URL Structure
-
What's the best way to set up a url structure? When a user goes through the funnel should it show it in the url?
Like this:
domain.com/thickness/high-density/1-mil-plastic-bags (1 mil plastic bags is a subcategory - when the user is at this page they will see many products. When they select one - it brings them to a product detail page which I think should be done like this: domain.com/product-name regardless of the funnel that brought them there. Does this make sense?)
or
**domain.com/1-mil-plastic-bags **
Also, is there a limit of how many "/" could be used?
-
Hi Rachel,
There is no reason, rather than just personal preference (to an extent).
I'd like my customers to share a product with their friends on Facebook etc. so I like to get straight to the point in the URL. Maybe having domain.com/department/category/subcategory may be a better option for you, depending on how keyword friendly your categories are.
For example, my DJ company ranks number 1 on Google in the UK for "disco speakers" and this is how I have the URL structured: http://www.electromarket.co.uk/speakers-audio-equipment/dj-pa-speakers/active-powered-pa-speakers/
That is just for a specific type of speaker.
This has worked best for us, but it completely depends on how deep your categories go. We try to make all of our most popular categories as closely linked to the homepage as possible.
Hope this helps!
Tom
-
Thanks Tom for the detailed answer.
Is there a reason why it can only be two forward slashes deep?
-
Rachel,
Wow the upper limit! That depends on the browser. Opera can take 190,000 characters before it chokes. Probably a better question would be, help me find a product/path structure that makes sense to me, and my customer.
Also remember SEO points are awarded by the search engines if the product your trying to optimize for is used in the URL. So if your selling brown paper bags, the using the URL www.mydomaine.com\bags\brown-paper-bags is a better choice than 190,000 hard to read letters or symbols.
-
Hi there,
I currently use Magento Enterprise and this is how we have our URL structure set.
Depending on the software you're using, there is a chance you could have shorter URL's for sharing purposes (e.g. domain.com/category/subcat/product-title-here == domain.com/productcode) but make sure that this URL isn't actually a "page" but is in fact just a redirector. (Unless you want to get involved with "rel canonical" see here: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/rel-canonical-html-head/)
Getting back to your URL structure, this is definitely the way I would recommend anybody set up their URLs. Especially if your domain name doesn't have the keyword in it. E.g. your shop is called LuckyCharms.com and you sell jewellery, a website that is called weselljewellery.com may rank quicker because the keyword is already in the domain name. But with the URL structure set to include the category, the URL now becomes LuckyCharms.com/products/jewellery/bracelets what have you.
The URL is read by search engines and I think it can only be a positive thing to have as much in your URL as you can without making it look messy. Two categories deep is the limit. E.g. domain.com/category/subcategory/product-title-here
Hope this is of some help to you!
Tom
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
-
Need Professional Help with Site Structure, Page Authority, and Internal Linking
We are a 10 year + small (1000 pages) niche ecommerce site (Magento) that has recently lost rankings to a competitor. We out perform them in every metric so I do not understand them leap frogging us to the top spot. This has forced me to look at my site structure, page authority (rank), and internal linking. After reviewing a moz crawl issues report, here are some of my observations: Root domain has a PA of 40 Top 3 $ Category pages have a PA of 22, 18, 18 Multiple meaningless blog posts and other category/product pages have PA’s of 30+ Here is a screenshot of the crawl report with internal links, links, etc showing. I need some help - thoughts, suggestions, next steps in analysis?
On-Page Optimization | | SammyT0 -
Toxic URL???
Hi I have a URL that produced page 1, number 1 to 3 for most of our industries top phrases. Then we received a google penalty, (as did several of our competitors on the same day). We were effectively wiped from google. After much disavowing we were allowed back into the search results, this took about 3 months. I have employed the services of a top London SEO company for over a year now and have seen no significant improvement. I believe they are doing there best, however there results are VERY poor. According to the various tools, (searchmetrics, woorank, semrush) to name but a few, our site scores very well, yet we are not getting the results. Page one seems to be full of totally new websites, most of which I have never heard of, and have appeared from nowhere. Should I scrap our URL and put up a completely new one, and put a redirect from the original one? This would be a biggy since our url has been around for 20 years. Thanks for reading. Andy
On-Page Optimization | | First-VehicleLeasing0 -
What word should I use in my URL for my blog
Should I use the word "blog" in my sub folder as in : http://www.mybusiness.com/blog or should I use http://www.mybusiness.com/news. Is there a difference for when my site is crawled. I understand that a blog works a little differently. Can someone explain the basics?
On-Page Optimization | | graemesanderson0 -
URL Structure Suggestion
Hi
On-Page Optimization | | sandeep.clickdesk
My site url: http://goo.gl/AiOgu1
We are working on URL structure of our website. I have one query about URL structure.
Which one is good URL structure according to user and SEO prospective.
The targeted keyword for the particular page is "wordpress live chat". Is it worthful to rewrite the present url "https://www.abc.com/wordpress" to "https://www.abc.com/wordpress-live-chat" Please suggest.0 -
Optimal URL structure for location-specific pages
I'm in the middle of revamping a website for a restaurant that has multiple locations and am trying to decide what the best URL/internal link structure would be. Right now, each restaurant has a single location page, but we are going to add additional pages for catering. Sitewide-linked pages exist for /catering and /locationname. The way I see it, we have two basic options: Option #1: Catering page - /locationname/catering/ Option #2: Catering page - /catering/locationname/ In both cases, there would be links from the /locationname an /catering pages to the location-specific catering pages. Is either option preferable to the other?
On-Page Optimization | | mblair0 -
Two different keywords - one URL
We're new to SEO, but have two keywords that are really not quite the same, but Google has targeted the same URL for us ... which means that SEO Moz is recommending we optimize the same URL, for opposite keywords (using the on page SEO). For example, the keywords (these aren't our keywords) of say, "beer brewing" and "ways to make beer for small breweries" are both pointing at our home page. The on page SEO is showing that "beer brewing" is a rank of say, a google ranking of 9. However, "ways to ..." is a google ranking of 47. So ... what am I supposed to do now? Do I rewrite the page to have "ways to ..." more prominent? I cannot really have the title and h1's include both ... What do I do now? We have about 3 or 4 of these "pairs". -- Anthony
On-Page Optimization | | apresley0 -
Product sorting and dynamic urls
On our weekly SEOmoz crawls, we get thousands of warnings about overly dynamic URLs as a result of our product sorting options at the top of our category pages. It seems like the ability to sort products by price, name, etc., is nice for the customer. For SEO is this really a problem or can we ignore these warnings?
On-Page Optimization | | teatable0 -
Include the company/domain name in page titles and urls?
I know this isn't something that I would use site-wide but I'm wondering if it helps or hurts me to use my company name (also my domain name) in pages below the homepage. As an example, let's say I'm Home Depot. In the category pages off the homepage should I use Page names and urls like Home and Garden Supplies or Home and Garden Supplies at Home Depot? Or does it hurt me to reuse my company/domain name on multiple pages?
On-Page Optimization | | kdieruf0