URL Structure "-" vs "/"? Are there any advantages to one over the other?
-
An example would be domain.com/keyword/keyword2 vs domain.com/keyword-keyword2
Are there any advantages / disadvantages to one over the other?
-
Lots of great feedback has been offered. In short, it's up to your personal preference.
I can't help but add a link because I have watched too many Matt Cutts videos (they are starting to auto-play in my head) and he answered your exact question.
-
the /keyword/ tells the search engine that you have a folder, the other does not. If your Keyword1 has a lot of sub/related keywords then creating a folder would be helpful. Google does search the index files of your folders... without being prompted to.
If you don't have a legit sub category then I would stick with the -.
-
The beginners guide to seo is a great place to start in terms of how to structure your URLs. I personally avoid the "domain.com/keyword/keyword2" type of URL structure. I'd stick with the latter format, but would make sure to not keyword stuff. Just keep it simple with one or two keywords as you mentioned. It's really ugly when you see a url that looks like http://www.domain.com/keyword-keyword2-keyword3-keyword4-keyword5-keyword6-keyword7. I know I hate it when I see those URLs show up in the SERPS. I believe Rand touched on this in The Future of LInk Building webinar from a while back.
-
Well your first example would be referencing 2 separate directories, where the second example is one directory.
Here's a quick snippet of an article from Rand. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/11-best-practices-for-urls
These last examples have done nearly everything right:
- http://www.discoverohio.com/visitors/map.asp
Brilliant - it's short, descriptive, static and obvious. - http://web.mit.edu/is/usability/usability-guidelines.html
Despite the subdomain, everything else is near perfect. - http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/presidents/jk35.html
I'm letting the White House off the hook for not using "john-kennedy" as the page title, because they've wisely also provided his number (the US' 35th President).
- http://www.discoverohio.com/visitors/map.asp
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
-
Google Sites website https://www.opcfitness.com/ title NOT GOOD FOR SEO
We set up a website https://www.opcfitness.com/home on google sites. but google sites page title not good for SEO. How to fix it?
Technical SEO | | ahislop5740 -
Google is not indexing my new URL structure. Why not?
Hi all, We launched a new website for a customer on April 29th. That same day we resubmitted the new sitemap & asked Google to fetch the new website. Screenshot is attached of this (GWT Indexed). However, when I look at Google Index (see attachment - Google Index), Automated Production's old website URL's still appear. It's been two weeks. Is it normal for Google's index to take this long to update? Thanks for your help. Cole VoLPjhy vfxVUsO
Technical SEO | | ColeLusby0 -
"Extremely high number of URLs" warning for robots.txt blocked pages
I have a section of my site that is exclusively for tracking redirects for paid ads. All URLs under this path do a 302 redirect through our ad tracking system: http://www.mysite.com/trackingredirect/blue-widgets?ad_id=1234567 --302--> http://www.mysite.com/blue-widgets This path of the site is blocked by our robots.txt, and none of the pages show up for a site: search. User-agent: * Disallow: /trackingredirect However, I keep receiving messages in Google Webmaster Tools about an "extremely high number of URLs", and the URLs listed are in my redirect directory, which is ostensibly not indexed. If not by robots.txt, how can I keep Googlebot from wasting crawl time on these millions of /trackingredirect/ links?
Technical SEO | | EhrenReilly0 -
What would be the optimum URL structure for an inbound tour operator that sells tours in Jordan?
We are an inbound tour operator in Jordan. We have just redesigned and restructured our website. We sell tours in Jordan (Jordan Tours) and this is the primary keyword we are targeting. Our Jordan Tours page includes different tour categories. Each category takes you to a number of tours to choose from. What would be the best URL structure that will optimize our ranking for "Jordan Tours"? A. /jordantours/tour-type-category/tour-name B. /jordantours/tour-name C. /tour-name I have to admit that two weeks ago we launched the new site and went with option C. by intuition, aiming at reducing the clutter for a better user experience. So if C isn't the answer, is it worth making the change and applying 301 redirects after our new pages has been indexed for 2 weeks? Your insight is much appreciated. Thank you, Rakan
Technical SEO | | rakan0 -
/forum/ or /hookah-forum/
I'm building a new website on Hookah.org. It will have a forum and blog. Should I put them in Hookah.org/hookah-forum/ and Hookah.com/hookah-blog/ or Hookah.org/forum and Hookah.org/blog I think /forum/ and /blog/ are easier for users but am not sure how much adding the word hookah helps with SEO.
Technical SEO | | Heydarian0 -
Having both <title>and <meta name="title"...> on a web page?</title>
Hi All, Client of mine using reversed Meta Tags format in their website and Honestly i never saw such Meta Tags formats. In my opinion having 2 Title tags and wrong reversed description tag is not correct and the needs to be removed, and other tags need to be changed,too But they said that it probably doesn't make a difference because they don't think it affects search engine results and won't remove it just based on opinion. Because weird thing is Search Engines are apparently able to index them. So should i persist on correcting them or just hope for the best and ignore it?!?!?! Thanks!
Technical SEO | | DigitalJungle0 -
301 an old URL with a ? in the URL?
I am redoing a site and the URL's are changing structure. The client's site was in magento and in the store they would get two URLs, for example: /store/categoryname/productname and /store/categoryname/productname?SID=dslkajsfdoiu947598whouieht983hg98 Do I have to 301 redirect both of these URL's to their new counterpart? Both go to the same content but magento seemed to add these SIDs into the navigation and Google has both versions in the index.
Technical SEO | | DanDeceuster0 -
Does anyone see benefit in .com/en vs .com/uk for a UK site?
The client is already on /en and in my opinion there is not much to be gained by switching to /uk
Technical SEO | | Red_Mud_Rookie0