Optimal Structure for Forum Thread URL
-
For getting forum threads ranked, which is best and why?
- site.com**/topic/**thread-title-goes-here
- site.com**/t/**thread-title-goes-here
- site.com**/**thread-title-goes-here
I'd take comfort in knowing that SEOmoz uses the middle version, except that "q" is more meaningful to a human than "t". The last option seems like the best bet overall, except that users could potentially steal urls that I may want to use in the future.
My old structure was site.com/forum/topic/TOPIC_ID-thread-title-goes-here so obviously any of those would be a vast improvement, but I might as well make the best choice now so I only have to change once.
-
I suggest using that. Would give you better rankings for that topic and then some juice can go to your threads.
-
It's a forum I built myself. I could easily make the "topic" the name of a category instead, I had just never thought of that approach.
-
Haha, Yes it does.
I'm not sure what you are using but vBulletin had that option. Having topic as the category would be better, but if its not doable the 3rd would be best.
That is strange Topic is Topic though. What platform are you using?
-
Sorry, I should have added that the word "topic" is the actual word that's being used. It's not a placeholder for the name of a topic. So it has no keyword value.
Does that change your answer?
-
I would go with first one, more keywords for search engine to identify. I think majority would say the same, it is just more friendly for search engines.
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
-
blog url structure change affect on pagerank
We are looking to change our blog structure which will help us with the organization of the topics but the url structure will change if we do this. Right now all of the blogs are under a general news blog, which we will be breaking out articles into several blog category topics Current:
Technical SEO | | theblueprints
example of current structure
current site: https://domain/blogs/news/blog article name Proposed Change:
current site: https://domain/blogs/keyword-name-of-blog-category/blog article name We have ranked #1 for several keywords that we would like to preserve the ranking if we make this switch with 301 redirects. Looking for suggestion on the percentage of chance our ranking will be negatively affected and by how much? Also what everyones recommendation is if we should make this switch or not touch the urls. Your help is appreciated, thanks in advance.0 -
Received A Notice Regarding Spammy Structured Data. But we don't have any structured data or do we?
Got a message that we have spammy structured data on our site via webmaster tools and have no idea what they are referring to. We do not use any structured data using schema.org mark up. Could they be referring to something else? The message was: To: Webmaster of <a>http://www.lulus.com/</a>, Google has detected structured markup on some of your pages that violates our structured data quality guidelines. In order to ensure quality search results for users, we display rich search results only for content that uses markup that conforms to our quality guidelines. This manual action has been applied to lulus.com/ . We suggest that you fix your markup and file a reconsideration request. Once we determine that the markup on the pages is compliant with our guidelines, we will remove this manual action. What could we be showing them that would be interpreted as structured data, and or spammy structured data?
Technical SEO | | KentH0 -
URL structure
Hello Guys, Quick Question regarding URL strucutre One of our client is an hotel chain, thye have a group site www.example.com and each property is located in a subfolder: www.example.com/example-boston.html , www.example.com/example-ny.html etc. My quesion is : where is better to place the language extension at a subfolder level?
Technical SEO | | travelclickseo
Should i go for www.example.com/en/example-ny.html or it is preferable to specify the language after the property name www.example.com/example-ny/en/accommodation.html? Thanks and Regards, Alessio0 -
Keywords, when are you overdoing it in the URL?
Hi guys, I'm auditing a site covering compensation for cancer. Keywords could include: Undiagnosed cancer 20 cancer compensation 10 undiagnosed cancer symptoms 10 cancer misdiagnosis claims 20 cancer claims 10 misdiagnosis of cancer 50 cancer misdiagnosis 70 So, when structuring the URL for the category, this was previously selected: www.site.co.uk/medical-negligence/cancer-misdiagnosis Although sub-pages appear like this: www.site.co.uk/medical-negligence/cancer-misdiagnosis/breast-cancer-misdiagnosis-claim/ 'Cancer misdiagnosis' as a keyword attracts the most traffic, but if we're using it on sub-pages - is there a need to include it twice on all sub-page URLs? With that in mind, would it be better to follow the following format? www.site.co.uk/medical-negligence/cancer-compensation www.site.co.uk/medical-negligence/cancer-compensation/breast-cancer-misdiagnosis-claim/ Or is there a better way to structure this? Thanks in advance guys!
Technical SEO | | Muhammad-Isap0 -
Spaces (actual spaces) in URL
Hi all, Is there a huge loss of SEO performance if a URL shows spaces with an actual space (i.e. %20) in the URL rather than a "-" (or indeed a "_")? I know the preferred option is to have a "-", but I am just wondering if it is worth our effort to manually change the "%20" to a "-" in all the instances? Thanks 🙂 Diana
Technical SEO | | Diana.varbanescu0 -
Removing a URL from Search Results
I recently renamed a small photography company, and so I transferred the content to the new website, put a 301-redirect on the old website URL, and turned off hosting for that website. But when I search for certain terms that the old URL used to rank highly for (branded terms) the old URL still shows up. The old URL is "www.willmarlowphotography.com" and when you type in "Will Marlow" it often appears in 8th and 9th place on a SERP. So, I have two questions: First, since the URL no longer has a hosting account associated with it, shouldn't it just disappear from SERPs? Second, is there anything else I should have done to make the transition smoother to the new URL? Thanks for any insights you can share.
Technical SEO | | williammarlow0 -
GWT, URL Parameters, and Magento
I'm getting into the URL parameters in Google Webmaster Tools and I was just wondering if anyone that uses Magento has used this functionality to make sure filter pages aren't being indexed. Basically, I know what the different parameters (manufacturer, price, etc.) are doing to the content - narrowing. I was just wondering what you choose after you tell Google what the parameter's function is. For narrowing, it gives the following options: Which URLs with this parameter should Googlebot crawl? <label for="cup-crawl-LET_GOOGLEBOT_DECIDE">Let Googlebot decide</label> (Default) <label for="cup-crawl-EVERY_URL">Every URL</label> (the page content changes for each value) <label style="color: #5e5e5e;" for="cup-crawl-ONLY_URLS_WITH_VALUE">Only URLs with value</label> ▼(may hide content from Googlebot) <label for="cup-crawl-NO_URLS">No URLs</label> I'm not sure which one I want. Something tells me probably "No URLs", as this content isn't something a user will see unless they filter the results (and, therefore, should not come through on a search to this page). However, the page content does change for each value.I want to make sure I don't exclude the wrong thing and end up with a bunch of pages disappearing from Google.Any help with this is greatly appreciated!
Technical SEO | | Marketing.SCG0 -
Canonical Tag Pointing To The Same URL
Does it matter if a canonical tag points to the URL in which the tag is on? Example Page: http://www.domain.com Canonical tag: rel="canonical" href="http://www.domain.com" /> I only ask because a client of mine has a CMS that automatically does that to every page on the site and there's no way to remove it. Will this have a negative impact or does it not matter at all? Any insights would be great because I can't find a clear answer anywhere online. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | MichaelWeisbaum0