URL structure for SEO
-
Hi Mozzers,
I have a site which is a combination of product pages, and news and advice pages that relate to the products. How would you approach the URL structure for this, following SEO best practice?
Approach 1
Product pages:
www.website.com/product-category/product-pageNews and advice pages:
www.website.com/product-category/product-page/news-and-advice-story-1
www.website.com/product-category/product-page/news-and-advice-story-2
etcor Approach 2
Product pages:
www.website.com/product-category/product-pageNews and advice pages:
www.website.com/news/product-category/news-and advice-story-1 (with internal linking to relevant product page)
www.website.com/news/product-category/news-and advice-story-2 (with internal linking to relevant product page)
etcOr would a different approach be better?
-
Why not:
www.website.com/news/news-and advice-story-1 (with internal linking to relevant product page)
www.website.com/news/news-and advice-story-2 (with internal linking to relevant product page)Or is there a need to have product-category in the path for some reason?
Can a product be in more than one category? How are you handling that? -
Totally agree with Andy.
Products or news pages, makes no difference in my opinion.
Keeping them focused and relevant will help not only the bots but more importantly, your customers.
I like to use the "how would you file this doc for someone to find in 1 years time?" question.
Simple but accurate.
HTH
Regards
Daren
-
The answer is whichever one works best for your particular situation.
Yes, while fewer folders is a benefit, it might not make sense to do this if you need to separate products, for example.
Try to keep URL's short, sensible and straight to the point - don't add keyword bloat and never stuff the URL's.
-Andy
-
Hi,
IMO approach 2 would be the best because fewer folders is generally better.
Thanks
-
Hello,
I think I should choose the second one. But be careful with that solution, and put IDs in URL with automatic redirect.
For example www.website.com/product-category/product-page => www.website.com/phone/iphone-1234.htmlIf you change product-category name (phone => smartphone or apple phone) or product-page name (iphone => iphone 5), old URLs can be automatically redirected with simple conditionnal code at the beginning of your server code (load name with ID and the compare with URL)
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 suggestions for a directory
Hi all, I am new to SEO. I work for a ratings and review website, like TripAdvisor and LinkedIn. How would one go about setting up SEO strategy for national directories that have local suggested pages? What can be a good practice. For example, Tripadvisor has many different restaurants across the UK. What would they do to improve their SEO? How do they target correct links? How do they go about building their Moz Score? Would really appreciate your thoughts and suggestions. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Eric_S
Eric0 -
Any Angular2 SEOs?
We are having a few issues with blog integration into an Angular2 website and would love an SEO referral. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vinadvisor0 -
SEO of blogging websites
What are the best practices of doing SEO of article/blogging websites.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Obbserv0 -
Change url structure and keeping the social media likes/shares
Hi guys, We're thinking of changing the url structure of the tutorials (we call it knowledgebase) section on our website. We want to make it shorter URL so it be closer to the TLD. So, for the convenience we'll call them old page (www.domain.com/profiles/profile_id/kb/article_title) and new page (www.domain.com/kb/article_title) What I'm looking to do is change the url structure but keep the likes/shares we got from facebook. I thought of two ways to do it and would love to hear what the community members thinks is better. 1. Use rel=canonical I thought we might do a rel=canonical to the new page and add a "noindex" tag to the old page. In that way, the users will still be able to reach the old page, but the juice will still link to the new page and the old pages will disappear from Google SERP and the new pages will start to appear. I understand it will be pretty long process. But that's the only way likes will stay 2. Play with the og:url property Do the 301 redirect to the new page, but changing the og:url property inside that page to the old page url. It's a bit more tricky but might work. What do you think? Which way is better, or maybe there is a better way I'm not familiar with yet? Thanks so much for your help! Shaqd
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ShaqD0 -
Suggestions for a SEO Review
I think it would be beneficial to have a third party seo review of the network of sites my team and I manage and was wondering if any of you had suggestions for what sort of tests should be done or that we should expect to see done during one of these reviews. We are a small team who has varying seo experience and have been working hard to make improvements to our sites in the past year. Most of our sites have been completely overhauled in the last 12-16 months and seo work that had not been done in the past has been setup, along with some corrections that may have been harming seo. We believe we are on the right track and have learned a good amount about seo in that time, but it would be nice to have some "expert" feedback outside of our office to get a clearer picture on anything we may be missing or some suggested improvements. A sort of double check on the work we have done.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | unikey0 -
Optimal URLs for SEO and UX
We are considering restructuring the URL scheme on one of the websites we maintain. We have a few options. Currently news article URLs are as follows:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Peter264
http://domain.com/news/1234/article-title-name/ Download section URLs are as follows:
http://domain.com/downloads/files/1234/file-title-of-download-here/ Forum URLS:
http://forum.domain.com/forum/topic/1234/title-of-forum-topic-here/ We feel that these are a bit too long for both SEO and user experience. We want to remove as many directories from the URLs as possible. From experience, what do you recommend changing for the example URLs above? We have some ideas below...and we need to keep the ID in the URLs...however I know this is a little frustrating. Some ideas we have for news articles:
http://domain.com/news/article-title-shorter-1234
http://domain.com/article-title-shorter-n1234 Some ideas for the download pages:
http://domain.com/downloads/file-title-shorter-d1234
http://domain.com/downloads/files/file-title-shorter-1234
http://domain.com/file-title-shorter-d1234 Some ideas for the forum URLs:
http://forum.domain.com/topic-title-shorter-t1234
http://forum.domain.com/topic/topic-title-shorter-1234 What do you think of these suggestions? Any other URL ideas? Recommended URL length? The purpose of is question was to find the perfect URLs for the site we are working on; your thoughts, suggestions and tips are very much appreciated.0 -
What url should i link to?
Hi everybody, after some discussions i decided to keep my page on the old domain for better seo rankings; However, the new third level domain sounds better: poltronafraubrescia.zenucchi.it.... the question is: i'm going to recive a high value link and i don't know if i should link directly to the old adress ( www.zenucchi.it/ITA/poltrona-frau-brescia.it ) where the page is located or to the new one by making a 301 redirect to the previous. what's best? and second question what's the way to keep the page on this adress ( www.zenucchi.it/ITA/poltrona-frau-brescia.it ) but show poltronafraubrescia.zenucchi.it as url? thank you guido
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | guidoboem0 -
SEO question
Hi i changed my page titles for a competitive keyword last week and noticed it has dropped 9 search engine ranking positions. Was ranking 37 and now it 46. Would you guys leave it and see if it starts creeping back up or change again? the page title i used was across my pages for example was Primary keyword | secondary keyword | Heading on page thanks for you help
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wazza19850