Help me choose a new URL structure
-
Good morning SEOMoz. I have a huge website, with hundreds of thousands of pages.
The websites theme is mobile phone downloads. I want to create a better URL structure.
Currently an example url is /wallpaper/htc-wildfire-wallpapers.html
My issue with this, first and foremost is it's a little spammy, for example the fact it's in a wallpaper folder, means I shouldn't really need to be explicit with the filename, as it's implied.
Another issue arises with the download page. For example /wallpaper/1234/file-name-mobile-wallpaper.html
Again it's spammy but also the file ID, is at folder level, rather than within the filename. Making the file deeper and loses structure.
I am considering creating sub domains, based on model, to ensure a really tight silo. i.e htc.domain.com/wallpaper/wildfire/ and the download page would be htc.domain.com/wallpaper/file-name-id/
But due to restrictions with the CMS, this would involve a lot of work and so I am considering just cleaning up the url structure without sub domains.
/wallpaper/htc/wildfire/ and the download page would be /wallpaper/file-name-id/
What are your thoughts?
Somebody suggested having the downloads in no folder at all, but surely it makes sense for a wallpaper, to be in a wallpaper folder and an app to be in an app folder? If they were not in a folder, I'd need to be more explicit in the naming of the files.
Any advice would be awesome.
-
This is not an SEO question per se, it is really a business question. How do you need to organize your wallpapers to give you the information you need with your business.
Depending on how you generate your revenue you may want to organize by type of phone, etc. Tools like Google Analytics will sort things by folder and so if you build in a logical structure for your business model, you can then use the insights to help your business.
Example, if you were paid depending on the type of theme, then you would need to organize around themes. If you simply wanted to see what themes as a group were the most popular, then organize by themes. Lots of things to consider. How do your users think about browsing wallpapers? Setup your directories so that it makes sense to them when they are browsing your site or looking at your URL in the SERPs.
That said, I would organize by folder. Helps when you need to analyze traffic to the site if things are in logical organized folders. Also makes it easy to group.
Good luck!
-
Why not organize by phone type?
So domain.com/htc/wallpaper/1243/file.html
When you optimize for humans, the keywords and url structures makes more sense.
If I were to search for an iphone wallpaper it would be just that iphone > wallpaper, not wallpaper iphone. Or maybe walpaper for iphone, but let's not get technical.. hehe.
And depeding on site structure you could use the /file.hmtl page as the canonical of the download page.
I wouldn't go the route of subdomains.
Good luck, Cyril
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
-
If a the site doesn't have a true folder structure, does having subdirectories really help with hierarchy and passage of equity?
If a website doesn't have a true folder structure, how much does have the page path structured like
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SearchStan
/shoes/rain-boots/ actually help establish hierarchy and flow of equity?
Since /rain-boots/ doesn't actually live in the /shoes/ folder? Will you simply have to use internal linking to get the same effect for the search engine?1 -
Did We Implement Structured Data Correctly?
Our designer/developer recently implemented structured data on our pages. I'm trying to become more educated on how it works since I'm the SEO marketing specialist on the team and the one that writes and publishes the majority of our content. I'm aware it's extremely important and needs to be done, I just don't know how to do it yet. The developer was on our team for over a year, we recently let him go. Now, I'm going through all the pages to make sure it's done correctly. I'm using the structured data testing tool to look at the pages and have been playing with the structured data markup helper. I would REALLY appreciate it if one of my fellow MOZ fans & family can help me determine if it's done correctly. We do not currently have any schema plugs installed that I know of. So I'm not sure how he implemented the Schema code. I would like to know what I need to do moving forward to the additional content we publish as well as what to do to correctly implement Schema if not already. When I manually look at one of our FAQ pages I see multiple schema data formats detected... I'm not sure if we're supposed to have multiple or just one----> https://www.screencast.com/t/TjHphL7jsI I also noticed in the Question schema data for that same page... the accepted answer is empty. I would image that should have the short version of the answer to the question in it?--->https://www.screencast.com/t/e6ppXkhXd7QS Here's a screenshot of our structured data info from Google search console---> https://www.screencast.com/t/KHj4BGgdrZ4m HELP please! Our website consists of 25-30 "product" pages https://www.medicarefaq.com/medigap/ https://www.medicarefaq.com/medicare-supplement/ https://www.medicarefaq.com/medigap/plan-f/ https://www.medicarefaq.com/medicare-supplement/plan-f/ We currently have about 75 FAQ pages and adding 4-6 per month. This is what brings in most our traffic. https://www.medicarefaq.com/faqs/2018-top-medicare-supplement-insurance-plans/ https://www.medicarefaq.com/faqs/2018-medicare-high-deductible-plan-f-changes https://www.medicarefaq.com/faqs/medicare-guaranteed-issue-rights We have 100 state specific pages (two for each state) https://www.medicarefaq.com/medicare-supplement/florida/ https://www.medicarefaq.com/medigap/florida/ https://www.medicarefaq.com/medicare-supplement/California/ https://www.medicarefaq.com/medigap/California/ We have 20ish carrier specific pages https://www.medicarefaq.com/medicare-supplement/humana/ https://www.medicarefaq.com/medicare-supplement/mutual-of-omaha/ Then we have about 30 blog pages so far and are publishing new blog posts weekly https://www.medicarefaq.com/blog/average-age-retirement-rising/ https://www.medicarefaq.com/blog/social-security-benefit-increase-announced-2018 https://www.medicarefaq.com/blog/new-california-bill-force-drugmakers-explain-price-hikes
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | LindsayE0 -
Need help in de-indexing URL parameters in my website.
Hi, Need some help.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ImranZafar
So this is my website _https://www.memeraki.com/ _
If you hover over any of the products, there's a quick view option..that opens up a popup window of that product
That popup is triggered by this URL. _https://www.memeraki.com/products/never-alone?view=quick _
In the URL you can see the parameters "view=quick" which is infact responsible for the pop-up. The problem is that the google and even your Moz crawler is picking up this URL as a separate webpage, hence, resulting in crawl issues, like missing tags.
I've already used the webmaster tools to block the "view" parameter URLs in my website from indexing but it's not fixing the issue
Can someone please provide some insights as to how I can fix this?0 -
New websites
Hi Moz community, My company updated and used a new developer to build and re-design their charity websites: www.runforcharity.com, www.cycleforcharity.com and www.sportforcharity.com. This sites were "re-launched" at the beggining of December 2015 and I have now been able to get a good 6 weeks worth of data. I've been religiously using Moz.com for a couple of years and I use it simply for SEO purposes. Our websites are built upon organic traffic being driven to them and I have noticed that the PA on the new sites has taken a hammering. They all appear to have a PA of 1 and I'm at a loss why? It appears that no page has h1 text? Would this be an issue with the developer or something the content team is doing wrong? Any help of advice would be much appreciated. Many thanks Ryan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bennerya0 -
What's the best URL structure?
I'm setting up pages for my client's website and I'm trying to figure out the best way to do this. Which of the following would be best (let's say the keywords being used are "sell xgadget" "sell xgadget v1" "sell xgadget v2" "sell xgadget v3" etc.). Domain name: sellgadget.com Potential URL structures: 1. sellxgadget.com/v1
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Zing-Marketing
2. sellxgadget.com/xgadget-v1
3. sellxgadget.com/sell-xgadget-v1 Which would be the best URL structure? Which has the least risk of being too keyword spammy for an EMD? Any references for this?0 -
Canonical Tag help
Hello everyone, We have implemented canonical tag on our website: http://www.indialetsplay.com/ For e.g. on http://www.indialetsplay.com/cycling-rollers?limit=42 we added canonical as http://www.indialetsplay.com/cycling-rollers?limit=all (as it showcase all products) Our default page is http://www.indialetsplay.com/cycling-rollers Is canonical tag implementation right? Or we need to add any other URL. Please suggest
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Obbserv0 -
Website URL Structure - keyword targeting on homepage vs internal pages
I have developed a few websites before where the homepage contains the content for the keywords I was targeting. This has been reasonably successful as I have found it easy enough to get links to the homepage. I am considering a new site in a totally different industry that I am thinking about structuring like this: mybrand.com (not necessarily targeting any keywords) mybrand.com/important-keyword-1/ (definitely want to target) mybrand.com/important-keyword-2 (equally important as 1st keyword) There will be several (30-ish) other pages targeting keywords but they are not as significant as the two mentioned above, more so they are about publishing informative information. The two important keywords are quite different but industry related. My questions are: should I be careful targeting keywords away from the homepage when the homepage gets the most links? Would I be better off building 2 different websites where the keyword content is captured in the homepage? Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BGu0 -
URLs are not indexed
My website has 0.5 million pages with urls like this- **http://www.mycity4kids.com/Delhi-NCR/collage-painting-classes-%3cnear%3e-shalimar-bagh ****, **none of these urls are indexed. Question 1- What can be the possible reason for this issue? Users see this url as : http://www.mycity4kids.com/Delhi-NCR/collage-painting-classes-<near>-shalimar-bagh</near>
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | prsntsnh
The symbol "<" and ">" get converted into "%3c" and "%3e" respectively, is this the reason for these urls not getting indexed?0