Correct URL Structure Question
-
Dear Moz Community,
I have a quick question regarding my internal link structure.
Which route would be the best way to design my website?
Option A)
MYSITE.com/category/make/model/state/cityOption B)
MYSITE.com/category-make-model-state-city.aspxI've been reading a lot of articles regarding link structure by Matt Cutts (or at least referencing him), but I'm not sure what the best practice is for today. Any information or references would be great.
Thank you very much!
-
Hi Rand
Many thanks for taking the time to check by on this one. I appreciate you giving your valuable input.
Peter
-
I wouldn't say that two levels is the max - but in general you should avoid having unnecessary/non-useful folders of depth, and probably no more than 5+ levels of folder depth if possible. Crawlers have gotten much more sophisticated, but it still tends to be the case that more folders don't add a lot of value, so unless there's a good reason (and there may be a reason for some in CFS' case as I noted above), I'd avoid them.
-
Hi Peter - generally speaking, I'd still recommend minimizing unnecessary subfolders, but in this case, I'd lean a little more toward A than B for usability, readability, and crawling purposes. My guess is that CFSSEO's got a lot of URLs in various forms of those subfolders, not just the example shown.
CFSSEO - If possible, I'd choose to go with something like mysite.com/category/make-model/city-state/xyz.html (but it really depends on the specifics of what's in the folders and how they describe the pages).
The reason is that you want to have a logical URL structure that makes sense to crawlers (who will make guesses about locations) as well as highly readable to searchers/users (who often scan the URL in the search results). In those cases, slashes are far more common and readable than hyphens.
-
Thank very much, Mr. Lunn.
I read on an SEO "checklist" that it is best to avoid deep link structures. If possible, try not to go past two levels
i.e.
Option A)
MYSITE.com/level-one/level-two/level-three/level-four/level-fiveOption B)
MYSITE.com/level-one/level-two.aspxDoes that still hold true today? Anyone have any good reference material slightly more recent?
Thank you very much!
-
Hi,
I would go with option B as option A implies sub-folders. Rand Fishkin suggests the same in this blog post: 11 Best Practices for URLs which was written 7 years ago (that long?!), but I think this principle still holds true.
I hope that helps,
Peter
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
-
Question about reciprocal link building. I'm not an SEO professional, just a local service business owner.
I did a link page on my website 13 years ago and never took it down. Should we scratch that page all together? Is it ok with Google to do a page on Recommended local service providers. Maybe I can keep some of those reciprocal links if that's the case...
Link Building | | FVLMS0 -
Linkbuild on 'new' or 'old' url?
Hi, I'm trying to rank for a keyword. For the last year and 4 months the rank hasn't changed much. It stays on the 3th page. Within this period the rank has first gone down and then up. Three months ago I started doing linkbuilding for the url the keyword was linked to. This is a main category page. Lately, I don't know when exactly I've discovered that the keyword is ranking for a different url, a product category of these items for 1 brand. I'm wondering if it's wise to shift my focus and start using the 'new' url for linkbuilding? The 'old' url isn't in the top 100 for the keyword. However, if you search for the url in Google, it shows up. And, if I'm advised to shift my focus to the 'new' url, is it advisable to go back and change the backlinks to the 'new' url? A question related to the above one, is there another tool like Open Site Explorer which shows you an overview of the backlinks directing to a deeplink? Like MajestickSEO. I'm trying to get the most extensive overview possible. Thanks in advance.
Link Building | | anubis20 -
SEO Question
If you Google - "San Diego DUI Lawyer" (a competitive term), this guys site comes up: sandiegoduiattorneys.weebly.com/san-diego-dui-lawyer.html Run his site in Opensite Explorer and you won't believe the results. This guy somehow has as much domain authority as Facebook, and maybe more than Moz. How is this possible? How is he getting all those links from random Weebly sites? I'm not saying I want to copy him, but I think it's highly problematic that somehow that site has been rigged to get all that link juice. Any feedback would be appreciated.
Link Building | | mrodriguez14400 -
What Domain should I use? - Domain authority question
Hi all, I created a website www.bruadair.com approximately 2 months ago, the website is for a luxury villa. Prior to creating this site the villa website was www.bruadair.co.uk , this website had been live for around 4 years. Now after developing the site and creating optimised content etc, I started my link building strategy to try and increase both the page and domain authority of the site. I used MOZ's open site explorer tool to examine my site and compared it with the old domain (www.bruadair.co.uk), this is was where my question arose. The old site has a domain authority of 16/100 and the home page has a page authority of 26/100. The old domain also had 468 inbound links ( the quality of these are most likely questionable, nofollows etc ). The new site in comparison has 1/100 domain authority and 1/100 page authority with no apparent inbound links. Before I noticed this I had generated a few inbound links to the new site, but Moz had not indexed websites since I had done this therefore it probably wouldn't have shown it in the open site explorer. Basically I have cloned the new site to the old web address and am thinking of using the .co.uk version just due to its existing domain and page authority. Would it be beneficial to swap over to the old site to benefit from the domain authority?? Thanks for any help given! 🙂
Link Building | | Tmgale0 -
Blog posts with currently no links question
Hi, If a blog has 100's of quality blog posts all with PR 1-3 but has no internal linking going on, what kind of affect would it have if someone was to go through all the pages using mixed anchor text (where it fits) back to money pages. Would generating 100's of internal links from a blog in a matter of days cause problems / flag up to SE's. I'm guessing it would be best to stagger it over a long period of time. Cheers
Link Building | | Bondara0 -
Website structure for SEO
Hi,Im working on Food Recipes website, i"m targeting "step by step recipes" how should i structure this website and what pages should i build my links to? If the whole website is about "step by step recipes" When you search for "step by step recipes" on Google, you'll see most of them are separate pages Should i create its own category call it "step by step recipes" and list all of my posts? but isn't it duplicated content ? ill be really appreciated with your help ! Thank you
Link Building | | KentR0 -
Quick question : Is it ok to get 300 quality backlinks ...
Is it ok to get 300 quality backlinks ... from different authoritative domains in one month...I think google might find it strange and I might get penalized...
Link Building | | ksbnok0 -
Question about forwarding domains and link juice
We currently have a domain that has a small amount of inbound links: http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/www.1800wecoach.com/a!links We decided to switch over to a different domain name, which currently has 0 inbound links. What we were wondering is which would be better: link to the new domain from the old domain in a prominent location on all pages. or forward the old domain to the new domain? does forwarding a domain pass linkjuice?
Link Building | | adriandg0