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.
What's the best possible URL structure for a local search engine?
-
Hi Mozzers,
I'm working at AskMe.com which is a local search engine in India i.e if you're standing somewhere & looking for the pizza joints nearby, we pick your current location and share the list of pizza outlets nearby along with ratings, reviews etc. about these outlets.
Right now, our URL structure looks like www.askme.com/delhi/pizza-outlets for the city specific category pages (here, "Delhi" is the city name and "Pizza Outlets" is the category) and www.askme.com/delhi/pizza-outlets/in/saket for a category page in a particular area (here "Saket") in a city. The URL looks a little different if you're searching for something which is not a category (or not mapped to a category, in which case we 301 redirect you to the category page), it looks like www.askme.com/delhi/search/pizza-huts/in/saket if you're searching for pizza huts in Saket, Delhi as "pizza huts" is neither a category nor its mapped to any category. We're also dealing in ads & deals along with our very own e-commerce brand AskMeBazaar.com to make the better user experience and one stop shop for our customers.
Now, we're working on URL restructure project and my question to you all SEO rockstars is, what can be the best possible URL structure we can have? Assume, we have kick-ass developers who can manage any given URL structure at backend.
-
In regard to shorter URLs:
The goal is to find a proper balance for your needs. You want to group things into sub-groups based on proper hierarchy, however you also don't want to go too deep if you don't have enough pages/individual listings deep down the chain.
So the Moz post you point to refers to that - at a certain point, having too many layers can be a problem. However there is one one single correct answer.
The most important thing to be aware of and consider is your own research and evaluation process for your situation in your market.
However, as far as what you found most people search for, be aware that with location based search, many people don't actually type in a location when they are doing a search. Except Google DOES factor in the location when deciding what to present in results. So the location matters even though people don't always include it themselves.
The issue is not to become completely lost in making a decision either though - consider all the factors, make a business decision to move forward with what you come up with, and be consistent in applying that plan across the board.
What I mean in regard to URLs and Breadcrumbs:
If the URL is www.askme.com/dehli/saket/pizza/pizza-hut/ the breadcrumb should be:
Home > Dehli > Saket > Pizza > Pizza Hut
If the URL is www.askme.com/pizza-huts/saket-delhi/ the breadcrumb should be
Home > Pizza Hut > Saket-Delhi
-
While thinking about the ideal URL structure, I did consider some of the blogs (including this one by Rand: https://moz.com/blog/15-seo-best-practices-for-structuring-urls, check point #11. Attaching a screenshot as well) and websites which were doing really good with their one level static URLs.
I actually did some keyword research on user's search pattern and google suggest data. Generally, our target search term comes before ("pizza huts" in this case) the geo location, may be people search things in a different way in India. Hence, I thought of keeping the URL structure that way.
A little confused about this point though "URL, breadcrumb both should match the sequence. If one has one sequence, and the other has a different sequence, that confuses search algorithms". Because, have seen many website doing tremendously well who're not following these principles.
-
Proximity to root is not a valid best practice, especially in this instance.
Here's why:
More people search based on geo-location than actual business name when looking for location based businesses. So by putting "Pizza Hut" first, that contradicts this notion. It implies "more people look for Pizza Hut than the number of people looking for all the different businesses in this geo-location".
Also, by using the URL you suggest, that's blatant over-optimization - attempting to stuff exact match keywords into the URL. In reality, people use a very wide range of keyword variations, so that's another conflict that harms your overall focus needs.
All of the individual factors need to reinforce each other as much as is reasonable for human readability. So URL, breadcrumb both should match the sequence. If one has one sequence, and the other has a different sequence, that confuses search algorithms.
-
Thank you so much once again Sir Alan.
Well, I'm just thinking aloud here. How about putting my primary keyword in the first level instead of having this well structured URL syntax? For instance:
Here,
- The complete primary keyword (or target search string) is closer to the domain. "Closer your keywords to the domain, better it is", I heard this somewhere. Is it still true and adds any additional value?
- We don't have deep URL directory structure and our primary keyword is together too. In the well structure URL (the one you suggested), the target keyword is broken into multiple pieces & the URL directories.
- But, I'm not exposing the hierarchy/navigation-flow via URL. I hope that's okay as far as I'm handling it cleanly from the breadcrumbs and rich snippets. What's your take on this?
I know there are chances of URL conflicts. For instance, if we have an area "foo" in the city "bar" vs a city "foo bar". I'll end up having the same URL for both the cases i.e /<search-query>-in-foo-bar. There are many such edge cases, I'm on it.</search-query>
-
Local pack exists, yet is far from complete or consistently helpful. Business directories thrive even in an age of local packs. It's all about finding the best way to provide value, and the internet is large enough that many players can play in the game.
-
Sorry for my ignorance here but does googl.in not show the local pack in its serps, with reviews and ratings?
if so, isn't the business model flawed, assuming you're going to be charging companies to be listed in your directory when they can get listed as a local business in Google right now for free?
perhaps I've overlooked something...
-
Business listing directory environments have a big challenge when it comes to URL structure / information architecture and content organization because:
- Many businesses are searched for based on geo-location
- Many of those require hyper-local referencing while many others can be "in the general vacinity"
- Many other businesses are not as relevant to geo-location
So what is a site to do?
The best path is to recognize that as mobile becomes more and more critical to searcher needs, hyper-local optimization becomes more critical. It becomes the most important focus for SEO.
As a result, URL structure needs to reflect hyper-local first and foremost. So:
- www.askme.com/delhi/
- www.askme.com/delhi/saket/
- www.askme.com/delhi/saket/pizza/
- www.askme.com/dehli/saket/pizza/pizza-hut/
This way, if someone searches for "Pizza Hut Dehli", all of the Dehli Pizza Huts will show up, regardless of neighborhood, while anyone searching for "Pizza Hut Saket" will get more micro-locally relevant results.
And for those businesses that serve a wider geo-area, even though they too will be assigned a hyper-local final destination page, they will still be related to their broader geo-area as well. So someone searching "plumbers in Dehli" will get the right results and then they can choose any of the plumbers in Dehli regardless of what neighborhood they are in.
Note how I removed /search/ from the URL structure as well. It's an irrelevant level.
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
-
My url disappeared from Google but Search Console shows indexed. This url has been indexed for more than a year. Please help!
Super weird problem that I can't solve for last 5 hours. One of my urls: https://www.dcacar.com/lax-car-service.html Has been indexed for more than a year and also has an AMP version, few hours ago I realized that it had disappeared from serps. We were ranking on page 1 for several key terms. When I perform a search "site:dcacar.com " the url is no where to be found on all 5 pages. But when I check my Google Console it shows as indexed I requested to index again but nothing changed. All other 50 or so urls are not effected at all, this is the only url that has gone missing can someone solve this mystery for me please. Thanks a lot in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Apr 8, 2019, 8:19 AM | Davit19850 -
Changing URL structure of date-structured blog with 301 redirects
Howdy Moz, We've recently bought a new domain and we're looking to change over to it. We're also wanting to change our permalink structure. Right now, it's a WordPress site that uses the post date in the URL. As an example: http://blog.mydomain.com/2015/01/09/my-blog-post/ We'd like to use mod_rewrite to change this using regular expressions, to: http://newdomain.com/blog/my-blog-post/ Would this be an appropriate solution? RedirectMatch 301 /./././(.) /blog/$1
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Feb 3, 2015, 12:52 PM | IanOBrien0 -
404's - Do they impact search ranking/how do we get rid of them?
Hi, We recently ran the Moz website crawl report and saw a number of 404 pages from our site come back. These were returned as "high priority" issues to fix. My question is, how do 404's impact search ranking? From what Google support tells me, 404's are "normal" and not a big deal to fix, but if they are "high priority" shouldn't we be doing something to remove them? Also, if I do want to remove the pages, how would I go about doing so? Is it enough to go into Webmaster tools and list it as a link no to crawl anymore or do we need to do work from the website development side as well? Here are a couple of examples that came back..these are articles that were previously posted but we decided to close out: http://loyalty360.org/loyalty-management/september-2011/let-me-guessyour-loyalty-program-isnt-working http://loyalty360.org/resources/article/mark-johnson-speaks-at-motivation-show Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Nov 4, 2014, 1:03 PM | carlystemmer0 -
Incorrect URL shown in Google search results
Can anyone offer any advice on how Google might get the url which it displays in search results wrong? It currently appears for all pages as: <cite>www.domainname.com › Register › Login</cite> When the real url is nothing like this. It should be: www.domainname.com/product-type/product-name. This could obviously affect clickthroughs. Google has indexed around 3,000 urls on the site and they are all like this. There are links at the top of the page on the website itself which look like this: Register » Login » which presumably could be affecting it? Thanks in advance for any advice or help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Nov 4, 2014, 10:57 AM | Wagada0 -
Does Google Read URL's if they include a # tag? Re: SEO Value of Clean Url's
An ECWID rep stated in regards to an inquiry about how the ECWID url's are not customizable, that "an important thing is that it doesn't matter what these URLs look like, because search engines don't read anything after that # in URLs. " Example http://www.runningboards4less.com/general-motors#!/Classic-Pro-Series-Extruded-2/p/28043025/category=6593891 Basically all of this: #!/Classic-Pro-Series-Extruded-2/p/28043025/category=6593891 That is a snippet out of a conversation where ECWID said that dirty urls don't matter beyond a hashtag... Is that true? I haven't found any rule that Google or other search engines (Google is really the most important) don't index, read, or place value on the part of the url after a # tag.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Oct 11, 2014, 2:26 PM | Atlanta-SMO0 -
Where is the best place to put a sitemap for a site with local content?
I have a simple site that has cities as subdirectories (so URL is root/cityname). All of my content is localized for the city. My "root" page simply links to other cities. I very specifically want to rank for "topic" pages for each city and I'm trying to figure out where to put the sitemap so Google crawls everything most efficiently. I'm debating the following options, which one is better? Put the sitemap on the footer of "root" and link to all popular pages across cities. The advantage here is obviously that the links are one less click away from root. Put the sitemap on the footer of "city root" (e.g. root/cityname) and include all topics for that city. This is how Yelp does it. The advantage here is that the content is "localized" but the disadvantage is it's further away from the root. Put the sitemap on the footer of "city root" and include all topics across all cities. That way wherever Google comes into the site they'll be close to all topics I want to rank for. Thoughts? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Feb 26, 2014, 10:25 PM | jcgoodrich0 -
What are Soft 404's and are they a problem
Hi, I have some old pages that were coming up in google WMT as a 404. These had links into them so i thought i'd do a 301 back to either the home page or to a relevant category or page. However these are now listed in WMT as soft 404's. I'm not sure what this means and whether google is saying it doesn't like this? Any advice welcomed.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Dec 2, 2013, 8:52 PM | Aikijeff0 -
Brackets vs Encoded URLs: The "Same" in Google's eyes, or dup content?
Hello, This is the first time I've asked a question here, but I would really appreciate the advice of the community - thank you, thank you! Scenario: Internal linking is pointing to two different versions of a URL, one with brackets [] and the other version with the brackets encoded as %5B%5D Version 1: http://www.site.com/test?hello**[]=all&howdy[]=all&ciao[]=all
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Oct 7, 2013, 3:15 PM | mirabile
Version 2: http://www.site.com/test?hello%5B%5D**=all&howdy**%5B%5D**=all&ciao**%5B%5D**=all Question: Will search engines view these as duplicate content? Technically there is a difference in characters, but it's only because one version encodes the brackets, and the other does not (See: http://www.w3schools.com/tags/ref_urlencode.asp) We are asking the developer to encode ALL URLs because this seems cleaner but they are telling us that Google will see zero difference. We aren't sure if this is true, since engines can get so _hung up on even one single difference in character. _ We don't want to unnecessarily fracture the internal link structure of the site, so again - any feedback is welcome, thank you. 🙂0