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
-
Duplicate URL errors when URL's are unique
Hi All, I'm running through MOZ analytics site crawl report and it is showing numerous duplicate URL errors, but the URLs appear to be unique. I see that the majority of the URL's are the same, but shouldn't the different brands make them unique to one another? http://www.sierratradingpost.com/clearance~1/clothing~d~5/tech-couture~b~33328/ http://www.sierratradingpost.com/clearance~1/clothing~d~5/zobha~b~3072/ Any ideas as to why these would be shown as duplicate URL errors?
On-Page Optimization | | STP_SEO0 -
URL structure of the page: Does this one need to contain the most important keyword for better SEO?
Hi everyone, I’m trying to get "air-conditioner-repair.html" to rank higher for the keyword "air conditioner los angeles". I am wondering whether or not I should change URL to "air-conditioner-los-angeles-repair.html" to get better results? Will be thankful very much for any advise you can offer!
On-Page Optimization | | kirupa0 -
Paginated URLs are getting Indexed
Hi, For ex: - My site is www.abc.com and Its paginated URLs for www.abc.com/jobs-in-delhi are in the format of : www.abc.com/jobs-in-delhi-1, www.abc.com/jobs-in-delhi-2 and vice versa also i have used pagination tags rel=next and rel=prev. My concern is all the paginated URLs are getting indexed so is their any disadvantage if these URLs are getting indexed as somewhere i have read that link juice may get distributed in case of pagination. isn't it good to use Noindex, Follow so that we can make the Google to understand that paginated page are not so much important and that should not be ranked.
On-Page Optimization | | vivekrathore0 -
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 -
Tips on URL structure for a site re-design
Wanted to know what you would do with regards to urls – in an ideal world how would you structure them? Keen to know as me and dave are soon to have a meeting about this and were wondering about changing them from the current – http://www.looking4parking.com/airport/gatwick to something like - www.looking4parking.com/gatwick-airport-parking We will soon have pages for the specific parking types that will be a lot more engaging to users with some really useful content on benefits, features, how a certain type of parking works, images, video etc. Currently going to a type of parking, such as meet and greet just brings up a dropdown modal – I was thinking of having the url structure looking like this – www.looking4parking.com/gatwick-airport-meet-and-greet-parking www.looking4parking.com/gatwick-airport-on-site-parking www.looking4parking.com/gatwick-airport-park-and-ride We will then have specific pages for each parking product – in which this product will have unique content built around it – each will have an overview of the product, benefits, features, reviews, images, directions to the car park, find your route and eventually a video on each product So for example we currently have the product “Jet Parks 2” at Manchester airport – the current url is - http://www.looking4parking.com/airport/manchester/park-and-ride/jetparks-2 I would like to change this now we have the opportunity to refresh the whole system, to something along the lines of **domain/location/product title - **www.looking4parking.com/manchester-airport-parking/jetparks-2 or as we have some similar products at certain airports (mainly where the airport has multiple terminals) we would just change it to the following - www.looking4parking.com/manchester-airport-parking/jetparks-3 What are peoples thoughts/opinions on the above?
On-Page Optimization | | RyanCrawf19840 -
Breadcrumbs structure
Adding breadcrumbs to create a hierarchy on what is otherwise a flat site. Got the following pages which are, our main pages that rank - Metal gates Metal driveway gates Metal garden gates Metal side access gates The Metal gates pages link off to the other pages mentioned but also contain a lot of other info The driveway gates, garden gates and side access gate page all contain our range of gates, the three pages mentioned then have links off to their individual gates contained within each section Breadcrumb wise, should I aim for Home - Metal gates - Driveway gates - individual driveway gate
On-Page Optimization | | Jon-C
Home - Metal gates - Side access gates- individual side access gate
Home - Metal gates - Garden gates- individual garden gate Is that the best way to go or if I want the driveway gate page (etc) to continueto rank should I go like this Home - Metal driveway gates Home - Metal side access gates etc0 -
Trailing slash on URLs
Hi everyone My question is regarding trailing URLs in Wordpress A designer setup a site and made the URL structure something like: www.website.com/description/ but I want to change it to www.website.com/description as this is more SEF A trailing / was added to the permalink structure in Wordpress, if I change this will google see these as new URLs and will all the current URLs become 404? Or should I just leave it? Thanks in advance
On-Page Optimization | | webseoservices0 -
How many urls per page is to many
I know it used to be 100 urls per page, but recently Matt cutts has said that they can count a lot more now. I was wonder what you guys thought was how many was to many per page?
On-Page Optimization | | Gordian0