Keywords in URL: sub-directory or single layer keywords?
-
Hi guys,
im putting together a proposal for a new site and trying to figure out if it'd be better to (A) have a keyword split across multiple directories or duplicate keywords to have the keyword hyphenated?
For example, for the topic of "Christmas decor" would you use;
(A) - www.domain.com/Christmas/Decor
(B) - www.domain.com/Christmas/Christmas-Decor
in example B the phrase 'Christmas' is duplicated which looks a little spammy, but the key term "Christmas decor" is in the URL without being broken up by directories.
which is stronger? Any advice welcome! Thanks guys!
-
When you're setting up a URL structure, we recommend setting up the URLs (folders/directories, etc.) so that it matches the hierarchy of the site. In the example you gave: www.domain.com/Christmas/Decor you would typically have a Christmas section of your site and then a Decor section.
But, if you have a Decor section (some that is not Christmas decor but maybe includes other types of decor), then the decor section as listed above wouldn't fit in properly. It could be like this: www.domain.com/Decor/Christmas-Decor/ and then you could actually also have a Christmas section, as well. It's possible that your Christmas products might list all of your Christmas products and the Christmas/decor/ section would then include the Christmas decor section.
Look at what sections of your site that you've created--and then the URLs should closely match those sections and that site hierarchy.
-
Hi,
I would suggest using the first option (/christmas/decor). Google and other search engines would understand that "decor" page is about Christmas Decor, as you are using "christmas" subfolder as a parent of "decor" page.
Hope this helps!
Dima,
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
-
Best approach to rank for this keyword?
Hi i want to rank for the keyword "white sandals" on Google Australia. Currently, the top 5 ranking pages are not optimised and specific to white sandals. See screenshot: https://image.prntscr.com/image/WenSRHqTTFSqYNg2MHvH1A.png To rank for this keyword, would you create a page dedicated to white sandals even though it looks like it doesn't matter and you could rank the broader sandals page (not colour specific). Any recommendations? Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | crazy4seo780 -
301 redirect to a temporary URL
Hi there, What would happen if I redirected a set of URLs to a temporary URL structure. And then a few weeks later redirected the original URLs and temporary URLs to the final permanent URLs? So for example:A -> B for a few weeks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sichristie
then: A->C and B->C where:
C is the final destination URL.
B is the temporary destination
A is the original URL. The reason we are doing this is the naming of the URLs and pages are different, and we wish to transition our customers carefully from old to new. I am looking for a pure technical response.
Would we lose link juice? Does Google care if we permanently redirect to a set of 'temporary' URLs, and then permanently redirect to a set of what we think are permanent URLs? Cheers, Simon0 -
Should /node/ URLs be 301 redirect to Clean URLs
Hi All! We are in the process of migrating to Drupal and I know that I want to block any instance of /node/ URLs with my robots.txt file to prevent search engines from indexing them. My question is, should we set 301 redirects on the /node/ versions of the URLs to redirect to their corresponding "clean" URL, or should the robots.txt blocking and canonical link element be enough? My gut tells me to ask for the 301 redirects, but I just want to hear additional opinions. Thank you! MS
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MargaritaS0 -
Best Way to Optimize 38 Local Directory Listing In Major Directories
Hi Folks, I am trying to figure out the best way to get our company's 38 U.S. locations in the major local directories. To start, I'd like to get us listed in the major ones: Google, Yahoo, Bing, and Yelp. I do have the resources myself here on staff to do everything manually. So, I don't necessarily need a service like Yext (but would also like any opinions on that offering if anyone can offer it). But, from what I know in the past, every time you try to claim a local listing within each platform, you have to confirm your existence there somehow - whether it be by a mailed postcard or some sort of automated call they give you. Considering that we want to manage all social and local platforms here at corporate, how can we do this? I am not physically at these locations, but I'm sure this is possible to manage everything through one account. The addresses will be local, but the phone numbers on each local profile will route to our customer service here at corporate because the local locations are mostly administrative. In other words, businesses is booked through corporate and carried out at local destinations. Thoughts/Comments?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CSawatzky
I want to do what's best for SEO and also dont' want to harm anything or our link equity. Thanks,
Pedram0 -
301 Redirection and apostrophes in URLs
Hi I am experiencing trouble getting any redirects with apostrophes in the URLs to 301 redirect in order to eliminate 404 errors. I have tried replacing the instance of the apostrophe in the source URL field to %27 and variations of this but to no avail. The site is a wordpress site (the old URLS are legacies from the old Business Catalyst site) and I am using the redirection plug in. I have gone into some detail with a helpful soul here http://wordpress.org/support/topic/how-to-deal-with-apostrophes-in-source-url but unfortunately to no result. If anyone has any idea how to solve this puzzle I would be grateful for the help. Example: http://www.tesselaars.com/blog/Inside_Flowers/post/Online_Marketing_for_Florists_Part_1%E2%80%93_A_Website_You_Won%27t_Regret/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Seamoose0 -
Keywords in WMT
Hello, In Googles Web master tools under "content keywords" 2 of my major keywords are missing. My site used to rank well for the keyphrase "short hairstyles" but gets very little traffic from google at all now, about 1% of what it did before april 2012. Someone did a negative seo number on us by pointing 10k+ spammy links to us from message boards, this and the timing of the traffic loss leads me to suspectthe penguin update. I am removing them as best I can but no increase in traffic has resulted so I'm looking for any and all issues and the missing keywords seems to be an oddity. The missing keywords include "short" which is pretty fundemental. The word is in the domain and plenty of times in the content. Any ideas?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jwdl0 -
Renaming a URL
Hi, If we rename a URL (below) http://www.opentext.com/2/global/company/company-ecm-positioning.htm
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pstables
to http://www.opentext.com/2/global/products/enterprise-content-management.htm (or something similar) Would search engines recognize that as a new page altogether? I know they would need to reindex it accordingly, so in theory it is kind of a "new" page. But the reason for doing this is to maintain the page's metrics (inbound links, authority, social activity, etc) instead of creating a new page from scratch. The page has been indexed highly in the past, so we want to keep it active but optimize it better and redirect other internal content (that's being phased out) to it to juice it up even more. Thanks in advance!
Greg0 -
SEO Strategy for URL Change
I'm working with a company who will likely have to change their URL because of a trademark dispute. They will be able to maintain the new URL for some period but will soon need to drop the existing URL all together. Aside from the usual keyword considerations when choosing a URL, are there any SEO strategies I should consider as we execute this change?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jon_KS0