unfortunately I'm unable to provide a URL for reasons I won't bore you with, but here's an example:
We recently ran a competition that was very successful in generating links. The URL for this is www.domain.co.uk/competition.
However, the page actually sits within the About Us section - which is where all of our news and content marketing pages go - and uses a URL override.
How much of an issue is this in regards to A) Our SEO in general?; and B) Ensuring we receive as much equity from the links we earn as possible? A brief explanation of what URL overrides actually are would also be useful! (We have a digital marketing agency who handle most of our SEO)
Thanks in advance guys!
John
-
Hi Jimmy,
Thanks very much for the reply!
John
-
Hi Tom,
Yes that's exactly right. The link from the About Us section goes directly to www.example.com/competition - it doesn't quickly redirect.
Thanks for putting my mind at ease!
John
-
Hi John
Just to make sure I'm reading this correctly.
You have your homepage. You can then click to the "about us" page. And from there, you can click to the "competition" page.
However, instead of it looking like: www.example.com/about-us/competition, it looks like: www.example.com/competition
Is that correct?
If it is, then I don't think there is anything to worry about. Here's why:
Think of your URL as merely a cosmetic thing. Your URL structure does not have to reflect how a search engine or a user reaches that page. The most important thing in terms of site structure and SEO is how a search engine crawler (and user) reaches that page - IE, how many clicks away from your root domain it is.
As a rule of thumb, you should try to keep all of your important pages no more than 3 clicks away from your homepage - and ideally as few as possible. How the URL is presented when the user/search engine reaches that point is not relevant**
**This isn't entirely the case - there is some correlation with including your keyword in the URL and higher rankings, albeit a very slight correlation. For example, some sites have links to their main pages from their homepage which then take you to a URL like: http://www.example.com/keyword/product-a - that doesn't mean that the search engine has to reach the page by going through that subfolder (which may not even exist), but the display URL contains the keyword and so it might be better for SEO (although I think if this does have an effect it is very, very slim). Conversely, if your main page URL was http://www.example.com/keyword, but it takes you four clicks to reach there, it would not be good for SEO as your page is so far away from the homepage.
The main guidelines here are to:
- Keep your main pages as close to the homepage as possible (via internal links)
- Try to include the keyword in your URL if possible (or at least use friendly, readable URLs)
Now, on the "about us" page, the link that goes to the "competition" page - does it go directly to www.example.com/competition, or is it linked to www.example.com/about-us/competition and then quickly redirects?
If it's the second scenario, that would be an unnecessary redirect and might involve some of the link equity being diluted. I'd get the agency to look at linking to the www.example.com/competition page directly if that is the case (although I doubt it will be).
I hope that helps to explain some things!
-
Hi John,
Your URL override sounds like a 301 redirect, you can test this by going to what the URL actually is in your system, e.g. www.domain.co.uk/about-us/pages/competition with a
'URL Redirect Checker'
If it reports as '301' then that is good (Moz has a section on redirects in their learn section).
If it reports as another type of redirect then that would not be as efficient as a 301.
Pages that come back as '200' are direct links (these are the best), 301 is 'Moved Permanently', they also prevent the page from being indexable via both URLs so as to remove any duplicate content possibilities.
301 redirects are 'meant' to carry all the equity across so nothing is being lost from an SEO perspectiveIn terms of SEO, having the easiest URLs possible is always a bonus, not only does Google prefer shorter URLs but is also encourages direct traffic and visitor referrals (you'd rather tell a friend to go to a particular if it easy enough to type).
Kind Regards
Jimmy
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
-
Removed URLs
Hi all, We have recently removed 200+ articles from our blog. However, those links are still being shown on Google weeks after their removal. In there a way to speed up the process? What effect will this have on our SEO ranking?
Technical SEO | | businessowner0 -
Using RewriteRule - SEO Implications
Hi There, My client has a website (www.activeadventures.com) which they relaunched in April 2013. The company sells inbound tourism trips to New Zealand, South America and the Himalayas. Previously, the websites for these destinations were on their own domains (activenewzealand.com, activehimalayas.com, activesouthamerica.com). With the launch of the new website those domains were all retired (but had 301 redirects put into place to the new site), and moved into sub directories of the activeadventures.com domain (eg: activeadventures.com/new-zealand). There has been no indication that this strategy has improved organic search results (based on analytics) and in my opinion I believe that having this structure has been detrimental to their results. My opinion is based off the following: Visitors to the websites are coming into the site with a specific destination in mind that they want to travel to. Thus... having the destination in the URL I believe provides more immediate relevancy and should result in a higher CTR. I also feel that having the sites on their own URL's will provide a more concentrated theme for the destination based search phrases. The new site is a custom Joomla build and I want to find the easiest way to keep the current Joomla set up AND move the country specific sections of the site back onto their original URL's. It seems on the face of it that the easiest way to get this done is to use the htaccess file and use "RewriteRule" to push all the relevant pages back onto their original domains. Obviously we will ensure we also cover off pointing the existing 301's from the new site and the old sites to this new structure. My question is, are their any potential negative SEO implications of using the RewriteRule in the htaccess file to achieve this? Many thanks in advance. Kind Regards
Technical SEO | | activenz
Conrad Cranfield0 -
SEO friendly url strategy...
Hi guys i just wanted your expert opinion on keywords in urls. The example i'm giving you is in regards to a ecommerce website: Option 1: www.example.com/shop/coffee/coffee-beans/brand-coffee-beans-500gr Option 2: www.example.com/shop/coffee/beans/brand-coffee-beans-500gr We sell coffee so i'll keep the example relevant 🙂 Does it make a difference on how the keywords are stacked throughout? Would the search engine combine the two keywords eg. .../coffee/beans/... or would i be better of having .../coffee/coffee-beans/... and is there a penalty for having the same phrase more than once in the url? I hope my question makes sense... 😉 Looking forward to your opinions and ideas!
Technical SEO | | Immanuel0 -
Landing Page URL Structure
We are finally setting up landing pages to support our PPC campaigns. There has been some debate internally about the URL structure. Originally we were planning on URL's like: domain.com /california /florida /ny I would prefer to have the URL's for each state inside a "state" folder like: domain.com /state /california /florida /ny I like having the folders and pages for each state under a parent folder to keep the root folder as clean as possible. Having a folder or file for each state in the root will be very messy. Before you scream URL rewriting :-). Our current site is still running under Classic ASP which doesn't support URL rewriting. We have tried to use HeliconTech's ISAPI rewrite module for IIS but had to remove it because of too many configuration issues. Next year when our coding to MVC is complete we will use URL rewriting. So the question for now: Is there any advantage or disadvantage to one URL structure over the other?
Technical SEO | | briankb0 -
Blogger Blog URL Structure Questions
I'm starting to use my blog more and wanted to ask about an issue I've read about on SEOmoz in the past. I use blogger instead of wordpress. It's quick and simple - I have no interest in switching to wordpress for this particular blog. My blog is currently setup as blog.site.com. Is it still important (for seo reasons) to switch from blog.site.com to site.com/blog? If so, is there a way to do this in blogger? And if I do this, will my past posts lose their authority if their redirected to the new url structure? Rand mentions in this article: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/11-best-practices-for-urls "never use multiple subdomains" - This is an old article, but I've seen this mentioned several times. Does this still hold true? Am I losing out on links to my blog? Thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | ChaseH0 -
Pintrest SEO
Has any testing been done to determine if Pintrest helps a website ranking?
Technical SEO | | StreetwiseReports0 -
Website Page Structuring and URL re writing - need helpful resources
Hello, I am not technically very sound and I need some good articles that teach me how to think about and go about website pages structuring and url rewriting that is seo friendly. I will be most obliged if some of you great seomoz-ers can pitch in with help. Regards, Talha ZigZag Solutions
Technical SEO | | TopGearMedia0 -
URL Rewrite
Using the .htaccess file how do I rewrite a url from www.exampleurl.com/index.php?page=example to www.exampleurl.com/example removing index.php?page= Any help is muchly appreciated
Technical SEO | | CraigAddyman0