URL, Breadcrumb/Site Hierarchy Display, User (and Bot) Expectations
-
TL;DR: Do parts of URLs that are used throughout the web quite consistently have any influence on robots (or users)? Are there any studies? What would you use for pages that are something between a tag-page and a wiki-like article?
Long version:
On a site with a lot of content, I decided to go for tags to present articles on that topic together. My first thought was to simply list those under the URL /tag/{Tag_Name}. Short. Simple. Grabs the core meaning - on this page you'll find stuff about the tag.
But: those tag-pages will be more than just lists of the tagged pages (let's say they are articles on various topics and products with certain attributes and the same tag can apply to a product and an article). The tag pages themselves will often talk a lot about the use of said tag - extensively, without blabbering. It is aimed at being a landing page and hub for the tag/keyword. Having this in mind, I pondered using /wiki/. It does fit in some respects, but it really is not a wiki. /info/, /lexicon/, /knowledge/ and other ideas came to mind but the more I thought the weirder I did find most ideas.
What I am now wondering:
-
Do these parts of URLs (/tag/, or /product/, or /wiki/) that are not really keywords in most cases have any influence on search engines? They are used quite consistently across the web and therefore could be used as signals. I suspect, though, that they might have more influence on shaping user expectation. (If I see /wiki/ in an URL or site hierarchy display (breadcrumb), I expect ... well, a wiki-style page; if I see /tag/ I expect a collection of stuff with that tag.)
-
What would you chose if it is not quite a tag, nor quite a wiki but something in-between? Or do you think it does not matter at all? (Breadcrumbs will be used and google has used them for display in just about all SERPs.)
-
Are there perchance any studies concerning these parts of URLS?
Regards
Nico
-
-
Thanks for your thoughts! That surely is some stuff worth thinking about - and reminding me that many people are a lot less familiar with online vocabulary than us her.
In the current case it does not really solve the problem due to it being a bit of a mixture of things like /motifs/ /themes/ /objects/ /characters/ /topoi/ etc. as they appear in a certain kind of literature.... but I really do not want to use multiple URLs for that. I might end up settling for /info/ as catch-all - and give it a more meaningful breadcrumb probably.
Regards
Nico
-
I am not aware of any studies showing impact of what you call "not really keywords". Even if there were, I would ignore them as you have to ask, "Do these words mean anything to your users?" I work in some verticals where when you use a term like "wiki" or "faq" people think I am either talking about some type of weaved basket or I just said they were overweight, respectively. I think it is good to start from a common lexicon, with words like "wiki" etc, but you still have to ask that initial question.
We went through this exercise about 2 years ago on a site as we wanted to setup an evergreen section for the top 40 keyword concepts. Each concept would have a single page that would contain an original article that was at least 1,000 words long, custom videos, images, etc.
We asked a similar question. Should we call the section (and folder in the URL) "wiki", or "encyclopedia" or "info", etc? We did not want to call it a "wiki" as we had experts editing and writing and it was not open to the public to edit, even though for the sake of organization and layout, it looked like a wiki and provided information like one. This is when we found out that our users were generally not as familiar with wikis and the comment with the weaved basket came out.
We did some keyword research and found that the word "help" made sense to users and also with the way Google looked at our topics when you used help in conjunction with the key terms we were trying to rank for. So we ended up using a URL that was domain.com/help/keyword-topic-of-article-slug.html It has worked pretty well for us and the traffic has followed. We have our daily blog content and ecommerce sections in separate folder. Makes it easy with GA and Search Console as we can look at each section easily and determine what is going on. This was key when we had some issues with organic traffic as once we noticed overall traffic changes, we drilled down into the sections, found the issues and fixed.
TL;DR - Find out what words make sense to your users and use those, ideally they would also be keywords that you are trying to rank for. After than, just follow best practices for URL guidelines.
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
-
Https://www.fitness-china.com/pilates-equipment How to find the most relevant internal link pages
https://www.fitness-china.com/pilates-equipment How to find the most relevant internal link pages? site this page, find https://www.fitness-china.com/pilates-equipment-kr and https://www.fitness-china.com/pilates-equipment-jp Is there any other better way
On-Page Optimization | | ahislop5740 -
Product URL
Hey Mozzers, Nice quick and simple one for you. Which of these 2 options is better for SEO and userbility and why domain.co.uk/productname.html
On-Page Optimization | | ATP
domain.co.uk/shop/category/product.html The top one stops stops any funky problems with magento making 2 paths to the same product but the second option feels more natural and helpful to the user. I feel both a valid but I would like some opinions please0 -
Removing old URLs from Google
We rebuilt a site about a year ago on a new platform however Google is still indexing URL's from the old site that we have no control over. We had hoped that time would have 'cleaned' these out but they are still being flagged in HTML improvements in GWT. Is there anything we can do to effect these 'external' dropping out of the indexing given that they are still being picked up after a year.
On-Page Optimization | | Switch_Digital0 -
Acquired Old, Bad Content Site That Ranks Great. Redirect to Content on My Site?
Hello. my company acquired another website. This website is very old, the content within is decent at best, but still manages to rank very well for valuable phrases. Currently, we're leaving the entire site active on its own for its brand, but i'd like to at least redirect some of the content back to our main website. I can't justify spending the time to create improved content on that site and not our main site though. What would be the best practice here? 1. Cross-domain canonical - and build the new content on our main website? 2. 301 Redirect Old Article to New Location containing better article 3. Leave the content where it is - you won't be able to transfer the ranking across domain. Thanks for your input.
On-Page Optimization | | Blenny0 -
Site Maps / Robots.txt etc
Hi everyone I have setup a site map using a Wordpress pluggin: http://lockcity.co.uk/site-map/ Can you please tell me if this is sufficient for the search engines? I am trying to understand the difference between this and having a robots.txt - or do I need both? Many thanks, Abi
On-Page Optimization | | LockCity0 -
Http://www.xxxx.com does not re-direct to http://xxx.com
When typing in my website URL www.earthsaverequipment.com successfully re-directs to earthsaverequipment.com as specified in robot. However if you type http://www.earthsaverequipment.com it brings up a 404 error Is this a potential issue? if so is there a way to fix it? thanks
On-Page Optimization | | Earthsaver0 -
Seasonal site structure
Bit of a complicated one for anyone who likes a challenge.. We sell a range of products which are very seasonal, so therefore have a seasonal section within the store with the products categorized into their relevant categories. In additon to this i wanted to also create a feature of each season so in effect pull forward on to a new tab the relevant season ie: Valentine so that customers didn't have to hunt for the products by going via seasonal shop etc The problem is that my site urls display last-category/product-title so in effect as the seasons change these urls will be deleted. They do remain elsewhere in our catalogue.. Does this make sense?
On-Page Optimization | | LadyApollo0 -
Absolute vs relative urls
Hello, Should absolute or relative urls to be used for the internal links? I heard mixed opinions on that: One source claims that web crawlers prefer absolute urls as they are more understandable Other source points that there is no difference for web crawlers what urls are used and relative urls are shorter which reduces the size of a page. Which option is recommended? Many thanks Darius
On-Page Optimization | | LinenMe0