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
-
Removing site subdomains from Google search
Hi everyone, I hope you are having a good week? My website has several subdomains that I had shut down some time back and pages on these subdomains are still appearing in the Google search result pages. I want all the URLs from these subdomains to stop appearing in the Google search result pages and I was hoping to see if anyone can help me with this. The subdomains are no longer under my control as I don't have web hosting for these sites (so these subdomain sites just show a default hosting server page). Because of this, I cannot verify these in search console and submit a url/site removal request to Google. In total, there are about 70 pages from these subdomains showing up in Google at the moment and I'm concerned in case these pages have any negative impacts on my SEO. Thanks for taking the time to read my post.
Technical SEO | | QuantumWeb620 -
SEO Redirect
If we have several hundred domain names currently using a park page, would we be better served having them redirect to our corporate homepage for SEO purposes?
Technical SEO | | mkessler0 -
Using Web Applications for SEO
I am in the sign/banner business, for years I have had a flash based web application that I developed which allows customers to design their own signs/banners online. With the demise of flash i am prompted to begin developing an HTML5 based application to take it's place. Developing this software is a rather expensive endeavor so many local sign shops, which don't sell on the web, don't bother to develop such an application, but what if i gave it to them? I assume a fair amount would find great value in such an application thereby allowing their clients to communicate a design idea without having to drive to the store front. The application would actually run embedded on my site thus earning me a link back to my site. Question is this: Is this a bad idea. If dozens of sign shops are running my application embedded on their sites will the help or hurt me? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | RocketBanner0 -
Is SEO moz ranking tool reliable?
Good afternoon from 21 degrees C hot and sunny wetherby UK with the aroma of wetherby whalers fish and chips wafting through the office window... I'm begiining to question the vailidity of SEO moz ranking tool. Specifically for this site www.davidclick.com it ranks the site zero for term "York wedding photographer" Here is the evidence: http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc53/zymurgy_bucket/ranking-25-may-12copy.jpg I question it after checking this term on PC and networks ive never used before and i get the term ranking at 5th. Can anyone verify what SERP www.davicdclick.com ranks for "York wedding photographer" and indeed why SEO Moz ranking tool is scrorring in zero. Thanks in advance 😉
Technical SEO | | Nightwing0 -
seo moz crawl diagnosis
Hi seomozzers, We are creating a brand new website for a client and I would like to run an seo moz crawl to fix what has been done wrong. So my question is it ok to run an SEO moz crawl with a dev URL? Are final URLs and dev URLs will give me the same results or not? Basically, Should I wait for getting the final URL or is it ok to run a crawl under a dev URL such as www.dev2.example.com or http://183.2564.2864? Thank you 🙂
Technical SEO | | Ideas-Money-Art0 -
Suggestions on how to hire help with my SEO?
Hi, I just signed up with SEOMOZ and found some major duplicate content issues with Wordpress. I have installed Yoast SEO plug in but honestly am a little lost on how Wordpress handles it all and need guidance. I would love to hire someone to do some desktop share / Skype sessions to teach me the proper way to set this up but did not see if there was any place on SEOMOZ where employers and providers can connect. I am interested in more than just this one issue, looking for a freelancer ongoing to work on our site for SEO. Any suggestions? Thanks in advance Force7
Technical SEO | | Force70 -
Global SEO Targeting
Hi, I have a website currently on the domain example.co.uk (.com is not available) I'm looking to enter other markets such as Brazil, Russia - obviously content will need to change to suit the desired market / language. I'm looking for some information on the best practice to enter foreign markets. I was thinking maybe to create individual sites for each location eg: example.br example.ru This way I could localise each site in terms of business directories, content, language etc. Or have my example.co.uk with various languages on it Experience, suggestions are welcomed - thanks.
Technical SEO | | Socialdude0 -
Domain Forwarding and SEO
I have looked around and only saw older and contradicting responses to this question but what effect does having a domain with VALUABLE-KEYWORD.com forward to MAINSITE.com or COMMON-MISSPELLING.com forward to MAINSITE.com in terms of SEO and is it considered spammy or looked down upon
Technical SEO | | treytt0