Taxonomy question - best approach for site structure
-
Hi all,
I'm working on a dentist's website and want some advice on the best way to lay out the navigation. I would like to know which structure will help the site work naturally. I feel the second example would be better as it would focus the 'power' around the type of treatment and get that to rank better.
.com/assessment/whitening
.com/assessment/straightening
.com/treatment/whitening
.com/treatment/straighteningor
.com/whitening/assessment
.com/straightening/assessment
.com/whitening/treatment
.com/straightening/treatmentPlease advise, thanks.
-
Bee159,
I would look at two aspects.
(1) How much content do you have? Does the amount of content you have point to one page, or two pages (or more)?
(2) If this is a new build for an old site, what of your target market uses smart phones versus desktop/laptop browsers? If this is a new website, what is the demographic of your target market, and are they likely to use smartphones or desktops to find you?
Why does this matter? Outside of the fact that Google has put the mobile index first, you want to keep your interface as simple as possible for the users. If they primarily use a cellphone to access your website, then you will want to have longer, scrolling pages. If they have to click around a lot on a cell, it can be harder for them to find and read your information, and that can affect your bounce rates.
If your clients/customers are primarily desktop users, then I would focus on what makes sense in terms of your site structure to put on one page or more. I'm not trying to hedge my answer, but I know you could have a huge site, or a small one, and those inform the site design and taxonomy, along with the target demographic for your site's users.
When it comes to SEO and taxonomy, I would opt for KIS (keep it simple). What makes it as simple as possible for your users to find the information they need? What is logical in terms of bigger topic ==> more granular.
When it comes to naming your URLs, if you decide the content is small enough to put on one page only, you can always do:
.com/dental-services/whitening-assessment-treatment
.com/dental-services/straightening-assessment-treatmentI do think when you use subfolders, you should try to keep the names unique (think unique identifiers, even though it is a folder) when at all possible or if it makes sense. Why? Because it reduces confusion for people and bots.
So per your
.com/whitening/assessment
.com/straightening/assessment
.com/whitening/treatment
.com/straightening/treatmentHas a lot of the same words used again and again. Instead, consider something like:
.com/teeth-whitening/unique-keword-here-assessment
.com/teeth-whitening/more-keywords-treatment
.com/teeth-straightening/another-unique-word-treatment
.com/teeth-straightening/different-keyword-now-assessmentUsing 2 word mid-tail keywords or 4 word long tail keywords can you help you rank better and improve the logic of your taxonomy.
To summarize, base how much content you put on one page on how your users read your material (mobile browser or desktop or both) and by how much content you have. And how to judge that, I don't know how to tell you without seeing it.
However you organize your pages and taxonomy, do your best to give the subfolders unique names even when they don't have the same parent. The caveat is if it is not logical to the human eye and understanding to use 2-4 word phrases, then don't. You don't want to overthink or over optimize it.
Some other thoughts...keep to web conventions, as people are used to HOME SERVICES ABOUT CONTACT (etc.). The slugs you can name using more detailed keyword phrases. If you have older clients (50+), then I'd stick to a very explicit taxonomy and navigation. If you have younger users, you can be a little more creative, like use the much-maligned hamburger menu.
Does this all make sense?
-- Jewel
-
Thanks for all the responses everyone and thanks Jewel for taking time to lay out that taxonomy.
So what you're saying is, it's better to have one page /whitening with all the different services in full, than to have:
/whitening/ - hub page H2s for each service and a paragraph on each with a link to more i.e.
Home Whitening Kit
with a link to:
/whitening/home-whitening-kit/ - full page with lots of in depth info, linking back to main hub page for other whitening services.
Thank you.
-
I agree with Logan Ray about going from the granular to the specific regarding site structure.
Having said that, in designing a taxonomy around users, I would do a navigation bar like this:
-
HOME
-
SERVICES
-
Whitening
-
(on whitening page)
Whitening Assessment
(down page)
Whitening Treatment
-
Straightening
-
(on straightening page)
Whitening Assessment
(down page)
Whitening Treatment
-
LOREM
-
IPSUM
-
VALOR
I do think users will be more likely to search under "whitening assessment" or "whitening treatment", for example, than your first example.
As the others said, the parent/child folder structure won't make or break your overall SEO, but a well-designed navigation will help improve the on-page user experience, and that will help reduce bounce rates.
I would not create 4 pages, unless you have so much content it makes sense to break it into 4 pages. Remember, we must design for people first, and robots second. The less clicking around people have to do, the better. Especially on a mobile phone, it's easier for the users if the information is all on one page.
-- Jewel
-
-
In my opinion, I dont think it matters much. However, i do like my urls to have keyword placement in the same manner as they would be typed by users (so, basically keywords with more search volume or what you think people would be typing in)
To answer your question, I would ask what do you think people are going to type in Google for if they wanted any of these services? Will it be 'whitening treatment' or 'treatment whitening'?
As Logan said, its not going to make or break your SEO, I wouldnt be too worried about it but yes, when being in a situation like this, I would like to go with what I mentioned earlier.
-
Honestly, search engines aren't that particular about URL structure, it is important, but not to the degree where one of these two examples is going to make or break your SEO campaign. That being said, I usually set up my URLs with the broadest category in the first folder, and get more granular from there. In your first example, the assessment and treatment folders make more sense to me, since there's additional content that could live in each of those respective folders. In your second example, there's less opportunity for future content to live in those folders.
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
-
If a the site doesn't have a true folder structure, does having subdirectories really help with hierarchy and passage of equity?
If a website doesn't have a true folder structure, how much does have the page path structured like
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SearchStan
/shoes/rain-boots/ actually help establish hierarchy and flow of equity?
Since /rain-boots/ doesn't actually live in the /shoes/ folder? Will you simply have to use internal linking to get the same effect for the search engine?1 -
Multilingual SEO - site using Google translate within existing URL structure
Hi everyone - I've just been looking at a site that simply uses Google Translate through its website. So basically, on any page you can Google Translate the content to any language you like - there's no change to the URL structure according to language, etc. I haven't come across this approach before (simply allowing users to Google Translate withing the existing page) - and it doesn't sit well with me - let me have your thoughts re: the SEO implications. Thanks in advance, Luke
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
When Mobile and Desktop sites have the same page URLs, how should I handle the 'View Desktop Site' link on a mobile site to ensure a smooth crawl?
We're about to roll out a mobile site. The mobile and desktop URLs are the same. User Agent determines whether you see the desktop or mobile version of the site. At the bottom of the page is a 'View Desktop Site' link that will present the desktop version of the site to mobile user agents when clicked. I'm concerned that when the mobile crawler crawls our site it will crawl both our entire mobile site, then click 'View Desktop Site' and crawl our entire desktop site as well. Since mobile and desktop URLs are the same, the mobile crawler will end up crawling both mobile and desktop versions of each URL. Any tips on what we can do to make sure the mobile crawler either doesn't access the desktop site, or that we can let it know what is the mobile version of the page? We could simply not show the 'View Desktop Site' to the mobile crawler, but I'm interested to hear if others have encountered this issue and have any other recommended ways for handling it. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | merch_zzounds0 -
Google favoring old site over new site...
Hi, I started a new site for a client: www.berenjifamilylaw.com. His old site: www.bestfamilylawattorney.com was too loaded up with bad links. Here's the weird part: when you Google: "Los Angeles divorce lawyer" you see the old site come up on the 21st page, but Google doesn't even show the new site (even though it is indexed). It's been about 2 weeks now and no change. Has anyone experienced something like this? If so, what did you do (if anything). Also, I did NOT do a 301 redirect from old to new b/c of spammy links. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mrodriguez14400 -
This site got hit but why..?
I am currently looking at taking on a small project website which was recently hit but we are really at a loss as to why so I wanted to open this up to the floor and see if anyone else had some thoughts or theories to add. The site is Howtotradecommodities.co.uk and the site appeared to be hit by Penguin because sure enough it drops from several hundred visitors a day to less than 50. Nothing was changed about the website, and looking at the Analytics it bumbled along at a less than 50 visitors a day. On June 25th when Panda 3.8 hit, the site saw traffic increase to between 80-100 visitors a day and steadily increases almost to pre-penguin levels. On August 9th/10th, traffic drops off the face of the planet once again. This site has some amazing links http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/04/algorithmsdata-vs-analystsreports-fight/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JamesAgate
http://as.exeter.ac.uk/library/using/help/business/researchingfinance/stockmarket/ That were earned entirely naturally/editorially. I know these aren't "get out of jail free cards" but the rest of the profile isn't that bad either. Normally you can look at a link profile and say "Yep, this link and that link are a bit questionable" but beyond some slightly off-topic guest blogging done a while back before I was looking to get involved in the project there really isn't anything all that fruity about the links in my opinion. I know that the site design needs some work but the content is of a high standard and it covers its topic (commodities) in a very comprehensive and authoritative way. In my opinion, (I'm not biased yet because it isn't my site) this site genuinely deserves to rank. As far as I know, this site has received no unnatural link warnings. I am hoping this is just a case of us having looked at this for too long and it will be a couple of obvious/glaring fixes to someone with a fresh pair of eyes. Does anyone have any insights into what the solution might be? [UPDATE] after responses from a few folks I decided to update the thread with progress I made on investigating the situation. After plugging the domain into Open Site Explorer I can see quite a few links that didn't show up in Link Research Tools (which is odd as I thought LRT was powered by mozscape but anyway... shows the need for multiple tools). It does seem like someone in the past has been a little trigger happy with building links to some of the inner pages.0 -
Best strategy for "product blocks" linking to sister site? Penguin Penalty?
Here is the scenario -- we own several different tennis based websites and want to be able to maximize traffic between them. Ideally we would have them ALL in 1 site/domain but 2 of the 3 are a partnership which we own 50% of and why are they are off as a separate domain. Big question is how do we link the "products" from the 2 different websites without looking spammy? Here is the breakdown of sites: Site1: Tennis Retail website --> about 1200 tennis products Site2: Tennis team and league management site --> about 60k unique visitors/month Site3: Tennis coaching tip website --> about 10k unique visitors/month The interesting thing was right after we launched the retail store website (site1), google was cranking up and sending upwards of 25k search impressions/day within the first 45 days. Orders kept trickling in and doing well overall for first launching. Interesting thing was Google "impressions" peaked at about 60 days post launch and then started trickling down farther and farther and now at about 3k-5k impressions/day. Many keywords phrases were originally on page 1 (position 6-10) and now on page 3-8 instead. Next step was to start putting "product links" (3 products per page) on site2 and site3 -- about 10k pages in total with about 6 links per page off to the product page (1 per product and 1 per category). We actually divided up about 100 different products to be displayed so this would mean about 2k links per product depending on the page. FYI, those original 10k pages from site2 and site3 already rank very well in Google and have been indexed for the past 2+ years in there. Most popular word on the sites is Tennis so very related. Our rationale was "all the websites are tennis related" and figured that the links on the latest and greatest products would be good for our audience. Pre-Penguin, we also figured this strategy would also help us rank for these products as well for when users are searching on them. We are thinking through since traffic and gone down and down and down from the peak of 45 days ago, that Penguin doesn't like all these links -- so what to do now? How to fix it and make the Penguin happy? Here are a couple of my thoughts on fixing it: 1. Remove the "category link" in our "product grouping" which would cut down the link by 1/3rd. 2. Place a "nofollow" on all the links for the other "product links". This would allow us to get the "user clicks" from these while the user is on that page. 3. On our homepage (site2 & site3), place 3 core products that change frequently (weekly) and showcase the latest and greatest products/deals. Thought is to NOT use the "nofollow" on these links since it is the homepage and only about 5 links overall. Heck part of me debated on taking our top 1000 pages (from the 10k page) and put the links ONLY on those and distribute about 500 products on them so this would mean only 2 links per product -- it would mean though about 4k links going there. Still thinking #2 above could be better? Any other thoughts would be great! Thanks, Jeremy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jab10000 -
Press Release Sites
Ok, I am getting a lot of conflicting information about press release sites. i have been doing press release's for a while (mostly manually), I have also tried a few companies that claim to do it well (never do). After the Panda update the PR sites I have been using are just not as effective. Does anyone else have this problem or are there better PR sites that can be recommended.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TomBarker820 -
Architecture questions.
I have two architecture related questions. Fewer folders is better. For example, www.site.com/product should rank better than www.site.com/foldera/folderb/product, all else constant. However, to what extreme does it make sense to remove folders? With a small site of 100 or so pages, why not put all files in the main directory? You'd have to manually build the navigation versus tying navigation to folder structure, but would the benefit justify the additional effort on a small site? I see a lot of sites with expansive footer menus on the home page and sometimes on every page. I can see how that would help indexing and user experience by making every page a click or two apart. However, what does that do to the flow of link juice? Does Google degrade the value of internal footer links like they do external footer links? If Google does degrade internal footer links, then having a bunch of footer links would waste link juice by sending a large portion of juice through degraded links, wouldn't it? Thank you in advance, -Derek
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dvansant0