The importance of url's - are they that important?

[GaryVictory]

Hi Guys

I'm reading some very contrasting and confusing reviews regarding urls and the impact they have on a sites ability to rank.

My client has a number of flooring products, 71 to be exact - categorised under three sub categories 1. Gallery Wood - 2. Prefinshed Wood - 3. Parquet & Reclaimed. All of the 71 products are branded products (names that are completely unrelated to specific keyword search terms. This is having a major impact regarding how we optimise the site.

FOR EXAMPLE: A product of the floor called "White Grain" - the "Key Word" we would like to rank this page for is Brown Engineered Flooring. I'm interested to know, should the name of the branded product match the url?

What would you change to help this page rank better for the keyword - Brown Engineered Flooring.

---

Title page: White Grain

Url: thecompanyname.com/gallery-wood/white-grain (white grain is the name of the product)

Key Word: Brown Engineered Flooring

**Seo Title: **White Grain, Brown Engineered Flooring by X

Meta Description: BLAH BLAH Brown Engineered Flooring BLAH BLAH

Any feedback to help get my head around this would be really appreciated. Thank you.

[GaryVictory]

David/MaxOnce again, thank you very much for such detailed information. This has been really helpful and I'm truly grateful. I do have one more question if I may. The main primary domain name contains the word "wood" - is it really essential to contain the word "wood" into "sub categories" also (as seen below)? You can see how we're planning to structure the site.Many of our key words have the word wood, so for obvious reasons this term is essential. Thank youwww.thebestwoodcompany.comParquet & Reclaimed - 1./parquet-reclaimed/lights-greys/PROUCT 2. /beiges/PRODUCT                                                                3. /browns/PRODUCT 4. /darks-blacks/PRODUCT                                                                  Engineered Wood  - 1. /engineered-wood/lights-greys/PRODUCT 2./beiges/PRODUCT                                                                   3. /browns/PRODUCT 4. /darks-blacks/PRODUCT  Prefinished Wood  - 1. /prefinished-wood/lights-greys/PROUCT  2. /beiges/PRODUCT                                                                   3. /browns/PRODUCT 4. /darks-blacks/PRODUCT

[max.favilli]

Honestly, all being said, I would choose the URL structure which makes more sense disregarding the SEO effect. I mean, secure the keyword you want to rank for are there in the url, but do not move them leftward just for the purpose of SEO. As far as I can tell from my little experience is not a factor which weight so much to justify a weird URL structure just for the purpose of putting the most relevant keyword on the far left.

Said that, all the keywords you want to put in the URL must be in the url part processed server side. Crawlers do not process javascript, any framework, like angularjs I mentioned earlier, will make it possible to show different url in the browser through url routing, client side. Which means javascript dynamically change the content of the page without a roundtrip to the server. It's the javascript which detect the URL change, not the server. So the crawler will never navigate it, google will never know it exist.

Yes, there are ways to have google crawler index those javascript generated pages, you can find instructions here https://developers.google.com/webmasters/ajax-crawling/ but I strongly suggest you to do not go that way.

Instead, have your CMS generate an html page with all the content you want to index, and dynamically show and hide portions of the content using a javascript framework like angular, if it helps (for bookmarking purpose or UX) use client side url routing to change the url when you show the different portion of the content. That way google will crawl the page with all the content, it's white hat as long as you don't cloak.

So, what you have to do is design your pages, deciding which content goes there keeping in mind SEO target, keyword diversity and semantic; a part of course from the most important... UX.

Now, getting back to the original question, should you put the keywords you want to rank in the url, yes, put those you want to rank in the url processed server-side, the others if useful for UX, bookmarking, etc... process client side with a javascript framework using client side url routing.

Hope it helps. Good luck.

[max.favilli]

In my opinion, as of the current state of client side technology, the way to go is angularjs.

When you talk about shorten the url you are probably referring to url routing which is one of the capability of angularjs, but other frameworks are doing a good job in that area as well.

[David-Kley]

"jQuery is a fast, small, and feature-rich JavaScript library. It makes things like HTML document traversal and manipulation, event handling, animation, and Ajax much simpler with an easy-to-use API that works across a multitude of browsers."

Using JQuery can allow you to load in galleries or product options/variations into a page, without actually having to have a unique URL for each item. This would be done through coding, and display on one of the category pages to help your users see available flooring options. I'm not outright claiming that this would be great for SEO, as the items often are not "crawlable", but merely suggesting a few different options that may help your users navigate a larger site.

Sorry if you thought I was mentioning PHP or dynamically changing URLs

[GaryVictory]

Thanks David

These are all areas I'm currently researching. My client is ambitious enough to really expand their product range, so I'm interested to find out more about JQuery and how it really works? If I'm correct, this helps shorten the url by replacing key words with specific code?

[David-Kley]

I would think of it this way:

1. What URL format would give you the most amount of beneficial (unique) URL's?
2. By using this structure, do you have the time/resources to optimize all newly created URL's?
3. Looking at the BIG GUYS in the flooring industry (Lowe's, Home Depot, ETC) what URL format do they use? Can this format be downscaled to work for your needs? Would that format make sense to use on your site?
4. What does the Google keyword planner suggest for being the most heavily searched for terms? Is there a way to include these terms in your navigation and still have it make sense?
5. Judging by your goals, does it make sense to have all the URL's be unique to each product, or would it work better for your gallery or product options to be loaded in a JQuery or "outside of content" format on a second level category page?

That should help you narrow it down a bit

[GaryVictory]

David/Max/Sheena

I cannot thank you guys enough. And Sheena, thanks so much for your help. Max sorry if I confused you - I probably confused myself more.

My thought process now consists of the site "architecture", "keywords" as well as considering other client needs. It would certainly help if each product was a generic name. However keeping the url for this is also challenging.

By manufacturer - gallery-wood/engineered-floors/grey-sabe - Keyword, Grey Engineered Wood

By manufacturer - gallery-wood/oak-flooring/grey-stone - keyword, Oak Wood or Grey Wood etc

By colour - gallery-wood/beiges/blonde-oak - keyword, Beige Oak or Oak Wood

By colour - gallery-wood/blacks-brown/engineered-ember - keyword, Brown Engineered Wood or Black

Maybe we could title "Gallery Wood" into "gallery-wooden-floors" to expand our keyword range?

Thanks so much again!

[David-Kley]

Unless the brand name is more popular than the style or type, I would only use the brand name where it makes sense. For the URL structure, personally I would use the style or color rather than the brand. If you do a few searches in Google, I'm betting you see a lot more results coming up for styles and colors.

I like the way that Sheena has described how to do the URL's, as it makes sense to flow from first major category, and go down from there gallery-flooring/manufactured-flooring/PRODUCT

With the way Google has been changing up their results, I'm betting if you had a lot of really nice optimized pages for "manufactured flooring", you would not need to really go into very specific details

EDIT* I thought I would add why I think this way. We do a lot of ecommerce seo for clients, and optimize every page on the site. Even with the individual product pages being highly optimized for one given thing, we often see the main level category pages ranking higher, even if your query is for a specific type or style.

[max.favilli]

Maybe it's a language thing, but I may still be misunderstanding you.

If I understand correctly, the product name is "White Grain", the category that product falls in is "Gallery Wood", what is "Brown Engineered Flooring"? What is the relation with the product name and the category name?

• Is it a sub-category as Sheena was suggesting? If so the url structure she suggested make perfect sense. Of course from a pure seo prospective you want to put the keyword to the leftmost possible place in the url, but it may do more harm than good if it doesn't make sense sematically.
• Is it a synonym of the category? If so I would replace the category name in the url.
• Is it something else?

[GaryVictory]

Hi Sheena

Your comments certainly help. It's really about architecture and what keyword to rank for. The sub category "gallery-wood" has a number of different products such as - Stone, Ember, Sabe, Shell, Oyster etc. I've already considered these urls

www.companyname.com/gallery-wood/whites-greys/stone  - keyword?

www.companyname.com/gallery-wood/mid-drowns/shell  - keyword?

All products currently are easily selectable on the same page. By using these url types we can build up their selection of products and later easily move them into sections "mid-browns", "whites-grey" etc - we're not planning this now as the "mid-browns" section for example would be to empty. With a structure like this, the headache now would be what keyword to use which matches the url?

Really appreciate your feedback.

[GaryVictory]

Hi Max

Thanks for getting back to me.

We have a very good inbound strategy in place that includes content creation, social media, influencer outreach, the list goes on to help build authority.

However my question is how to optimise a page that is focussed on the brand name itself - the name of the product is "White Grain", meaning the "title" of the page should be named the same (branded product). If the name of the product was called “Brown Engineered Flooring”, this would be a piece of cake http://www.companyname.com/dark-engineered-flooring, as the url suggests.

BUT - How does a product name like "white grain", "stone" or "Ember"  become fully optimised for a keyword? Currently we have http://www.companyname.com/gallery-wood/white-grain

[Sheena_Schleicher]

First off, I do think URLs help theme pages, which can indirectly help with SEO, but that shouldn't be your main goal. Aim to create a consistent structure for how all category, subcat, product detail pages are organized. This will not only make your life a whole lot easier, but it will also make more sense to users, help keep linking consistent, and (indirectly) help rankings.

I would have 3 category pages that lists all relevant products: /gallery-wood, /prefinished-wood, /parquet-reclaimed-wood. I would probably then have subcategory pages that drill-down to more specific product listings (i.e. /gallery-wood/brown-engineered-flooring). *This is the page level you'll want to target "brown engineered flooring."

From there, you have to decide if you want the product detail page URL to follow the folder structure (i.e. /gallery-wood/brown-engineered-flooring/[product-name]) or if you want it to only have the product name (.com/[brand-product-name/number]) which is usually better for complex ecommerce sites where products fall under multiple categories.

You could also drop the parent category from the URL structure, which is probably what I'd do. Something like:

• Category: /gallery-wood  *optimize for "gallery wood" & related terms
• Subcategory: /brown-engineered-flooring   *optimize for "brown engineered flooring" & related terms
• Product Detail: /brown-engineered-flooring/brand-product-name *optimize for brand, product name & related terms

Depending on search volume, there may even be an opportunity to create brand categories or landing pages.

I hope this helps!

[max.favilli]

Don't laugh, but personally my advice is to gain some backlinks to that page if you want to improve ranking.

All the on-page optimization suggestion you can easily find in the page grader tool here on moz.

If you want to rank well for “Brown Engineered Flooring”, you know what you have to do, put it in the url path, put it in the title, in the h1, in the body, don't stuff the page with it and remember the usual recommendation: before the fold is better than under the fold, at beginning of the title is better than in the middle, etc...