Categories and URL Structure - When to add a new directory?
-
I've been wondering this for quite awhile so I figured I should just ask.
Suppose my website has 5 categories and the url structure looks like:
do I also want to create a landing page for the above categories at the same URL depth as the homepage of the site?
OR what about:
www.mysite.com/category1/index.html
Which is a better way to do this?
Also, if your site began as fairly small and your 5 categories were your only other pages other than index, about, and contact pages (meaning you really had no reason to create separate directories), then as time passes, you decide to add 3 subcategory pages that would fit into a page: www.mysite.com/category1.html
would you add a folder with he same name as the html page, and then rename the html file as index.html and place it into the new folder?
-
I'm sorry, there was a typo in my question.. When I used the term "subdirectory" what I was actually referring to was a product page.
So, essentially what you are saying is that for my lowest URL depth where the website homepage is found, the only files there are going to be index?
-
Hi Bradley,
let's start with the first doubt... when you talk about a "landing page for the above categories", do you mean one landing for all 5 categories, or one landing page per category.
In the second case, the same /category1/, /category2/... should be treated and considered as landing pages.
In the first case, instead, your idea of having the landing on the same level of the architecture as the home page is formally correct, but - IMHO - it would be poor UX solution, because your are obliging the users to pass trough one possibly useless click in order to arrive to the category they are interested.
I also did not really understand your second question, but normally if you have to start adding subdirectories, than the URL of a subdirectory should be something like this:
www.domain.com/directory1/subdirectory2
as saying, you will add a second level of deepness in your navigational architecture.
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
-
Duplicate URL's in Sitemap? Is that a problem?
I submitted a sitemap to on Search Console - but noticed that there are duplicate URLs, is that a problem for Google?
On-Page Optimization | | Luciana_BAH0 -
Best website IA/structure for SEO?
What's the current thinking on the best structure of information on a website for SEO? Structure for visitors can be best achieved through navigation menus, but I am more interested in how I should organise my URL structure so Google can make sense of the depth of my site topics. The website is an Asian travel blog so there are essentially two specific types of post on the site. One type is location specific (may be about an attraction, a city, a region or a country). The other type is general (usually about an aspect of travel like travel cash, visas, scams, etc). At the moment, all my general posts are organised like www.asiantraveltips.com/blog/[post-name]. My location-specific posts are organised like www.asiantraveltips.com/[country]/[region-or-city]/[place-name]/ so that Google can see I have depth of topics about each country and region. But I find it hard to keep consistency in this arrangement of URLs and I don't know if I might be better off to just have everything flat and tagged as a blog post like www.asiantraveltips.com/blog/[country]-[region-city]-[post-name]/? What's best practice these days? How are others organising travel blog websites?
On-Page Optimization | | Gavin.Atkinson0 -
Category Page Content
Hey Mozzers, I've recently been doing a content audit on the category and sub-category pages on our site. The old pages had the following "profile" Above The Fold
On-Page Optimization | | ATP
Page Heading
Image Links to Categories / Products
Below the Fold
The rest of the Image Links to Categories / Products
600 words+ of content duplicated from articles, sub categories and products My criticisms of the page were
1. No content (text) above the fold
2. Page content was mostly duplicated content
3. No keyword structure, many pages competed for the same keywords and often unwanted pages outranked the desired page for the keyword. I cleaned this up to the following structure Above The Fold
H1 Page Heading 80-200 Word of Content (Including a link to supporting article)
H2 Page Heading (Expansion or variance of the H1 making sure relevant) 80-200 150 Words of Content
Image Links to Categories / Products
Below the Fold
The rest of the Image Links to Categories / Products The new pages are now all unique content, targeted towards 1-2 themed keywords. I have a few worries I was hoping you could address. 1. The new pages are only 180-300 words of text, simply because that is all that is needed to describe that category and provide some supporting information. the pages previously contained 600 words. Should I be looking to get more content on these pages?
2. If i do need more content, It wont fit "above the fold" without pushing the products and sub categories below the fold, which isn't ideal. Should I be putting it there anyway or should I insert additional text below the products and below the fold or would this just be a waste.
3. Keyword Structure. I have designed each page to target a selction of keywords, for example.
a) The main widget pages targets all general "widget" terms and provides supporting infromation
b) The sub-category blue widget page targets anything related and terms such as "Navy Widgets" because navy widgets are a type of blue widget etc"
Is this keyword structure over-optimised or exactly what I should be doing. I dont want to spread content to thin by being over selective in my categories Any other critisms or comment welcome0 -
WordPress and category/subcategory landing pages
Hey, Here's my situation. I'm building a WordPress blog for product reviews of a certain niche. Current category setup is 4 main categories with 4-8 subcategories each. Each subcategory has a unique description that will help it become a landing page for certain keywords, after which it lists the posts from that subcategory. The posts will always be assigned to a sub-category, never to a main category. My issue is what to do with the main categories. They're fairly general so they're not really targeting any keywords, and don't have any unique descriptions attached to them. I was thinking of choosing between three options on designing the main category pages: List the subcategories + normal posts loop that bring the latest posts from the subcategories (may create a lot of duplicate content since the subcategory pages are also listing their posts) List only the subcategories (+ maybe just the latest post from each subcategory) Don't link the main categories at all, instead only use them to create dropdowns for the subcategories So, what would you choose, and why?
On-Page Optimization | | mihaiaperghis0 -
New sitelinks - can we control the number?
A quick question on Google's new sitelink format. When searching for our brand name (Confetti) Google returns 8 sitelinks for our site. When searching for our domain (confetti.co.uk) Google returns the maximum number of 12 sitelinks. Is there a quick way (Webmaster Tools for example) to increase the number of sitelinks for our brand name to 12? Thanks,
On-Page Optimization | | Confetti_Wedding0 -
Internal link structure for large site
I am working on a very large directory site which is undergoing a complete redesign. I am considering the internal link structure from first principles. When a site has over 100,000 pages, how do you ensure that each page is linked to from somewhere so that there are no orphans? Trying to get my head around the structure makes my brain hurt. Any tips?
On-Page Optimization | | mascotmike0 -
Absolute URLs
Hi, this is a very basic question but I want to confirm, as I remembered it was consider a good practice to use the absolute version of your links when linking to other pages of your site, not for any issue related to passing authority or PageRank, but because if someone scraps your content then they would take the links as well (as if they didn't remove them). Have the practices for internal linking with absolute or realtive URLs changed in any way? Which is the best way? absolute or relative? is there any harm for using the relative version? Relative: Absolute: [](<strong><em>http://www.cheapdomain.com/myfolder/mypage.html)[](<strong><em>http://www.cheapdomain.com/myfolder/mypage.html) [Thanks!](<strong><em>http://www.cheapdomain.com/myfolder/mypage.html)
On-Page Optimization | | andresgmontero0