URL Structure - Keywords vs. Information Architecture/Navigation
-
I'm creating the URL structure for an ecommerce site and was wondering if it's better to structure my URLs according to the most popular way people word their key phrases or by what makes most sense from a navigation perspective.
Let's say I'm selling clothing (I'm not, just an example). I want the site to be open enough so a user can navigate by Person Type (Men's, Women's, Children's), Clothing Type (Shoes, Shirts, Hats), and Brands (Nike, Reebok, adidas).
My gut and past experience say to structure the URLs from the least specific to the most specific:
But I know "men's Nike shoes" is searched for more than "men's shoes Nike", which would render this URL:
I know mysite.com/mens-nike-shoes would be best, but the folders setup is what I have to work with.
So which is best for SEO? URLs that play to the structure of the most searched for key phrases? Or URLs that follow the information architecture/navigation of a site?
Nate
-
For an overall ranking perspective, exact match is going to be better (all other things being completely equal). However, websites are never perfect vacuums of comparison. Regardless of which format you choose, you will still be able to overcome your competition through proper on-page optimization, and great link building.
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 structure with broad search phrase but specific intent
My question is regarding some difficult URL structure questions in an online real estate marketplace. Our problem is that our customers search behavior is very broad, but their intent very narrow. For IRL examples go to objektia (dot) se. Example: Lease commercial space Stockholm Is a usual search query, wherein the user searches for the **broad category **commercial space, in the geography of Stockholm. The problem is that their intent is actually much more specific, since: Commercial space === [Office, Retail, Industrial, Storage, Properties] I have previously asked the forum for help regarding the placement of products in our URL-hierarchy, in which I got some good answers. We chose to go the route of alternative #3, ie placing our products (real estate listings), directly beneath their respective category (neighborhoods). https://moz.com/community/q/placement-of-products-in-url-structure-for-best-category-page-rankings Basically we chose to have the following URL structure: Structure: domain.se/category/subcategory/product Example: domain.se/Stockholm/suburb-of-stockholm/specific-listing-12 Now the question is, how do we deal with the **space type **modifier in our URL structure. Nobody wants to see retail space when they are after office space, so our current search page solution (category page) is the following: Structure: domain.se/space-type/neighborhood/sub-neighborhood All space types: domain.se/commercial-space/neighborhood/sub-neighborhood Specific space type: domain.se/office-space/neighborhood/sub-neighborhood Now, the problem with our current solution in combination with our intent to move our product pages into this hierarchy, is that every product page will be (and is today) linking towards the specific type category. Our internal link network would be built around type categories that are extremely relevant from a UX standpoint, but almost worthless (surprisingly) from an organic traffic standpoint. Also, every search page (category page) for each space type would be competing for the same search broad search phrase. The alternative is to place the type modifier at the end of the URL: Category page type at the end: domain.se/neighborhood/sub-neighborhood/type Listing page (product page), type at the end: domain.se/neighborhood/sub-neighborhood/street-address/type/listing-12
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Viktorsodd0 -
URL Construction
Working on an old site that currently has category urls (that productively rank) like this example: LakeNameBoating.com/category/705687/rentals I want to enhance the existing mid page one rank for terms related to "Lake Name Boat Rentals," 301ing the old urls to the new, would you construct the new urls as: LakeNameBoating.com/lake-name-boat-rentals or... LakeNameBoating.com/boat-rentals And why? It's all for one particular lake with "name" being just an anonymous placeholder example. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010 -
Duplicate/ <title>element too long issues</title>
I have a "duplicate <title>"/"<title> element too long" issue with thousands of pages. In the future I would like to automate these in a way that keeps them from being duplicated AND too long. The solution I came up with was to standardize these monthly posts with a similar, shorter, <title>, but then differentiate by adding the month and the year of the post at the end of each <title>. Hundreds of these come out every week, so it is hard to sit there and come up with a unique <title> every time. With this solution the <title> tags would undoubtedly be short enough, however my primary concern is, would simply adding the month and year at the end of each <title> be enough for Google/Moz to decide it is not a duplicate? How much variation is enough for it not to be deemed a duplicate <title>? </p></title>
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Brian_Dowd0 -
Bolding Keywords
A client has just switched from us to another provider and I have been checking up on the work done and the only change they have made is to bold lots of keywords on each page - I thought this was a practice that did not work - is there any evidence of this working or not working? Any articles/proof that we are not using out dated practices as we stopped doing this ages ago and yet the new provider is doing this. Who is right or wrong?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JohnW-UK0 -
How important is the HTML structure for on-page/on-site SEO?
To be more specific, say a page layout has Header, Body, Left Sidebar, Footer sections. Which layout from the following options is more SEO-friendly? Header > Body > Right Sidebar > Footer Body > Header > Right Sidebar > Footer Does it make a big difference to code HTML so that the the copy of the body appears in front of all other sections when spiders crawl a website? Is it worth taking extra steps to make this happen? I am asking this question because our site has a header navigation with a lot of dropdown menus. So I assume that this is "noise" for spiders as it pushes the main content of the page down. Please bear in mind that the question is more geared towards how search engine see the page rather than how it appears to the end user as layout can be controlled by CSS.This question also assumes that all other on-site SEO best practices are followed for both options.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Saugar0 -
Outranking a crappy outdated site with domain age & keywords in URL.
I'm trying to outrank a website with the following: Website with #1 ranking for a search query with "City & Brand" Domain Authority - 2 Domain Age - 11 years & 9 months old Has both the City & brand in the URL name. The site is crap, outdated.. probably last designed in the 90's, old layouts, not a lot of content & NO keywords in the titles & descriptions on all pages. My site ranks 5th for the same keyword.. BEHIND 4 pages from the site described above. Domain Authority - 2 Domain Age - 4 years & 2 months old Has only the CITY in the URL. Brand new site design this past year, new content & individual keywords in the titles, descriptions on each page. My main question is.... do you think it would be be beneficial to buy a new domain name with the BRAND in the URL & CITY & 301 redirect my 4 year old domain to the new domain to pass along the authority it has gained. Will having the brand in the URL make much of a difference? Do you think that small step would even help to beat the crappy but old site out? Thanks for any help & suggestions on how to beat this old site or at least show up second.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DCochrane0 -
Sudden increase in number of indexed URLs. How ca I know what URLs these are?
We saw a spike in the total number of indexed URLs (17,000 to 165,000)--what would be the most efficient way to find out what the newly indexed URLs are?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0 -
Navigation
I've been wrestling with this one for a while. Take a standard small web site navigation with nav links for: Products Solutions Support Learning Center I believe having drop downs to show the sub-pages of each category provides a better user experience, but it also bloats my links per page in the navigation from 4 to 24. Most of the additional links are useful for user experience, but not search purposes. So, 2-years after Google's changing of how it treats nofollows (which used to be the easy answer to this question), what is considered best practice? A) Go ahead and add the full 24 nav links on each page. The user experience outweighs the SEO benefits of fewer links and Google doesn't worry too much about nav links relative to main body links. B) Stick to only 4 nav options. Having 20 additional links on every page is a big deal and removing them is worth the user experience hit. I can still get to all levels of this small site within 2-3 clicks and do cross category linking to mitigate silos. C) Use some technical voodoo with js links or iframes to hide the nav links from Google and get the best of both worlds. D) Do something that is not one of the first three choices. Does anyone feel strongly about any of the above options or is this a user-preference type of situation where it doesn't make much difference which option you choose on a small 100-200 page site? I'm really looking forward to everyone's thoughts on this. -DV
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dvansant0