Prioritize Cities Instead of Counties or Countries in Site Architecture
-
I am designing the structure of a large travel webiste and have the following problem.
The obvious structure from a users perspective would be to structure locations as follows:
Home/Hotels/Country/County/City
i.e. Home/Hotels/UK/Lancashire/Preston
The problem is, it is the cities that I need closer to the root directory, instead of countries and counties.
If I did Home/Hotels/City or even
Home/Hotels/Country/City
There may be too many links on one page and google may think they're spammy.
How can I get the cities closer to the root directory as they are the most important pages on the site. Even if I did a text based sitemap I would encounter the same problem.
*scratches head!
Thanks in Advance,
Nick
UPDATE_________________________________________________________
Sorry I may have phrased the question wrongly.
I should have said that I need the city pages to be less clicks from the root directory, as opposed to their actual URL structure.
Ideally, I want to be able to access the city pages before the county and country pages on the site, as they are more important.
Thanks A Bunch
-
Hi Steve, a lot of consideration needs to be placed on the scale of the website. How many countries around the world, how many continents etc etc.
In terms of coming up with an intuitive and relatively simple way to reduce the number of clicks to an actual city, I'd recommend a large, full-width map with big dots for more popular cities and that sort of thing. Could like be created using HTML5/CSS3 for maximum SEO friendliness. The advantage of a map is it's immediately intuitive and doesn't require drop-down menus or anything of that variety.
So the structure I'm suggesting would theoretically allow one-click to top cities which is going to make a lot of people very happy
-
Thanks so much for such a swift reply,
Sorry I may have phrased the question wrongly.
I should have said that I need the city pages to be less clicks from the root directory, as opposed to their actual URL structure.
Ideally, I want to be able to access the city pages before the county and country pages on the site, as they are more important.
Thanks A Bunch
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
-
SEO Rankings Ebbs and Flows on Ecommerce Site - Normal?
Hey everyone, I should start by saying I'm very new to SEO (I'm actually just a copywriter that's taken on this role at an agency), so I apologize if I'm using some common terms incorrectly or if there's a lack of information. I've been optimizing my first ecommerce website (clothing company), and things were going very well last year. Strong surges in organic traffic, peaking in the summer. There was a drop before the holidays when the client dumped a ton of new product pages that weren't optimized. After optimizing the pages, the traffic went back up to its summer levels. Now, there's about a 10% drop in organic traffic since earlier this year, and a loss of just over 20% of keywords the site was originally ranking for. There's no sharp drop in the Analytics, but a steady decline. To give a better idea, the site was ranking for 5,270 keywords in February; it's dropped to 3,772 keywords in April. According to SEMRush, almost all the dropped keywords are the lower volume ones, maybe indicating long tail keywords? I'm really not sure what the cause of the drop is, as I've been following (I think) best on-page practices, which seems to have yielded results last year. One thing I should mention is the client has a unique product page for each variant of one product (so the same shirt will have 10 of the same pages, the only difference being the colour). Could Google be penalizing the site for duplicate content? It was fine last year though with that same site structure; I'm not sure how long it would take for Google to penalize a site for that. Sorry for the wall of text. I'd really appreciate any insight into this. Thanks Moz community!
On-Page Optimization | | EdenPrez3 -
Do i have to optimize all pages on ecommerce site which is currently 4028 give or take
Hello, do i have to optimize all pages on ecommerce site, as its a lot of pages to developed unique content for my plan at the moment is to start from top down, I have completed top home, featured products etc i have also started on individual team shops my content inst unique to each page more the same and just changing the team name and keyword i was planning on doing that in the blog area of the site and just making the top categories and sub categories. and maybe in time start on the products. I can do all categories in about two months but to complete products would take like 2 years I don't feel that is productive and most would be changed or out of stock by then please take a look at my site and tell me what you think ? sportingdesires.com Kindest Regards, Stephen Kewn
On-Page Optimization | | sportingdesires0 -
Your tactics on improving organic search for a site in a struggling industry
We work with a client of ours with organic search initiatives. The problem is: the industry (e.g. the core of the business) is sagging. It has been for a couple of years. And they're finally feeling these sagging losses. Google Trends support this and shows it quite nicely. It pretty much mirrors organic search referrals as well. The industry (e.g. the core phrase that the company and its competitors have historically hit very hard) as well as Google Trends for the client (middle of the pack) and their two big competitors are attached. Wondering if anyone else has had this type of circumstance with their clients and some of their go to tactics that helped them stop the skid (and even make it start going up). Thanks SpztkvF.png LPHGo76.png
On-Page Optimization | | ChristianMKG0 -
Acquired Old, Bad Content Site That Ranks Great. Redirect to Content on My Site?
Hello. my company acquired another website. This website is very old, the content within is decent at best, but still manages to rank very well for valuable phrases. Currently, we're leaving the entire site active on its own for its brand, but i'd like to at least redirect some of the content back to our main website. I can't justify spending the time to create improved content on that site and not our main site though. What would be the best practice here? 1. Cross-domain canonical - and build the new content on our main website? 2. 301 Redirect Old Article to New Location containing better article 3. Leave the content where it is - you won't be able to transfer the ranking across domain. Thanks for your input.
On-Page Optimization | | Blenny0 -
A Page For Every Conceivable City In The US - Seeking Community Feedback
Hi Guys! If you ask Local SEO questions here in the Moz Q&A Forum, you and I have probably had the chance to chat at some point or other. This time, I'd like to ask you question! I'd like to request feedback from the community regarding a practice I've been running into for as long as I can remember. Here's what I'm talking about: Let's say the company is a national florist company, a cell phone service company, a website design company. They have national headquarters but either very few or zero physical locations beyond this. In other words, they are virtual rather than local, apart from their national headquarters. Their approach to online marketing revolves around creating a landing page for every conceivable city or zip code in the U.S. I would guess that the thought behind this strategy is that their product is available in each of these cities, and this is their method of getting the word out. Because I work almost exclusively with local rather than virtual companies, the scenario I've described falls somewhat outside of my work experience. It does, however, relate to what I do for a living because I frequently encounter these types of pages (some with near duplicate or very thin content) ranking in the organic results for local searches, alongside the local pack results. My questions are: What do you think of this practice? Does the quality of these types of landing pages factor into your assessment? In other words, if the pages aren't thin or duplicate, do they have value? Is this a practice you would recommend to a national, virtual company? If not, what would you recommend? I really appreciate you taking the time to read my question and consider replying!
On-Page Optimization | | MiriamEllis2 -
City targeting on home page
Client has a site that ranks well for "Town_A_KW", "Town_B_KW" and "Town_C_KW". The home page is the page that's ranking. These towns are part of the larger metro area for Portland. They want to start ranking for "Portland_KW" and normally, I'd recommend optimizing the home page for this phrase, and better optimizing the sub-pages for town A, B and C KW's. The client is understandably nervous about messing with re-targeting the home page since it already ranks well. Is it best to: Add "Portland_KW" to home page meta titles, content, etc. to try and rank for that phrase? (so home page would be optimized for Town A, B and C KW's + Portland_KW). Re-target home page for "Portland_KW" only, and better optimize sub-pages for town A, B and C? Leave home page as is, and create a "Portland KW" sub-page? (client's original idea). Thanks in advance for your insights!
On-Page Optimization | | 540SEO0 -
Small Site Title Tag / Structure Question
Bit embarrassed to ask this question, but will ask it anyway! I have done some quite reasonable basic SEO for clients in the south of Spain with small sites and had reasonable success. My wife and I came to the Pyrenees in the south of France to take over and run bed and breakfast in a lovely old farm and some self-catering accommodation in one of the pastures (with my continuing to do a bit of work for clients too). We are running and developing the place for friends who are away 3-4 years. They had an abysmal site, so we designed one to together: http:www.loubetaspyrenees.com/ (I have given the French version because it's what I am most concerned with - there is an English version in case I can tempt you to a holiday here!) It's been very well received by users, so that's great. We have the place on about 12 agencies amd almost all link to our site, so it serves as a good showcase. Here's my issue (for the French site): It went online 11th Feb and is already doing well for more "long tail" searches, and for more local and specific searches, but is proving slow on our prime search terms. The prime market is French, and they key terms are "Gîtes" for the self-catering accommodation, and "Chambres d'Hôtes" for the Bed and Breakfast. Our key Geographical term for the French market is "Hautes Pyrenees" - it's a departmental area. In Google.fr We are around result 100 out of 600k results for "Chambres d'hôtes hautes pyrénées" and aren't in the first 200 for "Gîtes Hautes Pyrénées". This is a competitive market and we are competing with optimised and long-established agencies but still hope to do better. I know I am losing from poorly constructed title tags cannibablising the results, but cannot see how to solve this: Home Page Title tag: "Gîtes et Chambres d'Hôtes dans les Hautes Pyrénées | les Baronnies" I have two main pages on the Gîtes: Gîte for 2-3 people Title tag "Gîte dans les Hautes Pyrénées pour 2-3 personnes en les Baronnies"
On-Page Optimization | | PeterMurray
Gîte for 3-9 people Title tag "Location Gîte dans les Baronnies Pyrénées pour groupe 3-9 personnes" ("Location" means rental) Google understood the above and put us no 1 out of over 1miillion results for a search for a gite for 9 people in the south west of France ("gite sud ouest 9 personne") And 2 pages for the Bed and Breakfast: B&B in the farm building: "Chambres d'Hôtes dans les Hautes Pyrénées dans une ferme restaurée"
B&B in gite apartments with sitting rooms: "Chambres d'Hôtes dans les Hautes Pyrénées avec salon et terrasse" I am not sure how to handle the titles for the Home Page and for the 4 subpages - sounds silly, but have you any advice on how I might handle these titles better? I thought of using more general terms on the Home Page ("Holiday accommodation in the ..."), but on such a small site (18 pages in each language version) I feel that would be unwise. It seems I must try to find some way of differentiating the titles on the other 4 pages so that i am not cannibalising but where there are so few alternatives I am not sure how! Oh dear, sorry this was so long!0 -
Site URL's
We are redeveloping our website, and have the option to amend URLs (with 301 redirects from old URL to new), so my question is: Would 'golfsite.com/golf-clubs' achieve superior rankings than 'golfsite.com/clubs' for the search term 'golf clubs' if all other factors were the same? Should the URL reflect the intended search term wherever possible?
On-Page Optimization | | swgolf1230