Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. On-Page Optimization
    4. URL best practices, use folders or not ?

    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.

    URL best practices, use folders or not ?

    On-Page Optimization
    4
    10
    2077
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • 77Agency
      77Agency last edited by

      Hi

      I have a question about URLs. Client have all URL written after domain and have only one / slash in all URLs. Is this best practice or i need to use categories,folders?

      Thanks

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • Dr-Pete
        Dr-Pete Staff @77Agency last edited by

        It's a trade-off, for both SEO and users, and I don't think there's one answer that fits every situation. The category level can add information, but it also makes URLs longer, which can be bad for both bots and people. If you have short, descriptive categories that aren't repeated in the product/page names, and those categories mimic your site structure, then I think it can be positive.

        My argument was mostly against people adding categories just for SEO benefit (it's probably minimal, at best) or repeating every category, sub-category, etc. to the point of absurdity, causing keyword cannibalization and massive URLs. For example:

        www.bobscamerashop.com/cameras/digital-cameras/canon-cameras/eos-cameras/camera-canon-eos-rebel-t3

        Of course, that's also keyword stuffed, but I'm exaggerating to prove a point. You can go too far in either direction.

        In general, though, I don't think categories in the URL are necessarily bad. In some cases, as Woj said, they could be a positive for users and possible even SEO.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
        • wojkwasi
          wojkwasi @77Agency last edited by

          Think about it from the user's point of view. What would work best for them? Maybe even get some feedback from some site users if possible

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • wojkwasi
            wojkwasi @77Agency last edited by

            Will the site categories/products grow? If so, then the slash could be used to organise the structure & prepare for the future

            In the example, you presented:

            1. www.example.com/accounts-titanium
            2. www.example.com**/**accounts/titanium

            These are the same length & make no real difference

            When we compare these 2, however:

            1. www.example.com/open-demo-account
            2. www.example.com/accounts/open-demo-account

            You can see that #1 is shorter, doesn't repeat keyword (even though they are plural) & would be more likely clicked in the SERPs

            Does that help some more?

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • 77Agency
              77Agency last edited by

              http://www.seomoz.org/blog/should-i-change-my-urls-for-seo

              In this article point 2 is saying that the unstructured is better 😃 so i`m confused.

              wojkwasi Dr-Pete 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • 77Agency
                77Agency @77Agency last edited by

                the site is small about 60 pages and max depth level is 3

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • wojkwasi
                  wojkwasi @77Agency last edited by

                  I'd use folders or categories if the amount of products/items is large and/or going to expand

                  If it's a small amount & finite then make the URLs as short as possible 🙂

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                  • lavellester
                    lavellester @77Agency last edited by

                    Information architecture is important from a usability and search engine prospective.

                    I'd say go for the categories divided by the /

                    www.example.com**/**accounts/titanium
                    www.example.com/accounts/open-demo-account

                    This makes more sense and lends itself to scalability etc.

                    hope this helps.

                    there are some really good articles on information architecture on the seomoz and the web

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • 77Agency
                      77Agency @lavellester last edited by

                      URL is without any category or folder

                      www.example.com/credits

                      www.example.com/accounts-titanium

                      www.example.com/accounts-demo

                      www.example.com/open-demo-account

                      is this right or i need to use:

                      www.example.com**/**accounts/titanium

                      www.example.com/accounts/open-demo-account

                      lavellester wojkwasi 77Agency 4 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • lavellester
                        lavellester last edited by

                        not quite sure what you mean exactly - can you expand with and example?

                        Thanks

                        77Agency 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                        • 1 / 1
                        • First post
                          Last post

                        Got a burning SEO question?

                        Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                        Start my free trial


                        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.

                        • See all categories

                        Related Questions

                        • Ben-R

                          Best practices for publishing sponsored content

                          sponsored content content optimization on-page seo

                          Hello, Our website hosts sponsored content from different brands. Should we be listing the sponsor either on the frontend and/or through markup? - Would either way have any sort of an impact? The content itself is already clearly marked as 'sponsored content' but we were more interested in listing the specific sponsor. Also, we’re assuming the outbound links would need to be marked rel="sponsored" but are there any other best practices we should be implementing? Any insight would be appreciated.
                          Thank you in advance.
                          Best,

                          On-Page Optimization | | Ben-R
                          0
                        • webbutler13

                          Correct .htaccess settings for canonical url?

                          I want to forward all urls to http:www.mysite.com but am a little confuse because I am getting duplicate content error: Pages with Duplicate Page Content as of Jan 15http://titanappliancerepair.com/ 1 duplicatehttp://titanappliancerepair.com 1 duplicatehttp://titanappliancerepair.com/index.html 1 duplicate*****************************************************************What should I put ion htaccess file so I can forwardhttp://titanappliancerepair.com/index.htmlhttp://titanappliancerepair.comhttp://titanappliancerepair.com/to  http://www.titanappliancerepair.comor what is the correct way to do it?I'm confused because when I enter http://titanappliancerepair.com/ in browser it showshttp://titanappliancerepair.com so how can it be considered duplicate content?.Can someone help?I have godaddy and they have gave me this code to put RewriteEngine on
                          rewritecond %{http_host} ^coolexample.com [nc]
                          rewriterule ^(.)$ http://www.coolexample.com/$1 [r=301,nc]What is correct?

                          On-Page Optimization | | webbutler13
                          0
                        • 2bloggers

                          Best way to nofollow affiliate links?

                          I don't "nofollow" affiliate links but I have quite a few. Doing them one by one would just be an impossible job. Would it be best to get a plugin that nofollows EVERYTHING? What would google prefer? I need to DOFOLLOW some links because those sites deserve it.

                          On-Page Optimization | | 2bloggers
                          0
                        • dealblogger

                          How do I remove a Canonical URL Tag?

                          Some of my report cards say I have too many canonical URL tags. However, there is no information no how to delete one. Can someone give me a link or explain? Thanks.

                          On-Page Optimization | | dealblogger
                          0
                        • SeoMartin1

                          URLs and folder structure for an E-commerce

                          Hi there !-) I´m helping a friend who has a e-commerce about nail polish in Brazil. I´m a little in doubt about the urls and folder structure. Two questions: 1. There are 10 products per category and 50 categories. Should I put them all in the root folder or creat 2 major categories ( 25 sub-categories each one)? 2. Whats the better product page url ( the store has around 500) nailpolish.com/IMPORT/BRAND/NAME-OF-THE-PRODUCT OR nailpolish.com/COMPLETE-NAME-OF-THE-PRODUCT Whats the best recomandation?

                          On-Page Optimization | | SeoMartin1
                          0
                        • Trupanion

                          Best Practice for Deleting Pages

                          What is the best SEO practice for deleting pages?  We have a section in our website with Employee bios, and when the employee leaves we need to remove their page. How should we do this?

                          On-Page Optimization | | Trupanion
                          0
                        • smaavie

                          Avoiding "Duplicate Page Title" and "Duplicate Page Content" - Best Practices?

                          We have a website with a searchable database of recipes. You can search the database using an online form with dropdown options for: Course (starter, main, salad, etc)
                          Cooking Method (fry, bake, boil, steam, etc)
                          Preparation Time (Under 30 min, 30min to 1 hour, Over 1 hour) Here are some examples of how URLs may look when searching for a recipe: find-a-recipe.php?course=starter
                          find-a-recipe.php?course=main&preperation-time=30min+to+1+hour
                          find-a-recipe.php?cooking-method=fry&preperation-time=over+1+hour There is also pagination of search results, so the URL could also have the variable "start", e.g. find-a-recipe.php?course=salad&start=30 There can be any combination of these variables, meaning there are hundreds of possible search results URL variations. This all works well on the site, however it gives multiple "Duplicate Page Title" and "Duplicate Page Content" errors when crawled by SEOmoz. I've seached online and found several possible solutions for this, such as: Setting canonical tag Adding these URL variables to Google Webmasters to tell Google to ignore them Change the Title tag in the head dynamically based on what URL variables are present However I am not sure which of these would be best. As far as I can tell the canonical tag should be used when you have the same page available at two seperate URLs, but this isn't the case here as the search results are always different. Adding these URL variables to Google webmasters won't fix the problem in other search engines, and will presumably continue to get these errors in our SEOmoz crawl reports. Changing the title tag each time can lead to very long title tags, and it doesn't address the problem of duplicate page content. I had hoped there would be a standard solution for problems like this, as I imagine others will have come across this before, but I cannot find the ideal solution. Any help would be much appreciated. Kind Regards

                          On-Page Optimization | | smaavie
                          5
                        • scanlin

                          Best SEO structure for blog

                          What is the best SEO page/link structure for a blog with, say 100 posts that grows at a rate of 4 per month? Each post is 500+ words with charts/graphics; they're not simple one paragraph postings. Rather than use a CMS I have a hand crafted HTML/CSS blog (for tighter integration with the parent site, some dynamic data effects, and in general to have total control). I have a sidebar with headlines from all prior posts, and my blog home page is a 1 line summary of each article. I feel that after 100 articles the sidebar and home page have too many links on them. What is the optimal way to split them up? They are all covering the same niche topic that my site is about. I thought of making the side bar and home page only have the most recent 25 postings, and then create an archive directory for older posts. But categorizing by time doesn't really help someone looking for a specific topic. I could tag each entry with 2-3 keywords and then make the sidebar a sorted list of tags. Clicking on a tag would then show an intermediate index of all articles that have that tag, and then you could click on an article title to read the whole article. Or is there some other strategy that is optimal for SEO and the indexing robots? Is it bad to have a blog that is too heirarchical (where articles are 3 levels down from the root domain) or too flat (if there are 100s of entries)? Thanks for any thoughts or pointers.

                          On-Page Optimization | | scanlin
                          0

                        Get started with Moz Pro!

                        Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                        Start my free trial
                        Products
                        • Moz Pro
                        • Moz Local
                        • Moz API
                        • Moz Data
                        • STAT
                        • Product Updates
                        Moz Solutions
                        • SMB Solutions
                        • Agency Solutions
                        • Enterprise Solutions
                        Free SEO Tools
                        • Domain Authority Checker
                        • Link Explorer
                        • Keyword Explorer
                        • Competitive Research
                        • Brand Authority Checker
                        • Local Citation Checker
                        • MozBar Extension
                        • MozCast
                        Resources
                        • Blog
                        • SEO Learning Center
                        • Help Hub
                        • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                        • How-to Guides
                        • Moz Academy
                        • API Docs
                        About Moz
                        • About
                        • Team
                        • Careers
                        • Contact
                        Why Moz
                        • Case Studies
                        • Testimonials
                        Get Involved
                        • Become an Affiliate
                        • MozCon
                        • Webinars
                        • Practical Marketer Series
                        • MozPod
                        Connect with us

                        Contact the Help team

                        Join our newsletter
                        Moz logo
                        © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                        • Accessibility
                        • Terms of Use
                        • Privacy

                        Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.