Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Sizes and numbers in friendly urls - syntax
-
Ok, I'm trying to establish some business rules of syntax for SEO friendly URLS.
I'm doing this for an OpenCart online store which uses a SEO-url field to construct the "friendly URL's". The good news of that is I have total control over the urls' the bad news is I had to do some tricky Excel work to populate them.
That all said, I have a problem with items that have sizes. This is a crafts store so many of the items are differentiated by size. Examples:
Sleigh Bells, come in 1/2", 3/4", 1", 1 1/2" etc.
So far Ive tried to stay away from inch mark " by spelling it out. Right now its inch but could be in.
The numbers, fractions, sizes etc. create some ghastly friendly URL's. Is there any wisdom or syntax standards out there that would help me. I'm trying to avoid this:
www.mysite.com//index.php?route=craft-accessories/bells/sleigh-bells/sleigh-bells-1-one-half-inch-with-loop
I realize that the category (sleigh-bells) is repeated in the product name but there are several 1 1/2" items in the store.
Any thoughts would be useful, even if it's links to good SEO sites that have mastered the myriad of issues with dimensions in the urls.
thanks
-
I'll have to dig deeper than my local big-box retail store. This is a url from a random screw at Home Depot:
This product exhibits the issue. Product name, size (8 x 2 1/2), style (Phillips, Bugle Head), Thread (Coarse), Point (sharp), Coating etc.
-
This is a good question and harkens back to original data modeling. Each size item is a different sku. There are modules for OpenCart that will make a "series" record to mask via interface that they are all different records (think click on different color) but in our case they have different sku's, can be out of stock, can even have different prices. The nature of the crafts store is American Indian supplies. So just in seed beads there are five common sizes, up to 200 different colors per size and some of those can have faceted beads or non-faceted (we call them cuts). Add all that up and there are a ton of products that come in and out of stock etc.
That's it generally. My comment about sizes is that there are many many things across the materials (bells, silver broaches, etc.) that are chosen by the buyer by material (brass vs silver) but then by size (1", 1.5" etc.) The size is a key component so since each one is a different "product record" it will naturally have its own URL. All these inches, millimeters, fractions and odd sizes (thread come D, O, OO, YO etc.) it's enough to make one bonkers. I have an SEO url for each product and am looking for input from others thougths before I go medieval on shortening them.
Hope that answers your question.
-
Some very powerful resources shared by Patrick as always but while I was reading the question several ideas were popping up in my mind.
You are saying you have several different products that are in different sizes. If this is the case, why not you make it one product and in the product section offer the size in the dropdown? #justwondering
In my opinion the best URL structure for you would be domain.com/category/product-name.php
Once you decide what URL structure you will follow, do go through the instruction given by Patrick so that there should be no technical problem with regards to indexing and ranking.
Hope this helps!
-
Hi John
Okay cool - keep me posted - want to make sure you get to here you need to be! Good luck!
-
Thanks. I've read many of these but will do so again looking for details on the technical data in the URL. It strikes me that hardware stores (Home Depot and Lowes) must have this issue with screws etc. Will go there too.
-
Hi John
Take a look at the following resources:
URL Best Practices (Moz)
15 SEO Best Practices for Structuring URLs (Moz)
SEO Cheat Sheet: Anatomy of A URL (Moz)
SEO Optimal Ecommerce URLs (PracticalEcommerce)
Information Architecture for SEO - Whiteboard Friday (Moz)
Canonicalization (Moz - in case aliases or parameters appear)Don't forget to update your sitemap, upload it to Google and Bing Webmaster Tools, and also check your internal links so they are up to date.
There is a lot here, but these resources should help you get started on structuring your website and also your URLs in a logical and user friendly fashion. Let me know if you need anymore help! Good luck!
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
-
SEO - New URL structure
Hi, Currently we have the following url structure for all pages, regardless of the hierarchy: domain.co.uk/page, such as domain/blog name. Can you, please confirm the following: 1. What is the benefit of organising the pages as a hierarchy, i.e. domain/features/feature-name or domain/industries/industry-name or domain/blog/blog name etc. 2. This will create too many 301s - what is Google's tolerance of redirects? Is it worth for us changing the url structure or would you only recommend to add breadcrumbs? Many thanks Katarina
Technical SEO | | Katarina-Borovska1 -
URL has caps, but canonical does not. Now what?
Hi, Just started working with a site that has the occasional url with a capital, but then the url in the canonical as lower case. Neither, when entered in a browser, resolves to the other. It's a Shopify site. What do you think I should do?
Technical SEO | | 945010 -
How do I customize Magento product urls?
I would like my product urls to be /category/manufacturer/name/part#. This would be the only url the item uses and how the product is accessed. It would also be used for product feeds. My first attempt was to use https://amasty.com/magento-unique-product-url.html This creates a single url but I can not customize it. Sometimes it selects the manufacturer and sometimes the category. My second attempt was with https://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/custom-product-urls-seo.html I have it installed but it doesn't change the urls. Has anyone been able to do this successfully?
Technical SEO | | Tylerj0 -
URL path randomly changing
Hi eveyone, got a quick question about URL structures: I'm currently working in ecommerce with a site that has hundreds of products that can be accessed through different URL paths: 1)www.domain.com/productx 2)www.domain.com/category/productx 3)www.domain.com/category/subcategory/productx 4)www.domain.com/bestsellers/productx 5)... In order to get rid of dublicate content issues, the canoncial tag has been installed on all the pages required. The problem I'm witnessing now is the following: If a visitor comes to the site and navigates to the product through example 2) at time the URL shown in the URL browser box is example 4), sometimes example 1) or whatever. So it is constantly changing. Does anyone know, why this happens and if it has any impact on GA tracking or even on SEO peformance. Any reply is much appreciated Thanks you
Technical SEO | | ennovators0 -
How do I deindex url parameters
Google indexed a bunch of our URL parameters. I'm worried about duplicate content. I used the URL parameter tool in webmaster to set it so future parameters don't get indexed. What can I do to remove the ones that have already been indexed? For example, Site.com/products and site.com/products?campaign=email have both been indexed as separate pages even though they are the same page. If I use a no index I'm worried about de indexing the product page. What can I do to just deindexed the URL parameter version? Thank you!
Technical SEO | | BT20090 -
Why xml generator is not detecting all my urls?
Hi Mozzers, After adding 3 new pages to example.com, when generating the xml sitemap, Iwasn't able to locate those 3 new url. This is the first time it is happening. I have checked the meta tags of these pages and they are fine. No meta robots setup! Any thoughts or idea why this is happening? how to fix this? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Ideas-Money-Art0 -
Spaces (actual spaces) in URL
Hi all, Is there a huge loss of SEO performance if a URL shows spaces with an actual space (i.e. %20) in the URL rather than a "-" (or indeed a "_")? I know the preferred option is to have a "-", but I am just wondering if it is worth our effort to manually change the "%20" to a "-" in all the instances? Thanks 🙂 Diana
Technical SEO | | Diana.varbanescu0 -
URL rewriting from subcategory to category
Hello everybody! I have quite simple question about URL rewriting from subcategory to category, yet I can't find any solution to this problem (due to lack of my deeper apache programming knowledge). Here is my problem/question: we have two website url structures that causes dublicate problems: www.website.lt/language/category/ www.website.lt/language/category/1/ 1 and 2 pages are absolutely same (both also returns 200 OK). What we need is 301 redirect from 2 to 1 without any other deeper categories redirects (like www.website.com/language/category/1/169/ redirecting to .../category/1/ or .../category/). Here goes .htaccess URL rewrite rules: RewriteRule ^([^/]{1,3})/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/$ /index.php?lang=$1&idr=$2&par1=$3&par2=$4&par3=$5&par4=$6&%{QUERY_STRING} [L] RewriteRule ^([^/]{1,3})/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/$ /index.php?lang=$1&idr=$2&par1=$3&par2=$4&par3=$5&%{QUERY_STRING} [L] RewriteRule ^([^/]{1,3})/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/$ /index.php?lang=$1&idr=$2&par1=$3&par2=$4&%{QUERY_STRING} [L] RewriteRule ^([^/]{1,3})/([^/]+)/([^/]+)/$ /index.php?lang=$1&idr=$2&par1=$3&%{QUERY_STRING} [L] RewriteRule ^([^/]{1,3})/([^/]+)/$ /index.php?lang=$1&idr=$2&%{QUERY_STRING} [L] RewriteRule ^([^/]{1,3})/$ /index.php?lang=$1&%{QUERY_STRING} [L] There are other redirects that handles non-www to www and related issues: RedirectMatch 301 ^/lt/$ http://www.domain.lt/ RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^domain.lt RewriteRule (.*) http://www.domain.lt/$1 [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(.)/$RewriteRule ^(.)$ http://www.domain.lt/$1/ [R=301,L] At this moment we cannot solve this problem with rel canonical (due to our CMS limits). Thanks for your help guys! If You need any other details on our coding, just let me know.
Technical SEO | | jkundrotas0