Is my URL structure ideal?
-
.
-
Thanks everyone. This was very helpful. I will NOT include the state abbreviation. Ryan - I have an uppercase letter in every word. I will go ahead and format everything so that only lowercase letters are used. Thanks!
-
Simon and Yannick both offer good advice. One item I would add, it is a best practice to only use lower case letters in your URLs. If you do make a change, switch to all lower case letters as well.
I would also not ever change a URL in an attempt to stuff a keyword into it. URLs beyond the domain name are a very very low ranking factor. I would more likely want to change from your proposed URL to your current URL rather then vice-versa. In all likelihood, you can change your URL to mydomain/page=10 and it wont change your ranking.
To be clear, your current URL structure is desirable mostly because it is easy for people to read which can benefit CTR, and if someone links to your site using the URL they will include your important keywords. It may be a ranking factor but think of it as 0.001% type of thing which is not likely to ever make a difference. Your loss of link juice from the redirect is more impacting then such an incredibly minor change.
-
Hi Alexander, a good question.
I'm not sure it will benefit yourself or your visitors by adding in a State element such as FL to your URL structure. Main reason being 'semantic search', Google will know that FL means Florida and vice versa.
The actual decision probably lies with your keyword research, as in what the differences tend to be in search volumes between States and State Abbreviations for your main target keyword searches.
The shorter option without eg. FL looks neater from a user experience perspective, slightly easier to read. So long as you optimise the on-page well such as Titles, Descriptions, H1 tags etc then you'll be able to cater for both with the shorter URL.
Hope that helps, Regards, Simon
-
Hi there Alexander
Personally i would look at the following seeing that you want to have areas in your service at urls'.
mydomain.com/Florida/surety-bonds/Contractor-License-Bond/
That way you can build relevance over the area for other services too such as below if you know what i mean
-
The only thing you might want to change in your site/url structure is drill down to city level. If applicable? Don't live in the US so...
-
My title structure is properly in place. I just want to make sure there's nothing additional I can do since we are addressing URL Keywords today.
-
I'd put more effort in constructing the perfect title tag than the perfect url's. What you are talking about isn't really structure, it is more like: what to put in the url's.
Simply use the first url you mentioned. And in the title mention Florida Contractor license bond.
So the FL will not make any difference. Just make sure you mention it in your title and on-page of course, because that will help!
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
-
Question on site structure
My client is a nationwide company. They provide building maintenance services in 7 different cities. In each city they provide a different range of services. They currently have a single service page for each service and no mention on that page of the cities they offer the service. The service pages are getting no SERP visibility. We are running Paid Search and recommending SEO. I'm wondering whether it would be beneficial to build out specific service pages for each city so the content is more relevant to both users and search engines. What is best practice in this situation? Client wants to dominate SERPs in each market for the services they offer.
On-Page Optimization | | SEOinSunnyNelson0 -
Weird 404 Error URL's - Where to redirect?
For some reason, I end up with a bunch of weird 404 error URLs like these. /KRVWZ/SVfSZ/ /wp-content/upl /MKWTZ/RKYQZ/ /wp-content/upload What should I do with them? Should I redirect them or is there a better way to do something with them. I do use Yoast Premium if that makes a difference. Thanks in advance.
On-Page Optimization | | photoseo10 -
How would you improve our URL structure?
Hi Mozzers, I have a question about the URL structure on our website (www.ikwilzitzakken.nl). We now have a main category with "zitzakken" (beanbags). We also have different brands, types and colours. Now we have URL's like this: <a>https://www.ikwilzitzakken.nl/zitzakken/vetsak/vetsak-fs600-flokati-zitzak/_381_w_3544_3862_NL_1</a> which seems long and not clean. Please don't look at the query at the end, we can't do anything about that in our CMS. In english this would be: https://www.iwantbeanbags.nl/beanbags/vetsak/vetsak-fs600-flokati-beanbag/_381_w_3544_3862_NL_1 How would you optimise this? We do have good rankings (this one ranks #1 for example), but I think our overall structure could be way better. Would love your thoughts about this.
On-Page Optimization | | TheOnlineWarp0 -
Placement of key words in URL
I notice that the MOZ Page Grader considers "/keyword1/keyword2-keyword3" in a URL string to be less effective than "/keyword1-keyword2-keyword3". Is this correct from Google's perspective? If I am trying to maximise my SEO for the page title "Business building tips", for example, does Google think my URL is more relevant if it's in the form: 1. www.website.com/business-building-tips
On-Page Optimization | | Gavin.Atkinson
2. www.website.com/business/building-tips or
3. www.website.com/business/business-building-tips My instinct tells me 3 is more powerful, but logic tells me if I have a whole section devoted to "business" and one of those pages is "business building tips" then 2 should work just as well, possibly better?0 -
URL structure
Hello all, I am about to sort out my websites link structure, and was wondering which approach to our services page would be best. should we have: services/digital-marketing & services/website-design etc or: digital-marketing/website-design & digital-marketing/seo Basically I see digital marketing as the top level category that is the umbrella term for all of our digital services. But would it make more sense to have service to be the main category and digital marketing within that (along with all the other services from web design to seo)? all thoughts welcome!
On-Page Optimization | | wseabrook0 -
URL best practices
Hi, I have a problem here, I used http://www.vietnamvisacorp.com/faqs.html instead of http://www.vietnamvisacorp.com/faqs. Hence, http://www.vietnamvisacorp.com/faqs will be caused 404 page. My question is should I change from faqs.html to faqs (no .html)? Thanks in advance any advice?
On-Page Optimization | | JohnHuynh0 -
301 Redirects From a URL without Keyphrases to one With Keyphrases
I have a client that sells services. Each service offered currently has a URL structure like this: www.companyname.com/product/asp$view-id-page3022-item-24 These pages are pretty old, and I would love to have a more user-friendly URL like this: www.companyname.com/product/purple-swatch-watch If I rename the URL and do a 301 redirect, what impact will that have on search? Ideally, this page will be optimized for "purple swatch watch", but the current URL structure is so... well, you know. My apologies if this has been answered before. I tried looking through archived of 301 issues, but lost hope after my first 10 or so attempts at answered didn't help this specific issue.
On-Page Optimization | | ericav0 -
Seasonal site structure
Bit of a complicated one for anyone who likes a challenge.. We sell a range of products which are very seasonal, so therefore have a seasonal section within the store with the products categorized into their relevant categories. In additon to this i wanted to also create a feature of each season so in effect pull forward on to a new tab the relevant season ie: Valentine so that customers didn't have to hunt for the products by going via seasonal shop etc The problem is that my site urls display last-category/product-title so in effect as the seasons change these urls will be deleted. They do remain elsewhere in our catalogue.. Does this make sense?
On-Page Optimization | | LadyApollo0