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.
Should we remove category paths for better SEO?
-
We're looking to build some serious content and capitalise on long-tail keyword traffic for our sub-category pages, example for targeted keyword "designer dining tables".
Example of current link: www.website.com/designer-furniture/designer-dining-tables.html
Would removing the category paths help?
Example result - www.website.com/designer-dining-tables
More user friendly URLs and better for SEO would you suggest?
The only problem is, if we removed the paths would this have a hit on our traffic?
Any advice would be much appreciated. We are using Magento platform.
-
Hi Matt,
This answers my question perfectly. Everything we sell is 'designer goods' including tables, wardrobes, sideboards etc you name it.
My only concern was to have the word 'designer' too many times in the URL as it would look a little spammy, but as you described we can just keep the word 'designer' for the parent page and leave it out for the sub-categories.
We used SEM Rush and noticed a competitor doing really well in the SERPs and they have all their category path URLs removed so I was just curious if this had an impact on SEO, as the URLs looks short and user friendly.
Josh
-
This answer would depend on a few things. Single or multiple designer furniture offerings? How much traffic do you currently generate to those pages? What's the overall website strategy (ecommerce? blog?). In my opinion, removing the category page (/designer-future/) would really only make sense if "designer dining tables" was the ONLY product your website offered. If that was the case, then I'd imagine you'd have similar content on both your category & sub-category pages thus resulting in potential duplicate content issues & an overall confusing UX.
Conversely, if you have more than 1 sub-category (ie designer chairs, couches, entertainment centers, etc) then I would advise keeping your current url structure. Targeting long-tail keywords at a sub-category level could help in building the authority of the category page (assuming proper internal linking is in place). What you may find is that the more you target "designer dining tables", the more Google thinks your site must be about designer furniture and thus resulting in potential ranking improvements for your category page, designer furniture. Just a personal preference, I would drop "designer" from the sub-category page as it's inferred by the parent page. I guess it just depends if you want a more keyword heavy url, or a cleaner, shorter url. Either one is fine. For tips on URL Best Practices, check out this article by Rand:
http://moz.com/blog/15-seo-best-practices-for-structuring-urls
Hope this was helpful!
-
Hi Josh
Do not remove categories. This helps give your website a hierarchy and helps crawlers understand how your website is laid out. It is also great for breadcrumbs and helping users understand exactly where they are in the site. If your website creates dynamic URLs, look into canonical tags.
Here are some great resources:
URLs Best Practices (Moz)
Information Architecture for SEO (Moz)
Internal Links (Moz)To me, having categories in the URL are very important for many reasons. Make sure you discuss with your team and think about users/crawlers. It helps a lot to give your website a structure and not make it seems super flat.
It also helps with Sitelinks and it's search box!
Hope this helps! Good luck!
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
-
Are Expires Headers Detrimental to SEO Health?
My dev was looking into Expires Headers to increase speed, but she don't know the ramifications behind them for SEO. What I found online is really old: https://moz.com/blog/expires-headers-for-seo-why-you-should-think-twice-before-using-them What do SEOs think? Thanks in advance! ~Dana
Technical SEO | | dklarse0 -
Schema for Banks and SEO
I'm researching Schema opportunities for a bank, but besides the shema markup available today (like bankorcreditunion) and developments with FIBO, I can find no answer as to the effect of tagging interest rates and such in terms of SERP/CTR performance or visibility. Does anyone have a case study to share or some insight on the matter?
Technical SEO | | Netsociety0 -
Seo For Forum Sites
I have forum site.I've opened it 2 months ago.But there is a problem.Therefore my content is unique , my site's keyword ranking constantly changing..Sometimes my site's ranking drops from first 500.After came to 70s. I didn't make any off page seo to my site.What is the problem ?
Technical SEO | | tutarmi0 -
Should 301-ed links be removed from sitemap?
In an effort to do some housekeeping on our site we are wanting to change the URL format for a couple thousand links on our site. Those links will all been 301 redirected to corresponding links in the new URL format. For example, old URL format: /tag/flowers as well as search/flowerswill be 301-ed to, new URL format: /content/flowers**Question:**Since the old links also exist in our sitemap, should we add the new links to our sitemap in addition to the old links, or replace the old links with new ones in our sitemap? Just want to make sure we don’t lose the ranking we currently have for the old links.Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | shawn811 -
301 redirect relative or absolute path?
Hello everyone, Recently we've changed the URL structure on our website, and of course we had to 301 redirect the old urls to the coresponding new ones. The way the technical guys did this is: "http://www.domain.com/old-url.html" 301 redirect to "/new-url.html"
Technical SEO | | Silviu
meaning as a relative redirect path, not an absolute one like this:
"http://www.domain.com/old-url.html" 301 redirect to "http://www.domain.com/new-url.html" This happened for few thousands urls, and the fact is the organic traffic dropped for those pages after this change. (no other changes were made on these pages and the new urls are as seo friendly as possible, A grade on On-Page Grader). The question is: does the relative redirect negatively affects seo, or it counts the same as an absolute path redirect? Thanks,
S.0 -
Pages removed from Google index?
Hi All, I had around 2,300 pages in the google index until a week ago. The index removed a load and left me with 152 submitted, 152 indexed? I have just re-submitted my sitemap and will wait to see what happens. Any idea why it has done this? I have seen a drop in my rankings since. Thanks
Technical SEO | | TomLondon0 -
Image Size for SEO
Hi there I have a website which has some png images on pages, around 300kb - is this too much? How many kbs a page, to what extent do you know does Google care about page load speed? is every kb important, is there a limit? Any advice much appreciated.
Technical SEO | | pauledwards0 -
What is the best website structure for SEO?
I've been on SEOmoz for about 1 month now and everyone says that depending on the type of business you should build up your website structure for SEO as 1st step. I have a new client click here ( www version doesn't work)... some bugs we are fixing it now. We are almost finished with the design & layout. 2nd question have been running though my head. 1. What would the best url category for the shop be /products/ - current url cat ex: /products/door-handles.html 2. What would you use for the main menu as section for getting the most out of SEO. Personally i am thinking of making 2-3 main categories on the left a section where i can add content to it (3-4 paragraphs... images maybe a video).So the main page focuses on the domain name more and the rest of the sections would focus on specific keywords, this why I avoid cannibalization. Main keyword target is "door handles" Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Technical SEO | | mosaicpro0