Site structure question
-
I'm doing a site that will have many many pages.
Now I have heard that you get more seo value if its a lower tear so for example:rather than
site.com/brand/subbrand/product
Is this correct?
Should I structure my site like this?
site.com/product
site.com/brand points to site.com/product(so all products are on the sub root.)
Does that make sense?
-
One thing to consider with site structure is your analytics. Using a directory structure can give you some valuable information in your analytics -- you can look at a particular category of product in aggregate and see how it is doing, if it is set up properly.
This post from LunaMetrics has some more ideas for setting up a GA-friendly site at http://www.lunametrics.com/blog/2010/09/22/designing-google-analytics-friendly-site/.
-
Thanks for the responses!
based on some research I think first level is best.
Yahoo stores sets it up this way.
Example: site.com/brands (then the actual product is in the root)
Yahoo store structures there sites like this.
-
You could use no-follow, but for this purpose, it seemed best to just not hyper the text. I would have a product page of perhaps 30+ products PLUS links on each of those to the products full description page PLUS links to the brand page PLUS my normal page links. This starts to add up quickly and Roger yelled at me
-
Can you go into more detail about this problem with your brand links on your product pages? How did you determine the right number of links that should be on a page? Couldn't you use "no-follow" tags in the URLs and solve the same issue?
-
No more than 3 levels deep.
Yes, as you have written.
site.com/products-category/product-001.html The brand name could be a hyper to the brand page
site.com/brand/ where this list all the brands. Click on a brand, pulls the product page with a filter.
Then I have some high level brands that list their products on the brand page as an all inclusive.
Now I did have to remove my 'brand' links from my product pages as I was getting too many links on the page, so look out for that.
You are on the correct path.
-
The actual physical directories you use are really not a factor. You can have a webserver path that looks like site.com/brand/subbrand/productid/product but reach it from a URL of site.com/product if you use routes or other means of creating a virtual path.
That aside, what's important is not how deep a page is in your directory structure, but how many clicks would it take a user or crawler to get to the page. If a user has to click from Nike.com to "Nike shoes" then "Nike running shoes" then "Nike 3000x running shoe", that would be a concern, especially if there are more levels to your structure.
On the other hand, if you have a link on your home page that says "Nike Running Shoes", or a link from your home page directly to your latest products, that would get those pages more value from a SEO perspective.
-
I would focus more on your Site Architecture. Focus on clicks from the home page.
There is a great article about it here (http://www.seomoz.org/blog/site-architecture-for-seo), along with a link to Rand's video on 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
-
Mobile Version SEO question
Hi there, Quick question on mobile SEO. Basically, I don't think I can effectively format my mobile website design unless I just build it as a collection of pictures. This way it'll be possible to format so it doesn't look a jumbled mess. My question - if my mobile version is just essentially HQ screenshots/pictures put together, how will that affect my SEO for mobile? PS if anyone has suggestions on how I can design my mobile version without affecting desktop I'd appreciate it. I'm using shopify and across many of the themes I've tried whatever I design on desktop has to format on mobile as well. To my knowledge only wix allows you to independently edit the mobile and desktop versions.
Content Development | | markellw0 -
Simple Blog Content Question
Which is better? To write my own blog post or, (with permission) use other high DA content on my blog. I'll probably do both, but I'm very curious as to what the search engines prefer or which is better for seo. Thanks in advance!
Content Development | | MissThumann0 -
How do I stop someone from hijacking my site?
I had lost a lot of search engine rankings & it almost put me out of business. I worked a lot on the site in April and in May my sales rebounded 37%+ almost back to where they typically are. I have blamed Panda and saw another Panda update in May and my traffic is declining again. Today I happened to decide to check what pages were being indexed and I also noticed that when I published an update this morning it said the page "<cite class="_Zd">www.cheaptubes.com/index2.asp</cite>" exists on the destination server but not in current site and it asked if I wanted to delete it. I said no at the time but am going to delete it right after this question. I went to google & put "site:cheaptubes.com" into the search. My website has about 50 pages but google has "About 2,160 results" @ 10X per page. The first four pages are mostly my pages but I noticed even on the first page, 3rd result was for Nike shoes and it isn't my site. Someone has hacked my site and put up over 21,000 pages! That must be the real reason behind my website problems, right? How do I stop this from happening again? Is this having the negative effect that I fear it is?
Content Development | | cheaptubes1 -
What are the effects of posting on a blog site using copied content from your site if you source the site on the blog site?
I have noticed that some of my pages from my site are posted to different blog sites and directory submissions they are word for word what is on my site but at the bottom of the page it does list my site as the source and there are links in the text back to my site. Is this going to negatively effect my rankings or is it ok since my site is sourced in the article?
Content Development | | steve2150 -
Will our two retail sites get hit with duplicate content?
Our retail site just rolled out a second online store. The URL is new and it is showing some of the same products from the same vendors (probably about 40% of the fist store is in the second store). Down the road, we will remove the products from the first site, however, we are keeping it for now. The products show up on both sites, with the same images, and the same descriptions and almost the same URL query string. Are we going to get hit with any penalties due to duplicate content?
Content Development | | klmarketing0 -
How can i contact the owner of this site over copyright theft
Hi i am getting a bit fed up of people stealling our content and now i have come across this site that has stolen content from us but cannot find any email address or contact details and would like to know how to contact them or how to stop this site from stealling our work. here is the site http://caiii.com/ any help would be great
Content Development | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Fresh content ideas for a static site?
I have an ecommerce site. My home page is set-up just as I want it. I'm not looking to redo it or change my site to a blog. Just looking for some new, different, SEO friendly ideas or concepts to keep it "fresh".
Content Development | | VictorVC0 -
Duplicate content across multiple e-commerce sites
Hi, This may have been discussed here before though I couldn't find a definitive answer, but I was wondering what the best practice for having multiple e-commerce sites with some of the same products on both is. If Site A has 200 products, and Site B has 300 products, and 50 overlap, do they absolutely have to have unique product descriptions? The descriptions have already been rewritten to be different from the manufacturer's description, but do they need to be changed again? Or should the 50 products only be listed on one site or the other? Sites like csnstores.com seem to have the same descriptions as the subsidiary sites that they have, but maybe they have different sidebars/footers/etc which make the content considered original?
Content Development | | nks20120