Proper URL Structure. Feedback on Vendors Recommendation
-
Urgent! We're doing a site redesign and our vendor recommended new url structure as follows: website.com/folder/word1word2word3. Our current structure is website.com/word1-word2
They said that from SEO perspective, it doesn't make a difference if there are dashes between words or not and Google can read either URL. Is that true? I need experts to weigh on the above, as well as SEO implications if we were to implement their suggestion.
-
Hi there, I've got a few thoughts to drop about this, but I want to make sure I answer your specific question first, then answer what I think are the lead up or follow up questions that are either on your mind or that you'll land at in the end anyway.
There are specific instances where you may favor one URL structure over the other. For example, our landing pages are similar to your current structure, and the rest of the website is more similar to your vendor's proposed structure. Folders are a great way to categorize your content and help both Google and users navigate and understand your content. However, you do not want to lose the hyphens. That can make it difficult for users to read in search when they're deciding on a page to view and it can be difficult for Google to read. Let's say your URL has an acronym in it - maybe you're writing about basketball and NBA is in the URL. So your URL becomes: website.com/sports/hownbaistakingcharge Or website.com/sports/baskteballnbakobe. Are either of those readable? You have two stakeholders, Google and Users and your URL structure should support both. Compare the above to website.com/sports/how-nba-is-taking-charge or /basketball-nba-kobe. That's much better for Google because they can clearly read the different words and make sense of it, and it's much better for Users who are trying to quickly scan the URL on Google. I would push back on the vendor that the hyphenation is necessary.
I've listed a few other questions below that I would have for my vendor and team if we were proposing a major restructuring of the site's content.
A new URL structure means a few other things will likely change.
1. Have you thought about creating a redirect map for every page that is going to move?
2. How will the new URL structure interact with breadcrumbs on your site?
3. If you move to folders are you going to need to create head pages e.g. website.com/sports/how-nba-is-taking-charge is located under a main "sports" page that maybe doesn't exist yet. You WILL have users that attempt to reach the head page whether it exists or not and they'll be sent to a 404 instead.
4. Will changing your URL structure alter your main and sub navigation elements on the site? (in almost every instance, it should)And then my final question, knowing how much work it is to take a healthy site and improve it by changing the URL structure alone is this: what is the expected value? Why are we doing this? Sometimes there's a legitimate reason and sometimes it's pure vanity. The SEO upside to a major restructuring like this isn't normally enormous, but the effort involved can be titanic. So be sure your expectations are realistic going into it and get the details fleshed out as much as possible ahead of time.
Best of luck, let me know if I can answer anymore questions.
-
I would actually go with the folder structure most of the time. As in most cases that you come across there is no overlap in parts of the content that you have. That's why you sort of want to create mini silos on your site. For that I would always recommend to go that way so you can divide the content across multiple folders.
-
Hello there!
You should not think as: "what google wants?", think in what is best for users.
If you are using a site, what could be your more usefull structure for your understanding.In my opinion and my experience, works better this structure: website.com/word1-word2 WRONG
--EDIT--
Didn´t read the /folder/ in the first option.
So, then my advise is that to make a mix of both structures, something like this:
website.com/folder1/folder2/word1-word2,This helps you a lot to better structure the site, as Martjin said, to create silos and even more to create categories for different niches or contents in the site
Hope it helps.
Best luck.
GR
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
-
Ranking dropped after change single page url, should I change it back?
I was making updates to the content on the following page, and a few days later dropped from #2 SERP ranking to 50+. Things I checked: Yes, 301 redirect was implemented right away. After publishing, I manually requested indexing in search console. Right after publishing I re-submitted the sitemap manually and Google said they had not crawled it in 9 days. My question: should I change the URL back to the old one, or give it a little more time (especially since I re-submitted sitemap) Original URL: https://www.travelinsurancereview.net/plans/travel-medical/ New URL: https://www.travelinsurancereview.net/plans/travel-medical-insurance/
On-Page Optimization | | DamianTysdal0 -
To avoid the duplicate content issue I have created new urls for that specific site I am posting to and redirecting that url to the original on my site. Is this the right way to do it?
I am trying to avoid the duplicate content issue by creating new urls and redirecting them to the original url. Is this the proper way of going about it?
On-Page Optimization | | yagobi210 -
How to position and structure H1 and H2 on a page
Quick Question: We have been working on a website for an hotel and we are now facing an issue regarding how to position the H1 and H2 on each page: Since the Client has expressed the desire to have the title of the page mentioned right above the textWould it make sense to have the title of the page as H1 and have more descriptive H2 right below it? Ex: H1--> Accommodation H2--> Page Description Thanks,
On-Page Optimization | | travelclickseo0 -
Moving our current homepage to a new URL
Our homepage currently speaks to a specific product and we're re-doing our homepage to be more about the brand which links to the product. The current home page has PA of 62 with thousands of links to the page. Question is are there any best practices around this or any risks? So current page is: www.xyz.com which we will be refreshing then moving the existing content to www.xyz.com/product so all the subdirectories gets shifted over 1 Thank in advance for the help!
On-Page Optimization | | JoeLin0 -
Can bad text URLs hurt pages?
If you have some pages that contain plain text URLs (not anchored links) that used to be good URLs, but are now bad, either because the website shut down or because it has been acquired by someone else and is now parked (or worse) - are those URLs enough to cause quality problems? For example: This information was brought to you by Waymaker http://www.waymaker.net These aren't the only ones. And yes, I know I should fix them, but there are probably 10,000 pages like it. I will fix them, but its not something I can do in a few minutes. (this one is easy to fix programmatically, but others are a lot more complex) So my question is: do you have actual experience that these are bad enough to cause ranking problems (making them low quality)
On-Page Optimization | | loopyal0 -
SEF URLs. Should I use / or - ?
I have o activate SEF URLs in a website. Regarding SEO, is there any difference between using / or - ? I mean, Is it better to write URLs like this: http://www.domain.com/folder/folder/page or like this: http://www.domain.com/folder-folder-page ? Is there any difference? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | ociosu0 -
Is my H1 and H2 site structure proper?
If I have an h1 tag on the page that describes the purpose of the page, is it a bad idea to make all of the sub-headings h2 tags? A designer mentioned that it was frowned upon to make all of the secondary headings into h2 tags, or to use CSS to selectively style the heading tags.
On-Page Optimization | | dbuckles0 -
301 redirect and then keywords in URL
Hi, Matt Cutts says that 301 redirects, including the ones on internal pages, causes the loss of a little bit of link juice. But also, I know that keywords in the URL are very important. On our site, we've got unoptimized URLs (few keywords) in the internal pages. Is it worth doing a 301 redirect in order to optimize the URLs for each main page. 301 redirects are the only way we can do it on our premade cart For example (just an example) say our main (1 of the 4) keywords for the page is "brown shoes". I'm wondering if I should redirect something like shoes.com/shoecolors.html to shoes.com/brown-shoes.html In other words, with the loss of juice would we come out ahead? In what instances would we come out ahead?
On-Page Optimization | | BobGW0