Site´s Architecture - Categories . What´s the best in my case?
-
My Dear friends of MOZ, I´ve got you a case that has been driving me crazy for 2 weeks, Im doing an SEO audit for big brand that sells electronics.
Since they sell all kind of electronics, and are very popular the site is quite big and has several categories.
Now...Im working particularly in a kind of micro-site that sells two kind of products that are very similar but not the same. Lets say in this site they are selling super-light-weight-Laptops and tablets, so if you look the site its a Laptop/Tablet site. But the site is not under a laptop/tablet directory, some pages are under laptop and others in Tablet directory .
For example : Home page URL: /light-laptops/home.asp ; Products general page page URL is light-pads/products.asp ; and each single product page is under laptops or pads according the type of product.
From my point of view, they should create a new directory called /light-laptops-pads/ and single directories for products, and case studies, etc.. Since they want to show both products together when you click in products (off course they will be creating sub-directories for the two types of products).
At the begining I thought they were really mistaken, but now that I see that all light-pad content is in one folder and light-laptops content is in another, and the site jumps from one category to the other I am a little bit confused. PLEASE HELP ME
PD: I want to make clear that general categories like products, case studies , contact us, solutions pages are in some cases under /light-pad/ directory and in other cases under /light-laptops / directory
PLEASE PARDON MY ENGLISH!
-
Pablo -
Yes, it would be better to have all of your domain authority under one main domain name, instead of spreading it thinly using subdomains.
Thanks,
-- Jeff
-
Hi Jeff,
Thanks a lot for your answers, I have read also the answers to the other threads you referred me.
I dont want to abuse from your time and kindnes, but I ve got one more question. The idea of creating a subdomain started circuling my mind, though Im not sure about this universe.
Like Vice and Mic I bring two cases to the table, but both are using subdomains in this case. www.mercadolibre.com (latinamerican Amazon) and sony.com .
Sony uses store.com for all their products listing, support.sony for support and sony.com for main navigation pages.
Mercado Libre uses listado.mercadolibre.com for most of their products and autos(cars).mercadolibre.com or ropa.mercadolibre.com for really important categories like clothes and cars ( that would bring Mercado Libre more revenue than other categories, I think is where they are more focused in).
Now I always thought the same way Matt Cutts explains in his article about subdomain, it should be made for keywords that aren´t too related to domain´s keywords. I remember creating an insurance subdomain for a brokerage firm.
The domain authority of the domain Im working in is already 92 I understand SEO efforts will only have repercussions in subdomain, but as I said domain authority is already 92 . On the other hand I should add another folder, and the site structure is already a little bit long, while using a subdomain will save me using at least one folder less.
Hope you can give me a hand with this.
Best Wishes.
Pablo
-
So, if this is a huge brand name with a high domain authority... it honestly won't matter as much how their category and URL structure is set up.
However, if they are using two different directories with specific information about each product, this would be fine as well. I think that having a site with two big / strong categories, but no general categories should be okay, especially if their DA is really strong.
Hope this helps!
- Jeff
-
Thanks a lot Jeff, really helpful information.
This brand is also a manufacturer, as big as Sony. I understand your way you would proceed with this and I have the same approach, but if we follow an intuitive architecture of categories, the one they are using is not that wrong, altough not all the categories correspond to the same microsite .
Let me be a little bit more graphical :
/ Business /directory
/light-laptops/ displayed in microsite A
/light-tablets/ displayed in microsite A
/projectors/ displayed in microsite b
/4k-displays/displayed in microsite c
I dont really know how wrong its what they are doing. If tomorrow they come up with more "light tablets" info they will host it in /light-laptops/ I know this is not classic SEO, but do you think this structure would affect rankings?
Questions:
Yes, they don t have one directory including both products at the same time, but they have two different directories with Specific info about each product. (also including products,contact and home page since there is no general directory for both categories) You think this wouldn t be a right way to divide categories?
Do you think having a site like they have with two big and strong categories and no general categories would affect SEO?
Thanks a lot!
-
Microsites can either be a separate domain name (i.e. www.domain-light-tablet-laptops.com) or a subdirectory off of your existing domain (i.e. www.domain.com/light-tablet/)
It sounds like you're going with the subdirectory option for the microsite. I think that this will be helpful, and add more SEO value to the microsite. Here's a link to a post on subdomains vs. subdirectories:
http://moz.com/community/q/revisited-the-subdomain-vs-subdirectory-questionMy recommendation, if you are to use a sub-directory, would be to have one top level, such as:
www.domain.com/light-tablets-laptops/If you don't need to have the home.asp, that might be better... but that's going to depend on your site and page system settings.
For your categories, you might go with:
www.domain.com/light-tablets-laptops/manufacturer/And for your product, you might go with:
www.domain.com/light-tablets-laptops/manufacturer/tablet-XYZ/For the contact page, I'd go with:
www.domain.com/light-tablets-laptops/contact/Hope this helps!
Thanks,
-- 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
-
Does an EAT score on my YMYL site impact my rankings?
I've read some conflicting information on YMYL and EAT. If the Google Quality Raters are out there reviewing YMYL pages and scoring them on EAT, does that site's score have an impact on that page's/site's ranking?
Algorithm Updates | | BFMichael0 -
Why is old site not being deindexed post-migration?
We recently migrated to a new domain (16 days ago), and the new domain is being indexed at a normal rate (2-3k pages per day). The issue is the old domain has not seen any drop in indexed pages. I was expecting a drop in # of indexed pages inversely related to the increase of indexed pages on the new site. Any advice?
Algorithm Updates | | ggpaul5620 -
How do I code SEO for a secondary site without impacting the main site?
We have a secondary site for our online magazine, how do I code the SEO so I don't steal links from the main site?
Algorithm Updates | | gacwebteam0 -
Site titles / descriptions change - Google Algo Change ?
Hello, During the weekend 4 of our sites automatically changed their search titles and descriptions at the same time.
Algorithm Updates | | lordish
They are not picking up the real pages: Title, Description. Our ranks are dropping because of this. can you please tell if it happened to you as well or if you recognize a problem here? sites:
http://www.robinhoodbingo.com
http://www.gossipbingo.com
http://www.moonbingo.com in the attached examples:
for the kws searched - the results show different titles and descriptions. results for these pages:
moon bingo - http://www.moonbingo.com
mobile bingo - http://www.robinhoodbingo.com/skin/mobile.php rhMzURw.png 2tRL5dZ.png0 -
What is the best approach: abbreviated citations or fully spelled out citations?
What is the BEST approach: abbreviated citations or fully spelled out citations? For the purpose of ranking locally in google what is the best method of formatting citations? Would it be abbreviated or fully spelled out addresses. Southwest v.s. SW v.s. Sw Avenue v.s. AVE vs. Ave
Algorithm Updates | | MiamiWebCompany0 -
Relevant site outranked by powerful un-relevant sites
One of my clients has a site in a niche market, and has been ranking well for years. Since the Penguin algorithm changes his site dropped and 4-5 other sites came out of nowhere to take to top spots. These are very large sites, but they are not really reliant to the search terms. Sure, they sell one or two of the niche products, but our site is dedicated to those products. The site has been updated since I took over on the site, and is well SEOed. The site in question still ranks 1st for the keywords in every other search engine imaginable. Has anyone else encountered this? If so, how did you combat it?
Algorithm Updates | | DavidWilsonSEO0 -
Google site links on sub pages
Hi all Had a look for info on this one but couldn't find much. I know these days that if you have a decent domain good will often automatically put site links on for your home if someone searches for your company name, however has anyone seen these links appear for sub pages? For example, lets say I had a .com domain with /en /fr /de sub folders, each seoed for their location. If I were to then have domain.com/en/ as no1 in Google for my company in the UK would I be able to get site links under this or does it only work on the 'proper' homepage domain.com/ A client of mine wants to reorganise their website so they have different location sections ranking in different markets but they also want to keep having sitewide links as they like the look of it Thanks Carl
Algorithm Updates | | Grumpy_Carl0 -
What determines rankings in a site: search?
When I perform a "site:" search on my domains (without specifying a keyword) the top ranked results seem to be a mixture of sensible top-level index pages plus some very random articles. Is there any significance to what Google ranks highly in a site: search? There is some really unrepresentative content returned on page 1, including articles that get virtually no traffic. Is this seriously what Google considers our best or most typical content?
Algorithm Updates | | Dennis-529610