Recommended URL Structure

[mike-gart]

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

[wrttnwrd]

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.

[katemorris]

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!

[MoosaHemani]

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!

[Schwaab]

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.

[mike-gart]

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

[Schwaab]

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.