Seeking URL Advice
-
Hey Moz Community,
I'm looking for some URL structure advice for a new directory of a website. We're trying to rank for the term 'internships abroad in <country>'</country> We have roughly 100 pages targeting specific countries.
Right now the URL structure is www.gooverseas.com/internships-abroad/china, but some of my colleagues believe this structure would be better: www.gooverseas.com/internships-abroad/intern-in-china. I personally prefer the shorter structure, but we couldn't come to any agreement so we thought we'd pose the question to the community.
Any thoughts?
Thanks!
-
Thanks for the correction Keri. You are absolutely correct and I fixed my reply based on your sharp eyes
-
Thanks again for your feedback!
These pages are all pretty new (4 weeks tops), but we are aware of the link juice issue. Our purposed solution has been to create a page that lists all of our country pages (approx. 125) and have this page linked to from our homepage. Hopefully Google can then get from our homepage to all of our country pages in two jumps.
Sound?
-
I would go with the shorter URL structure in this case (http://www.gooverseas.com/internships-abroad/china) and use on-page key term targeting (as stated above) to help with semantic definition of the page content.
I noticed that none of the country specific pages have Page Authority (using SEOmoz toolbar) -- I'm not an expert on Drupal so not sure if the pages are brand new (they all have very recent cache dates and don't show up in the Internet Archive) -- or if the 'CTools jump menu' is preventing link juice from passing which will be difficult getting them to rank (unless they receive inbound links at some point).
-
Thanks, Anthony, for your response. Just to clarify how our CMS works, however, internships-abroad is actually a subdirectory of gooverseas.com. Removing the slash is not possible in this situation.
Does this alter your advise?
Thanks!
-
Ryan, I presume you didn't mean to include a space between internships and abroad, and that the primary recommendation should read mysite.com/internships-abroad/china?
-
Hi Andrew -
Shorter URLs generally out perform longer URLs. Also, fewer directories or file paths in he URL makes it easier to distribute link juice to the detail pages throughout the site (this necessitates a fairly flat file structure though and may not be the right solution for larger sites with diverse content, products & information requiring more complex taxonomies - this doesn't seem to be necessary in your case however).
I would suggest www.gooverseas.com/internships-abroad-china ... you get your keyword phrase in the URL with an economy of words in the process - leaving out '-in-' will save 4 character spaces. You can make up for this in your on-page key term targeting using meta tags, H1's, etc to create the semantic drill-down.
TY
-
I'm looking for some URL structure advice for a new directory of a website. We're trying to rank for the term 'internships abroad in <country>'</country>
My primary recommendation is:
mysite.com/internships-abroad/china
The above URL is a logical structure. You have one page for each country. You also can offer a category page providing general information such as general advice applicable to anyone considering an internship in another country. The URL has relevancy for your keywords, your site structure and readers. It's not spammy as keywords are not repeated.
Another URL structure that works is:
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
-
Why the url inspection is disabled in search console ?
In this situation, how can we make our pages be fetched by google?
On-Page Optimization | | supporthandle0 -
URL Structure Suggestion
Hi
On-Page Optimization | | sandeep.clickdesk
My site url: http://goo.gl/AiOgu1
We are working on URL structure of our website. I have one query about URL structure.
Which one is good URL structure according to user and SEO prospective.
The targeted keyword for the particular page is "wordpress live chat". Is it worthful to rewrite the present url "https://www.abc.com/wordpress" to "https://www.abc.com/wordpress-live-chat" Please suggest.0 -
Backlink URL: With or Without WWW?
When it comes to backlinks. Does it matter with or without WWW? For example my website is without WWW and I backlink with WWW, will it still affect my website rank?
On-Page Optimization | | Japracool0 -
When You Add a Robots.txt file to a website to block certain URLs, do they disappear from Google's index?
I have seen several websites recently that have have far too many webpages indexed by Google, because for each blog post they publish, Google might index the following: www.mywebsite.com/blog/title-of-post www.mywebsite.com/blog/tag/tag1 www.mywebsite.com/blog/tag/tag2 www.mywebsite.com/blog/category/categoryA etc My question is: if you add a robots.txt file that tells Google NOT to index pages in the "tag" and "category" folder, does that mean that the previously indexed pages will eventually disappear from Google's index? Or does it just mean that newly created pages won't get added to the index? Or does it mean nothing at all? thanks for any insight!
On-Page Optimization | | williammarlow0 -
URL Structure for Home Decorating site
Hi, I am about to launch a home decorating ideas website. I am stuck to determining the ideal URL structure, and the options are: Category: myhomedecoratingsite.com/room/master-suite/
On-Page Optimization | | adepalma
myhomedecoratingsite.com/kitchen/
myhomedecoratingsite.com/room/living
myhomedecoratingsite.com/master-suite/
myhomedecoratingsite.com/living-room/ Post: myhomedecoratingsite.com/interior/beautiful-master-suite/
myhomedecoratingsite.com/interior/cozy-living-room/
myhomedecoratingsite.com/room/master-suite/beautiful-modern-suite/
myhomedecoratingsite.com/room/living/cozy-contemporary-living Are these any good? What your best suggestion? Thanks in advance for your inputs. Al0 -
Rewrite URL for big website
My website is currently have over 1000 000 links indexed by Google , i'm going to rewrite all of these links, is this crazy ? Can someone give me a checklist to avoid going wrong way ? My website: http://www.webtretho.com/forum/ My current url format: webtretho.com/forum/f[forum_id]/[thread-title-thread_id/ Ex: Old URL: http://www.webtretho.com/forum/f90/chia-se-dau-hieu-mang-thai-1357342-new/ New URL: http://www.webtretho.com/forum/chuan-bi-mang-thai/chia-se-dau-hieu-mang-thai-1357342-new/
On-Page Optimization | | firstjames0 -
Question about URLs
Hello! I have a client that wants to upload an URL like this: www.example.com/keyword/page-name.html The main problem is that www.example.com/keyword/ doesn't exist and gives a 404 error so I'd prefer not doing that...... What do you think about this? And if the client wants to go ahead, is there any solution? A 301 to the final page would help? Thank you in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | Juandbbam0 -
All Caps in URL
Hello, we're working with a corporate client to make changes to their URL structure. We recommended that they use a structure like "domain.com/state/city/location". Their IT department is on board, but they just mentioned that all of the state and city info will be pulled from a database where it is all caps. So it would be like this "domain.com/STATE/CITY/location" I'm concerned that it may be spammy, but I can't find any definitive information online. We usually like to test issues like this on our own sites before advising clients, but we're working up against a quick deadline. Any help with this issue would be great, especially real world experience, not just theories. Thank you.
On-Page Optimization | | interactivek0