Changing Structure of Links... Yay or Nay?
-
Hello there,
My site: MigrationLawyers.co.za was made with no sub structure.
It has no categories, and no child pages, all the pages are simply added to the end of the URL.
Sometimes this results in a rather lengthy URL like:
**/Immigration-Permanent-Residence-Work-Permit-South-**Africa
I was hoping to arrange the pages a bit into a logical, parented structure that looks more like:
**/Immigration/Permanent-Residence/Work-Permit-South-**Africa I would have parented pages, making up the same pretty much URLNow the Questions:
Is it worth it?
Will google read my parented URL with all the keywords, or only the page's keywords?
What should I expect to see from google?
Will my SERPs be all messed up?I will, without doubt, 301 redirect all the old URLs to the new parented ones.
Any advice would be great,
Thanks,
Nikita -
In my own experience, good category names are very, very important. Have you prioritized your top 10 or 20 keyword search phrases? Those should be worked into your top level categories. I have recently seen reasonable benefits from redesigning categories and subcategories, and of course 301 redirecting popular old ones to the new ones diligently.
-
I agree with Martijn and based on what I see from your examples you should do with this one: **/Immigration/Permanent-Residence/Work-Permit-South-**Africa
In regards to your questions:
Is it worth it? - yes it does
Will google read my parented URL with all the keywords, or only the page's keywords? - Google will take into higher consideration the folder that is closer to your domain name. With your new structure I suspect you would promote the page with the "Immigration" keywords which includes "permanent residence" as one of the many services your "immigration" page includes. Same goes for your work permit. This is how google will see it while at the moment it sees one authoritative page which includes the whole keyword. As Martjin said it really depends in how many pages/services you got.
What should I expect to see from google? - I have witness slight improvement in rankings (+2-3 positions) after I Implemented url re-structuring and schema but I have mainly worked in property related web sites so not sure if this an exception or rule. Someone with an e-commerce web site (where there url structure is a must) could give us his insights in terms of improvements as in every single e-commerce site I have worked, I always made sure the url was structured properly from scratch so I do not have an insight in terms of "improving" rankings.
Will my SERPs be all messed up? - Not messed up but you might end up with lots of 404. Make sure you set redirects from the old URLs to the new Ones. Again it depends the web site. From my experience I changed 4 in the past and only one popped loads of 404s but that was mainly due to a plug in that was displaying search results based on unique criteria, something I could not control.Hope this helps!
-
Hi Nikita,
How many pages we're talking about for this site? If it's not to many (<50-100) I would say leave it like this, it probably wouldn't be worth the hustle to redirect the old pages to the new ones. As also the page urls will stay the same based on keywords I wouldn't waste my time on this for small sites. If we're talking about hundreds/ thousand of pages than it's another problem and I would say it could hurt the way Google gives you crawl budget.
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
-
Reasonable to Ask URL of Link from SEO Providing New Links before Link Activation?
My firm has hired an SEO to create links to our site. We asked the SEO to provide a list of domains that they are targeting for potential links. The SEO did not agree to this request on the grounds that the list is their unique intellectual property. Alternatively I asked the SEO to provide the URL that will be linking to our site before the link is activated. The SEO did not agree to this. However, they did say we could provide comments afterwards so they could tweak their efforts when the next 4-5 links are obtained next month. The SEO is adamant that the links will not be spam. For whatever it is worth the SEO was highly recommended. I am an end user; the owner and operator of a commercial real estate site, not an SEO or marketing professional. Is this protectiveness over process and data typical of link building providers? I want to be fair with the provider and hope I will be working with them a long time, however I want to ensure I receive high quality links. Should I be concerned? Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
Alan0 -
Site Structure - Is it ok to Keep current flat architecture of existing site pages and use silo structure on two new categories only?
Hi there, I have a site structure flat like this it ranks quite well for its niche site.com/red-apples.html site.com/blue-apples.html The site is branching out into a new but related lines of business is it ok to keep existing site architecture as above while using a silo structure just for the two new different but related business? site.com/meat/red-meat.html site.com/fish/oceant-trout.html Thanks for any advice!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | servetea0 -
How hard would it be to take a well-linked site, completely change the subject matter & still retain link authority?
So, this would be taking a domain with a domain authority of 50 (200 root domains, 3500 total links) and, for fictitious example, going from a subject matter like "Online Deals" to "The History Of Dentistry"... just totally unrelated new subject for the old/re-purposed domain. The old content goes away entirely. The domain name itself is a super vague .com name and has no exact match to anything either way. I'm wondering, if the DNS changed to different servers, it went from 1000 pages to a blog, ownership/contacts stayed the same, the missing pages were 301'd to the homepage, how would that fare in Google for the new homepage focus and over what time frame? Assume the new terms are a reasonable match to the old domain authority and compete U.S.-wide... not local or international. Bonus points for answers from folks who have actually done this. Thanks... Darcy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010 -
Wordpress Permalink Structure
A quick Wordpress Permalink checkup... I'm generally a fan of %postname% Permalink structure in Wordpress - although this does create a completely flat architecture, so that ALL Pages AND Posts are found at www.domain.com/_________ I'm sure I've heard, read, or ingested somewhere that it makes more sense to use /blog/%postname% which then makes all Blog Posts reside at www.domain.com/blog/________ with the static Page content still being at www.domain.com/________ Any thoughts to why this would NOT be a good idea? To me this seems more logical.. and like I say I'm sure I've heard an authority say Google kind of prefers that it can differentiate Blog content from everything else. I've used this successfully on a few sites so far, and all seems to be good. (Moz although not Wordpress, uses this structure for it's blog). Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GregDixson0 -
Change of language
Hi everyone, We bought a domain which had content in German for over 8 years. So the rankings it had were in another search engine aswell. So i've changed the language of the content + targetting in webmaster tools to Dutch. (i've created unique content, in case your wondering)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Online_Supply
Now we don't rank in the targetted search engine, nor in the search engine the website was previously ranked. My question is how can we fix this so we are going to get indexed and ranked for the targetted search engine. Thanks in advance.0 -
Website structure question - linking to categories?
Hi there, I have a video website (user uploaded clips) which are sorted into 75 categories. Now, these categories have their own pages and 90% of the traffic comes from the category keywords. All 75 categories are linked from the homepage (which is obvious, right?) AND from all video pages. Now, my question is: from SEO point of view, it is OK to link to categories from the video pages, too? I am in doubt here because: 1. I tend to think it is OK because I get a lot of traffic for the category keywords. 2. I tend to think that isn't OK because I get almost no traffic for the video pages. Any thoughts? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jasmin280 -
Changing Site URLs
I am working on a new client that hasn't implemented any SEO previously. The site has terrible url nomenclature and I am wondering if it is worth it to try and change it. Will I lose rankings? What is the best url naming structure? Here's the website http://www.formica.com/en/home/TradeLanding.aspx. (I am only working on the North America site.) Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AlightAnalytics0 -
Google WMT Change of address.
Hey all. I've got two domain names. -rt112media.com -route112media.com http://rt112media.com is my main address. The preferred domain. My Google WMT account has 4 sites listed that I am a verified owner on. 1.)rt112media.com 2.)www.rt112media.com 3.)route112media.com 4.)www.route112media.com I recent changed the address in WMT for route112media.com to have the preferred domain rt112media.com. I did this on Nov 23. It is currently saying their is a request and I can withdrawl. Now I'm needing to set the preferred for www.rt112media.com to be rt112media.com but it will not let me because of the pending route112media.com. The problem is I'm getting a ton of errors under my www.rt112media.com diagnostics. I'm not getting any under rt112media.com but I am thinking it is still effecting my page rank. I have the 301's for all set up as a 301 wildcard to rt112media.com. They all redirect to the preferred domain I wan (rt112media.com.) Suggestions?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Route112Media0