New URL Strucutre
-
Hello all!
I'm new to SeoMoz and would like to introduce myself and say thanks for all of the great content. This is definitely the premium website I have been looking for.
My question is regarding a new URL structure that will be implemented with our website redesign. We are looking to make our URL's more user and SEO friendly. We will be using 301 redirects to reroute our existing structure when the site goes live.
Background
I work in a company that retails automotive tires. I would consider class (performance, off-road, highway, etc.) to be the most important category, but based on our analytics we receive much more traffic from brand terms. This is most likely because our customers are not educated on specific tire classes and generally do head term searches or search by brand / product name. Ultimately the will have to buy from a certain class based on driving habits.Link and URL Structure
(Parameters)- The model page includes links to individual tire size specific pages.
- We are using the model page as our primary SEO page because the only difference from the 5 - 60 tire size specific pages per model will be the tire size itself. This means that all of the remaining content will be duplicated multiple times over.
- All links to the tire size specific page from the model page will have a rel="nofollow" attribute attached to it.
- All tire size specific pages will have a rel="canonical" tag pointing back to the model page
Out of the following structures, which would you consider to be the best format:
1. http://www.company.com/category/brand/model
or
2. http://www.company.com/brand/category/model
or
3. http://www.company.com/tires/category/modelWe will append the specific tire-size to the URL on the item specific pages.
Any other options or strategies will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance for your help!
-
Thanks for the fast response guys!
The "By Brand" path is basically for SEO purposes only. 90% of our visitors use one of two forms to find their tire size.
The first form is a vehicle search which breaks down to the specific tire size and the minimum speed rating requirements. This form accounts for 80% of our form completions.
The second form is by the specific tire size.
When a visitor completes one of these forms, they are only given results that link to the specific item pages that match their vehicle.
We actually do not want people using the "by brand / category" method to find their products as this will almost always lead them down an empty path. Tires must match an exact size for that vehicle.
One the other hand, we do want to show up in search results for these products. Our current results bring us quite a bit of traffic. This method is just to get them into the website. We will have a "Do these tires match my vehicle" form on the this page. If they do not, we will take them to a page explaining why not and provide them with alternate, matching results. By Brand is great for browsing but at the end of the day the tire must be a fit for the vehicle.
Ultimately the end focus of the website will be for them to search by vehicle.
An example of an item level URL (based on Roberts reply) would be:
brand category model item (tire size)
www.company.com/Michelin/Performance/Primacy-MXV4/2055516This same page would be duplicated 40+ times for each tire size available, with links to these item pages originating from the model page:
www.company.com/Michelin/Performance/Primacy-MXV4/Would the 40+ individual item pages leading from the model page produce duplicate content issues? These pages will contain the exact same content including our features and benefits and user reviews.
The path of "by brand" from the home page would look as follows:
Home -> Michelin -> Primacy MXV4 - > 205/55R16
or
Home -> Michelin -> Performance -> Primacy MXV4 - > 205/55R16
Whichever one would be deemed better.I just want to make sure I get it right the first time.
Thanks for the responses!
-
When looking at what people search on, besides tire or discount tires, the brands are right up there. Given that most recommend a structure of Category/sub category/product I would suggest: company.com/Michelin/all-terrain/60,000-mile or the same with 60,000-mile replaced with heavy duty or some other product descriptor. Here I am assuming all-terrain would be a model. (My guess is that all companies use their own independent model names and unless someone knows that model they would not necessarily search on it). An example would be a Michelin Primacy MXV4.....how many people search on that model??? Compared to how many search for automobile, light truck, off road, etc. I want to hit what the majority are searching on.
You said you are using the model page (again, Michelin Primacy? or something like All-Terrain?) as the primary SEO page and I am not sure about what you mean. Based on how people seem to search for tires, I would think having the Tire Brands optimized and then optimizing the model would be best (Frankly, short of the tire size links, I don't see a reason to not fully optimize any page - that way they are all working for you).
Another item you did not mention was the ability of the shopper to look up their auto, year, model, etc. and find the tire for their vehicle. Are you including that functionality on the homepage? I think most would like that as it is easier than trying to go figure out what type tire they have.
You said you retail tires so I am assuming you have a retail location (if you are also ECommerce, insure that your CMS will adjust for dynamic urls to search engine friendly like you are describing here). If you have retail locations insure that you have optimized for Google Places, etc.
With this, a final consideration for me (and I am not a subject matter expert in tire purchase habits) would be to be sure I was mobile compatible especially if I was retail.
Hope this helps, got any good deals on Goodyear P285 70 R17's..
-
I would structure the URLs in how the users are going to be navigating your site. How will they GET to the specified page?
Homepage>click
Category>click
Brand>click
Model ?
Is yes, than your first option is the best choice.
The user should be able to look at the URL and deduce the hierarchy of the site from the "folder" structure (even though those folders may be virtual)
Hope this help!
-Dan
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
-
Move To a full new Website
Hey everyone, I'm going to change my website's Domain, Server, CMS and Theme I can't find any full & detailed answer to how to do that without losing anything, is anybody here has a full resource or could tell me a how-to checklist for doing that. Thanks in advance,
Web Design | | Mahmoud.ahmad.taha0 -
Second Store URL
Our store has been up and running for about 18 months and has been more successful than expected. Unfortunately we have run into a few minor issues with customers wanting to pick up in store but much of the online parts we sell are drop ship. We have made the decision to open a second store. One will support our brand (using current URL)and reflect products and pricing we offer at our B&M locations. The second will continue down the path we have been going but under a completely different brand (and URL) in no way tied to our B&M stores. My question is this: Would it be smarter to re brand the store we have now and change the URL.?We would then create the second site as our corporate branded site. Or do we adjust the currently site and then create a second site with the new brand. The only real hold up is that the re branded store will generate far more revenue and the current site is optimized very well. However if i change the URL the optimization will go out the window .
Web Design | | Rillik0 -
New ecommerce site: Close old site and full domain redirect or keep it linking to new site?
We have rebranded and are working on our new site (B). Our old site (A) has a much higher domain/page authority than our new site. Currently we have the original Site A still there, with all links/pages pointing to the new Site B when people click. I am unsure whether we'd be best to close down the Site A completely and do a full domain redirect to Site B. Site A: 10 years age and has a moderate amount of links to it.
Web Design | | ModowestNZ
Homepage - PA: 24 DA:11 Site B: 6 months age, few links
Homepage - PA: 1 DA:2 My concern with the full domain redirect is that the indexed/ranking pages would dissapear. The benefit is less brand confusion for our niche range of party accessories.0 -
Moving servers which means moving ip address but using the same URL. Would it harm the website's SEO?
Hello everyone, The server (in-house) which we use to host our website is a bit old. We are using CDN77 for our static content. What if I move all our website to the CDN service? meaning I use their storage capability and just have our url point to the IP address they provide. Would that hurt our rankings?
Web Design | | Edgar-Cerecerez0 -
Is there an issue if we show our old mobile site to Google & new site to users
Hi, We have our existing mobile site that contains interlinking in footer & content and new mobile site that does not have interlinking. We will show existing mobile site to google crawler & new mobile site to users. Will this be taken as black hat by Google. The mobile site & desktop site will have same url across devices & browsers. Regards
Web Design | | vivekrathore0 -
Totally flat URL structure
Hi Mozzers! I've just been viewing a website with a flat URL structure - the site has a definite structure - with various sections - and yet the URL structure doesn't reflect this... The developer tells me this is purely for SEO purposes! Would be interested in your thoughts...
Web Design | | McTaggart0 -
Google penalty for links opening in new tab?
Our web services provided suggested that Google doesn't like in-text links that open the link in a new tab. Can anyone verify this? We often link to outside credible resources for our audience, though it seems smarter to open in a new tab rather than risk that the person will not navigate back to our site after finding us. Thank you in advance!
Web Design | | jhamlin0 -
Has Anyone Had Issues With ASP.NET 4.0 URL Routing?
I'm seeing some odd results in my SEOMOZ results with a new site I just released that is using the ASP.NET 4.0 URL routing. I am seeing thousands(!) of duplicate results, for instance, because the crawl has uncovered something like this: http://www.mysite.com/
Web Design | | TroyCarlson
http://www.mysite.com/default.aspx (so far, so good, though I wish it wouldn't show both)
http://www.mysite.com/default.aspx/about/ (what the heck -?)
http://www.mysite.com/default.aspx/about/about/ (WTF!?)
http://www.mysite.com/default.aspx/about/about/products/ (and on and on ad infinitum) I'm also seeing problems pop up in my sitemap because extensionless urls have an odd "eurl.axd/abunchofnumbersgohere" appended to the end of every address which is breaking links. sigh Buyer beware. I've found articles that discuss the "eurl.axd" issue here and there (this one seems very good), but nothing about the weird crawl issue I outlined above. Any advice?0