What directory should a site go in (url structure)?
-
Hi All,
The is the first actual SEO campaign i've worked on and I had a few question about where the site should live on the server and url structure. The site is in WP and we're using Yoast SEO.
Anyway the site lives in a a folder called Coastal, which is a child of the WWW folder. So the permalink of the homepage is mcoastalwindows.com/coastal/. The URL is mycoastalwindows.com. The thing is I can still get to the homepage or any of the pages on the site by typing in the /coastal/. Another example is permalink mycoastalwndows.com/coastal/siding/ and url mycoastalwindows.com/siding/. The urls always display without the /coastal/, so I'm not too worried about people linking to them, but Yoast puts a canonical element to the permalink and always includes the /coastal/. Also I'm seeing that Google displays a lot of the urls with the /coastal/, which is an issue seeing as we don't link to the pages that way.
My original thought was to solve this at the source and just move everything out of the coastal directory, but the developer swears that it's more secure being in another folder especially with WP. What would you all do and what is best practice? Would you move everything out of the coastal folder, 301 re-direct, do something with. htaccess, or another solution?
Appreciate the input thanks!
-
Thanks for the help guys! Appreciate it.
-
Hi Mario,
The Mozzers above are right - your best move is to get rid of the redundant /coastal/ subfolder.
Your developer is incorrect. There is no security benefit to the subfolder.
I would suggest, to ensure security, that you instead have a thorough read through this guide to Hardening WordPress and follow these methods, as they will cover you for the vast majority of hack attacks.
Also, keep regular backup copies of your database if your hosting company doesn't do this automatically. Between that and backups of the website files, you'll be well covered in the event of a hack.
Best,
Mike -
Hi,
I agree with Jeff, developers seem to have an inherited paranoia problem with Word press and security. This can be solved by using a security plug in like word fence.
Word press is built with security in mind its weakness is 3rd party plug ins so beware when installing any always look for more popular properly supported ones.
Hope this helps
Brett
-
Hi Mario,
I agree with Jeff. You need to move your site up a folder.
You could write rules that remove the '/coastal/' from the canonical URL for the Yoast plugin, 301 redirect /coastal/* to /* etc - but this is really messy.
It's fine to have your site on the root domain....it's no less secure.
-
Mario -
The biggest issue I see is that your developer thinks that having content not in the www / home directory is somehow more secure. I think this is a red flag, as literally 20% of the websites on the Internet run WordPress (including my site).
While there are security issues from time to time that crop up, keeping up to date with patches, upgrades and server settings will mitigate this.
Best practice, hands-down, is to keep your home page content in the www folder, and not in the /coastal/ folder. In a sub-folder, it's not going to perform as well from an SEO perspective. And it could hurt you, as it looks like you might be trying to "stuff" in a keyword or two.
I would recommend moving the site into the www / home directory, and setting things up so that this is the primary URL. Yes, use 301 redirects on the older links so that you don't have 404 errors on the site…
Hope this helps!
-- Jeff
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
-
URL / sitemap structure for support pages
I am creating a site that has four categories housed in folders off of the TLD. Example: example.com/category-1
Technical SEO | | InterCall
example.com/category-2
example.com/category-3
example.com/category-4 Those category folders contain sub-folders that house the products inside each category. Example: example.com/category-1/product-1
example.com/category-2/product-1
etc. Each of the products have a corresponding support page with technical information, FAQs, etc. I have three options as to how to structure the support pages' URLs. Option 1 - Add new sub-folder with "support" added to string: example.com/category-1/product-1-support Option 2 - Add a second sub-folder off of the product sub-folder for support: example.com/category-1/product-1/support Option 3 - Create a "support" folder with product sub-folders: example.com/support/product-1 Which of these three options would you choose? I don't like having one large /support folder that houses all products. It seems like this would create a strange crawling and UX situation. The sitemap would have a huge /support folder with all of my products in it and the keywords in my category folders would be replaced with the word "support." Because I would rather have the main product pages ranking over any of the support pages (outside of searches containing the word "support"), I am leaning toward Option 2: example.com/category-1/product-1/support. I think this structure indicates to crawlers that the more important page is the product page, while the support page is secondary to that. It also makes it clear to users that this is the support page for that particular product. Does anyone have any experience or perspective on this? I'm open to suggestions and if I'm overthinking it, tell me that too. Thanks, team.0 -
In Facebook when i place my site URL the image does not load?
In Facebook when i place my site URL the image does not load? It loads some generic image or logo but not other image thats related to the page. Is there any Tag we need to add in the website so the image loads? Is it good to use a tag as this for description? property="og:description" content="Some data" />
Technical SEO | | bsharath0 -
Mobile site backlinks?
Hello, Our mobile site redirects to desktop in a desktop browser and vice versa; however, they are different sites. This said, shouldn't the backlinks for our mobile site be the same as for our desktop site since one redirects to the other. We show no backlinks in my analysis? Any help or insight would be extremely appreciated! Thank you!
Technical SEO | | lfrazer1 -
Unused url 'A' contains frameset - can it damage the other site B?
Client has an old unused site 'A' which I've discovered during my backlink research. It contains this source code below which frames the client's 'proper' site B inside the old unused url A in the browser address. Quick question - will google penalise the website B which is the one I'm optimising? Should the client be using a redirect instead? <frameset <span class="webkit-html-attribute-name">border='0' frameborder='0' framespacing='0'></frameset <span> <frame src="http: www.clientwebsite.co.ukb" frameborder="0" noresize="noresize" scrolling="yes"></frame src="http:> Please go to http://www.clientwebsite.co.ukB <noframes></noframes> Thanks, Lu.
Technical SEO | | Webrevolve0 -
Trying to get google to know my site is a magazine site is this wrong
Hi, i have put a line to describe what my site is at the top of my site and i want to know if this is wrong or not. We have dropped frok being number one in google for lifestyle magazine to now number seven. Before we had to redo our site we were number one and then we dropepd to around number four when we finished the site and now we are number seven and i need to try and get back up there. To help google know we are a lifestyle magazine i have put a line at the top of the site and i want to know if this looks out of place and if i should take it down. i need advice on how to get google to know we are a lifestyle magazine and get back in the top five of google my site is www.in2town.co.uk any help would be great
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Canonical URL Issue
Hi Everyone, I'm fairly new here and I've been browsing around for a good answer for an issue that is driving me nuts here. I tried to put the canonical url for my website and on the first 5 or 6 pages I added the following script SEOMoz reported that there was a problem with it. I spoke to another friend and he said that it looks like it's right and there is nothing wrong but still I get the same error. For the URL http://www.cacaniqueis.com.br/video-caca-niqueis.html I used the following: <link rel="<a class="attribute-value">canonical</a>" href="http://www.cacaniqueis.com.br/video-caca-niqueis.html" /> Is there anything wrong with it? Many thanks in advance for the attention to my question.. 🙂 Alex
Technical SEO | | influxmedia0 -
Redirect from old wordpress site to new php site? Best approach
Hi I have two websites one legacy site done in wordpress the other in php. However I would like to merge the two together and remove the wordpress site. However it has a good link profile and the pages rank well. What is the best approach to do a 301 redirect from the old site with all its pages pointing to the homepage of the new site? If so what's the best way to do this in wordpress? Many thanks
Technical SEO | | ocelot0 -
During a site platform transition, should we 301 redirect all URLs or only those with inbound links?
We have an ecommerce client transitioning to a new platform. Due to the nature of the platform, all the pages will have different URLs. There are between 7000-8000 total pages on the website. We wrote 301 redirects for all URLs which are showing inbound links. Unfortunately, automating this process is pretty difficult and hand writing URLs for 8000 links is unfeasible. Is it worth investing the time to 301 redirect all 8000 URLs, or are we safe with only doing those with inbound links? One other option would be to implement a generic redirect for all the rest of the old URLs that sends them to the homepage. Would this be a good compromise?
Technical SEO | | outofboundsdigital0