URL Structure with deep Categories
-
Ladies n gents
Which sort of URLs do you suggest for Webshops with a deep structure of categories:
http://www.yourdomain.com/cat1/cat2/cat3/cat4/cat5/cat6/
(could get really long)
or better use just the last 2 categories:
http://www.yourdomain.com/cat5/cat6/
?
thanks for your suggestions
seth
-
Thanks for your help.
@ryan&joe: yes - I do know about that issue - unfortunately i dont have any chance to flatten our navigation (only because of people working with the navigation in our company) - im trying it for already 2 years, but its getting better and better
-
An overlooked use for directory structure is for your analytics. Lunametrics has a great post that will get you thinking about this over at http://www.lunametrics.com/blog/2010/09/22/designing-google-analytics-friendly-site/.
-
Seth, Ryan's response gets at a more important issue than the URL, so if you can flatten out your navigation, I would recommend that.
In response to the question you asked, I would recommend http://www.yourdomain.com/cat5/cat6/. With six categories in your URL, you'll be targeting too many keywords with each page and potentially having too many pages competing for the same keywords. SEO isn't all about getting as much traffic as you can, but getting it to the right pages so you can convert.
-
You are free to use whatever structure makes the most sense for you. I would recommend taking some time to think out the structure. Make sure it is sensible and does not add categories which are not useful.
What is important from a SEO perspective is how many clicks does it take users to access your pages.
Example 1 - URL: www.yourdomain.com/products/sports/tennis/rackets/wilson/x1000
If you have a link on your home page for "current specials" or "product of the month" that goes directly to the x1000, then it is 1-click for users to find the page. If you offer a link to "Wilson tennis rackets" then it would be 2 clicks for users to find the x1000 page.
Example 2 - URL: www.yourdomain.com/tennis-rackets/wilson-x1000
Without any special links it would be 2 clicks from your home page to see your x1000 page. From a SEO point of view this would not be as good as the first example above with the direct link to the item.
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
-
URL 301 Re-direct
Hello, If we publish a blog post with a url which accidentally contains a number at the end (blog.companyname.com/subject-title-0), is it best-practice to update the URL (e.g. to blog.companyname.com/subject-title) and put in a 301 re-direct from the old to the new one or should it simply be left as is? I've read that 301's lose link equity and relevance so is it really worth re-directing for the sake of a cleaner url? Thanks for your input! John
Technical SEO | | SEOCT1 -
Canonical sitemap URL different to website URL architecture
Hi, This may or may not be be an issue, but would like some SEO advice from someone who has a deeper understanding. I'm currently working on a clients site that has a bespoke CMS built by another development agency. The website currently has a sitemap with one link - EG: www.example.com/category/page. This is obviously the page that is indexed in search engines. However the website structure uses www.example.com/page, this isn't indexed in search engines as the links are canonical. The client is also using the second URL structure in all it's off and online advertising, internal links and it's also been picked up by referral sites. I suspect this is not good practice... however I'd like to understand whether there are any negative SEO effectives from this structure? Does Google look at both pages with regard to visits, pageviews, bounce rate, etc. and combine the data OR just use the indexed version? www.example.com/category/page - 63.5% of total pageviews
Technical SEO | | MikeSutcliffe
www.example.com/page - 34.31% of total pageviews Thanks
Mike0 -
Old URLs Appearing in SERPs
Thirteen months ago we removed a large number of non-corporate URLs from our web server. We created 301 redirects and in some cases, we simply removed the content as there was no place to redirect to. Unfortunately, all these pages still appear in Google's SERPs (not Bings) for both the 301'd pages and the pages we removed without redirecting. When you click on the pages in the SERPs that have been redirected - you do get redirected - so we have ruled out any problems with the 301s. We have already resubmitted our XML sitemap and when we run a crawl using Screaming Frog we do not see any of these old pages being linked to at our domain. We have a few different approaches we're considering to get Google to remove these pages from the SERPs and would welcome your input. Remove the 301 redirect entirely so that visits to those pages return a 404 (much easier) or a 410 (would require some setup/configuration via Wordpress). This of course means that anyone visiting those URLs won't be forwarded along, but Google may not drop those redirects from the SERPs otherwise. Request that Google temporarily block those pages (done via GWMT), which lasts for 90 days. Update robots.txt to block access to the redirecting directories. Thank you. Rosemary One year ago I removed a whole lot of junk that was on my web server but it is still appearing in the SERPs.
Technical SEO | | RosemaryB3 -
Keyword Phrase in URL structure
Wondered the best URL structure, to include a major keyword phrase. Our clients' case is that their domain name is not the main keyword. So should we include the keyword phrase in the URL structure to list all their office locations: A - www.website.com/anxiety-treatment/denver/1001
Technical SEO | | ErnieB
or
B - www.website.com/denver/1001 Would this be considered keyword stuffing? We'd like "A" above to rank for keyword phrases related to "anxiety treatment denver", etc.0 -
Multilingual Blog Structure
Hi I have a domain in 20 languages. I want to integrate a wordpress blog (in subfolders) in the 3 most important languages like EN-ES-FR (actually they will be 3 independent blogs) and I want to know which structure is the best one. OPTION 1 domain/en/blog/post1 domain/es/blog/post1 domain/fr/blog/post1 OPTION 2 domain/blog_en/post1 domain/blog_es/post1 domain/blog_fr/post1 Last question. For the rest of the 17 languages of my domain, can I put a link the english blog or is not recommended because maybe too many pages will be linking to the blog? Thank you
Technical SEO | | andromedical0 -
Ignore Urls with pattern.
I have 7000 warnings of urls because of a 302 redirect. http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/215/44060409.png/ I want to get rid of those, is it possible to get rid of the Urls with robots.txt. For example that it does not crawl anything that has /product_compare/ in its url? Thank you
Technical SEO | | levalencia10 -
Directory Categories
Is it important to select the right category for directory listings from an SEO point of view? I have located 2 appropriate categories in Business.com for my website: Category 1 = PR 5, Page Authority 53 Category 2 = PR 4, Page Authority 44 I presume number of links on the page is also a factor.
Technical SEO | | martyc0 -
URL Rewrite
Using the .htaccess file how do I rewrite a url from www.exampleurl.com/index.php?page=example to www.exampleurl.com/example removing index.php?page= Any help is muchly appreciated
Technical SEO | | CraigAddyman0