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.
What is better for SEO keywords in folder or in filename - also dupe filename question
-
Hey folks,
I've got a question regarding URL structure. What is best for SEO given that there will be millions of lawyer names and 4 pages per lawyer
www.lawyerz.com/office-locations/dr-al-pacino
www.lawyerz.com/phone-number/dr-al-pacino
www.lawyerz.com/reviews/dr-al-pacino
www.lawyerz.com/ratings/dr-al-pacino
OR
www.lawyerz.com/office-locations-dr-al-pacino
www.lawyerz.com/phone-number-dr-al-pacino
www.lawyerz.com/reviews-dr-al-pacino
www.lawyerz.com/ratings-dr-al-pacino
OR
www.lawyerz.com/dr-al-pacino/office-locations
www.lawyerz.com/dr-al-pacino/phone-number
www.lawyerz.com/dr-al-pacino/reviews
www.lawyerz.com/dr-al-pacino/ratings
Also, concerning duplicate file names:
In the first example there are 4 duplicate file names with the lawyers name. (would this cause Google to not index some)
In the second example there are all unique file names (would this look spammy to Google or the user)
In the third example there are millions of duplicate file names (if 1 million lawyers then 1 million files called "office-locations" etc (could so many duplicate filenames cause ranking issues)
Should the lawyers name (which is the main keyword target) appear in the filename or in the folder - which is better for SEO in your opinion? Thanks for your input!
-
I like all of the answers here and I would definitely focus on how the user is searching for the lawyers. If you have a site with millions of lawyers, they would each have an area of practice so it would make sense to develop a structure around this first:
lawyerz.com/practice-area/state/city/attorney-name
WIth this structure, a searcher that types in "estate planning lawyer" would be sent to the estate planning lawyers page and allowed to search further for their city and then lawyer names. I would attach the contact info, reviews directly on that lawyer's page.
Since your higher volume keywords are going be found within the "practice areas", this would seem the next step after the main domain target of "attorney" or "lawyers". Then, location can come third, attorney name is most likely a lesser searched keyword but using a url structure such as "attorney-john-doe" reinforces.
I would LOVE to hear all the expert opinions about this as I am a newbie to seomoz but am finding some great experts and advice over here.
-
while pages with such file names can be indexed, the long-term view dictates avoiding pages with filenames in the URL due to future potential conversion to other frameworks. It makes a site less than ideal for portability.
For example, if every page has index.php or whatever.asp and you change platform, you'll end up with every page needing a 301 redirect. So it's better to avoid that whenever possible.
-
Although the filename will be duplicate, the content on those filenames will be okay. Google will look more at the content on the page rather than anything else. There are sites out there that have weird file structures, like:
/index.php
/services/index.php
/products/index.php
Some CMS's will automatically do this, but they rank fine because they have quality content, even though the index.php is technically a duplicate filename.
You should be fine with this method.
-
It's about users for sure. The last set you show communicates "lawyer name" is more important/valuable. Which is the valid perspective, since all of those elements relate to that lawyer. If some users still want to find lawyers based on reviews, you can offer a filter for that in your database sorting. Same with locations.
On the other side of the coin, instead of "locations", if you had town names, you could group by those so it would be /town-name/lawyer-name/ where all lawyers in the same town fall within that town-name grouping. If it's just /locations/ that's an invalid sort hierarchy.
-
yes navigation-wise this definitely makes the most sense
www.lawyerz.com/dr-al-pacino/office-locations
i guess what I am mostly looking for an answer about is which is better for rankings, the keyword in the folder or file name and if duplicate file names will harm rankings.
thanks so much for your assistance guys.
-
Ok gotcha- well if that is the case, then think about how the user will navigate to the end result if they started from the home page. Logically, you could assume the following
If URL structure is as follows:
www.lawyerz.com/office-locations/dr-al-pacino
then /office-locations/ should contain links to all office locations of multiple lawyers.
But with this structure
www.lawyerz.com/dr-al-pacino/office-locations
/dr-al-pacino/ should contain links to the 4 other pages. **This option will probably be your best structure. **
-
If I am not mistaken it really depends on what users are searching
if they are only searching lawyers names than just find a structure that looks pretty and has the lawyer name in it.
But if there is any traffic data that points that people search the city or phone number along with the lawyer name than it might be wise to have that in the url structure
also ever thought of using subdomains? havent seen that in a lawyer directory yet but some of the major article sites switched to subdomains
-
Assume there will be enough content on these pages to not get hit by panda.
The reason for doing this is to hopefully secure more than one first page result since these are names and very low competition, we see some sites doing this successfully.
We will have locations pages too which will list all the docs in that city
-
Is there any particular reason why office location, phone number, reviews, and ratings need to be on 4 separate pages? I could see there being a lot of thin content which won't really rank well or provide a ton of user value. Can you give some more info as to why this would be? I could easily see all 4 of these pages combined into one.
With that, you can focus your URL structure into categories or local regions or both, depending on how dynamic you want the site to be. For example:
http://www.lawyerz.com/nevada/personal-injury/dr-al-pacino
OR
http://www.lawyerz.com/personal-injury/dr-al-pacino
OR
http://www.lawyerz.com/nevada/dr-al-pacino
Unless there is something that I missing, I think no matter how you structure your URLs, thin content just won't rank.
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
-
Lightboxes and SEO
Do lightboxes (AKA popup boxes when you click "learn more" type CTAs) have any negative effect on SEO? We are looking at revamping our sites to have more of a tiled approach, and a lightbox with summary content popping out with additional CTAs, directing to pages with more information or free trial pages. Is there any downside to this approach from an organic perspective? is there anything specific to keep in mind when creating these if not?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Chris81980 -
Keywords in URL: sub-directory or single layer keywords?
Hi guys, im putting together a proposal for a new site and trying to figure out if it'd be better to (A) have a keyword split across multiple directories or duplicate keywords to have the keyword hyphenated? For example, for the topic of "Christmas decor" would you use; (A) - www.domain.com/Christmas/Decor (B) - www.domain.com/Christmas/Christmas-Decor in example B the phrase 'Christmas' is duplicated which looks a little spammy, but the key term "Christmas decor" is in the URL without being broken up by directories. which is stronger? Any advice welcome! Thanks guys!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JAR8971 -
How to measure traffic for a keyword
Sitting in Country A I want to see how much traffic a particular keyword receives in Country B. Whats the best way to do it? Also, will the search results differ if I am analyzing the above sitting in Country A viz-a-viz Country B. In other words, will the IP of the country I am making the search from play a role in the results?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KS__0 -
Yoast seo title question
I was referred to this plugin and have found it to be the most irritating and poorly designed plugin in the world. I want to be able to set my titles without it changing my page headers as well. For instance - If I set my title to be "This is my article name | site name" it will make my H1 tag read the same. I do not want or desire this nonsense. Why would they think this is something wise? Why would I want my site name on every single H1 tag on my site? How can I fix this? I only want my title to be my title. I want my H1 tag to remain the post/page name that I define in wordpress.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Atomicx0 -
Does anyone know of any tools that can help split up xml sitemap to make it more efficient and better for seo?
Hello All, We want to split up our Sitemap , currently it's almost 10K pages in one xml sitemap but we want to make it in smaller chunks splitting it by category or location or both. Ideally into 100 per sitemap is what I read is the best number to help improve indexation and seo ranking. Any thoughts on this ? Does anyone know or any good tools out there which can assist us in doing this ? Also another question I have is that should we put all of our products (1250) in one site map or should this also be split up in to say products for category etc etc ? thanks Pete
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeteC120 -
Is .ME domain is effective in SEO ?
I am always listening about TLD. com. org .net but what about the .me domain. Can this will be effective in SEO. Can i able to beat down my competitors, if i choose .me . I also have a .com or other TLD option but if i am making my name than .me is for me but i need your suggestion for the seo purpose. Is there really domain affective in term of SEO.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pnb5670 -
Is CloudFlare bad for SEO?
I have been hit by DDoS attacks lately...not on a huge scale, but probably done by some "script kiddies" or competitors of mine. Still, I need to take some action in order to protect my server and my site against all of this spam traffic that is being sent to it. In the process of researching the tools available for defending a website from a DDoS attack, I came across the service offered by CloudFlare.com. According to the CloudFlare website, they protect your site against a DDoS attack by showing users/visitors they find suspicious an interstitial that asks them if they are a real user or a bot...this interstitial contains a Captcha that suspicious users are asked to enter in order to visit the site. I'm just wondering what kind of an effect such an interstitial could have on my Google rankings...I can imagine that such a thing could add to increased click-backs to the SERPs and, if Google detects this, to lower rankings. Has anyone had experience with the DDoS protection services offered by CloudFlare, who can say a word or two regarding any effects this may have on SEO? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | masterfish1 -
If you have an unlimited SEO budget, what would you do?
Here's a bit of background information: I've achieved the targets and is now being offered what is essentially an unlimited budget. I have a nice list of ideas but thought I would the brilliant people here at the SEOMOZ community what they would do. So as to promote as much response as possible, I'm going to keep my list to myself for now. And by "SEO", I mean I can do things like content strategy, blogging, infographics, etc. Shoot away!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | andrep0