Recommended URL Structure
-
Hello,
We are currently adding a new section of content on our site related to Marketing and more specifically 'Digital Marketing' (research reports, trend studies, etc). Over time (several months, or 1-3 years) we will add more 'general' marketing content.
My question is which of the following URL structures makes more sense from an SEO perspective (and how best to quantify the benefit of one over another):
www.mysite.com/marketing/digital/research/...
www.mysite.com/digital-marketing/research/..
Thanks,
Mike
-
I'm with Kate on this one. marketing/digital/research reflects the site structure, is very easy to read, and shouldn't be a problem.
Keywords in URLs are no longer a real factor, unless you have an exact match domain name.
Go with the URL that's easiest to read, will be easy from a structural point of view (in whatever CMS you're using) and most likely to get clicked.
-
Hi Mike!
Moosa has the best behind the scenes answer, but everyone here is dead on. Both structures work really well when it comes to search because they are both descriptive and short. That's really what you need to focus on. If I had to pick though based on your examples:
www.mysite.com/marketing/digital/research/...
www.mysite.com/digital-marketing/research/..
I'd go with marketing/digital/research .. that way as you content changes, you can change the types of marketing research and if digital is just understood later as marketing overall, then at that time the research can just be put under marketing, but I think you'll always want to distinguish the types of marketing. This will just account for all possibilities.
Also, having all marketing focused content under /marketing/ allows you do be able to do some quick calculations inside of analytics on multiple scales. You can filter to see traffic, sources and more data for all marketing (all with /marketing/), just research (anything with /research/), and so on.
Hope this helps!
-
This is always the choice of a webmaster but if I would be at your place I would be at your place I would select the URL that is short, to the point and give a hint to Google about what the page is all about.
I believe digital marketing is a separate branch of marketing and having a URL that is independent from the marketing tag will be more relevant to me!
If I have to choose the URL structure, I would have chosen:
http://www.mysite.com/digital-marketing/research
hope this helps!
-
If the main category is Digital Marketing then I would have the URL be /digital-marketing/. I think its important to consider how you plan to use the category in the future and build for that so you don't have a funky structure in the future and/or have to do a bunch redirects to fix it. I understand that's not always possible and things may come up you hadn't considered.
-
I tend to agree but does your answer change if you consider that the main category will MOST likely (not definite) be 'digital marketing'?
I know, raises a larger question of whether ANY marketing plan in the future could possibly not also be considered digital marketing.
Mike
-
I would have your URL represent your site architecture. If Digital Marketing is a subcategory of Marketing I would have the URL structure represent that by using example.com/marketing/digital/...
If you plan on adding more subcategories at a later date it will save a lot of headaches by just having your URL structure represent your site architecture.
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 Structure for geo location for specific page
On hackerearth.com/challenges page, there is an option to select languages. This option is in the footer. Once you select the language the url changes. Ex - if we select French, the URL changes to hackereath.com/fr/challenges. In case we decide to change the URL of this page with Geo, what should be the URL structure which accommodates languages as well. My research says that it would good to keep the url like domainname.com/page/language.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Rajnish_HE0 -
Question about structuring @id schema tags
We are using JSON-LD to apply schema. My colleague had question about applying @id tags in the schema parent lists: While implementing schema, we've included @id as a parameter to both the "list" child of "ListItem" of a "BreadcrumbList" - on the same schema, we've added an @id parameter to mainContentOfPage and both @id parameters are set to the pages URL. Having this @id in both places is giving schema checker results that have the child elements of "mainContentOfPage" appearing under the "list" item. Questions: is this good or bad? Where should @id be used? What should @id be set to? Thanks for the insight!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RosemaryB0 -
URL construction in 2014
Hey guys, I was wondering if you could tell me your thoughts about how a URL is perceived by the algo in 2014? For example: http://www.moneyexpert.com/reviews/credit-cards/amex-platinum/ and lets say http://www.moneyexpert.com/reviews_credit-cards_review_amex-platinum.html In the eyes of google do both different style of url generally help google understand the same result? or will the keyword rich html url have a bigger benefit? I am looking forward to your advice on this matter. I don't plan on doing a lot of SEO but rather letting nature take its course so to speak... so i just wanted to make sure i construct this site with 'best practice'.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | irdeto0 -
Google Disavow wrong Sample URLs
Sometime last year we were penalized for unnatural links by Google. We followed a couple of good posts on MOZ on how to go about correcting all of this (Excel Showing work, Google Docs, Ahrefs, semrush, etc...) and submitted a reconsideration request as well as a list of urls using Disavow Tool. So today, about 20 days later, we get a reply from Google stating that we still have some links that are outside their quality guidelines with 3 examples. Problem is, none of the 3 examples they listed have our website on them. I even did a View Source and checked all our inbound link reports for these websites. All of the 3 examples are Lawyer / Legal Advise websites and ours has nothing to do with this. Any ideas on how to reply and ask them to double check? Maybe they mixed up with another account they were working on at the same time.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Apex-Lighting0 -
Changing the spellings of titles and URl changes
Hi, Changing the spellings of titles and URl changes We identifies 500+ titles with some issues like spellings and punctuations and short or too long. We want to change them, but the titles are connected with the URL's when we change the titles the URl's change as well. My questions are 1. Is it a good way to change them all in one shot or do few daily 2. As the URl's change will Google index drop the old pages as they would be 404 and index new ones? 3. Will we have chances to have drop in traffic due to this? 4. Any way to redirect? as we have a Drupal website Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mtthompsons0 -
URL errors in Google Webmaster Tool
Hi Within Google Webmaster Tool 'Crawl errors' report by clicking 'Not found' it shows 404 errors its found. By clicking any column headings and it will reorder them. One column is 'Priority' - do you think Google is telling me its ranked the errors in priority of needing a fix? There is no reference to this in the Webmaster tool help. Many thanks Nigel
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Richard5551 -
Optimal site structure for travel site
Hi there, I am seo-managing a travel website where we are going to make a new site structure next year. We have about 4000 pages on the site at the moment. The structure is only 2-levels at the moment: Level 1: Homepage Level 2: All other pages (4000 individual pages - (all with different urls)) We are adding another 2-3 levels, but we have a challenge: We have potentially 2 roads to the same product (e.g. "phuket diving product") domain.com/thailand/activities/diving/phuket-diving-product.asp domain.com/activities/diving/thailand/phuket-diving-product.asp I would very much appreciate your view on the problem: How do I solve this dilemma/challenge from a SEO standpoint? I want to avoid DC if possible, I also only want one landing page - for many reasons. And usability is of course also very important. Best regards, Chris
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sembseo0 -
Which URL structure is much better?
Hi Everybody, Which URL structure is much better? Type 01. http://www.domain.com/category-a/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cprasad
http://www.domain.com/category-a/subcategory-a-1/
http://www.domain.com/category-a/subcategory-a-2/
http://www.domain.com/category-b/
http://www.domain.com/category-b/subcategory-b-1/
http://www.domain.com/category-b/subcategory-b-2/ Type 02. http://www.domain.com/category-a/
http://www.domain.com/subcategory-a-1/
http://www.domain.com/subcategory-a-2/
http://www.domain.com/category-b/
http://www.domain.com/subcategory-b-1/
http://www.domain.com/subcategory-b-2/ How these 2 types can affect for Ranking, Site Links in Google and passing PR from root to other pages? Thanks Prasad0