Stripping Parent Pages from Slugs
-
Hi
Basically my wordpress site exists of 4 Parent Categories, each of them having + 50 subpages (or child pages) in them. Some of these child pages have other child pages in them. This creates URL's (or slugs) looking like this:
mydomain.com/sunflower-seeds/exotic-sunflower-seeds/new-york-seed-shops
I found a plugin that 301 redirects a page to any given url. This way i can make www.mydomain.com/sunflower-seeds/exotic-sunflower-seeds/new-york-seed-shops redirect to mydomain.com/new-york-seed-shops, only with the purpose to have shorter links and the keyword appearing 'earlier' in the url.
Another option to shorten the url's is to shorten the parent pages slugs, something like this: mydomain.com/seeds/exotic/new-york. Only downside is that the keyword for the parent pages themselves won't appear in the slug anymore. The keywords will still be there in the Title, Description and H1 tag, but not in the url. so if my keyword is stunflower seeds, instead of having www.mydomain.com/sunflower-seeds i'll have www.mydomain.com/seeds
What would you do?
1: Leave urls like this - really long urls, keywords don't come 'early' in url
mydomain.com/sunflower-seeds/exotic-sunflower-seeds/new-york-seed-shops2: Make child pages 301 redirect - short urls, but url structure is lost (parent pages don't show in the url)mydomain.com/new-york-seed-shop3: User shorter slugs for Parent Pages - to me looks like the best option, but then i'll loose my keywords in the slugs for parent pages.mydomain.com/seeds/exotic/new-york4: Yes there's even a 4th option, again the example of how my slugs look now:
mydomain.com/sunflower-seeds/exotic-sunflower-seeds/new-york-seed-shops
I could use the plugin to redirect every child page (for example new-york-seed-shops) to this: mydomain.com/seeds/exotic/new-york-seed-shops. But i don't know if it's okay to redirect to different parent pages with wordpress...I'd also like to know if backlinks to 301 redirect pages count for the page they redirect to. And if they have the same impact/strength as links that link directly to the page.Thanks in advance
-
Hi Freek,
Here are my thoughts :
1 : Might look like a spammy keyword stuffed url to users and search engines
2 : Short and sweet, you do lose the idea of parent/child relation, but I think it's the most clean and optimized one (as long as you keep it short)
3 : Less descriptive, but looks less keyword optimized and might help to get breadcrumbs because of the parent/child relation.
4 : Not that I can think of, you might want to try both, number 2 and 3 on a certain part of your website, track your rankings and see wich ones goes up and wich ones stays the same or decrease. Then you should be able to decide wich one is the best.
Also, don't forget to ask website's customer what they think would be the best URLs, their opinion also counts!
Best regards,
Guillaume Voyer.
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
-
May integrating my main category page in the index page improve my ranking of main category keyword?
90% of our sales are made with products in one of our product categories.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lcourse
A search for main category keyword returns our root domain index page in google, not the category page.
I was wondering whether integrating the complete main category directly in the index page of the root domain and this way including much more relevant content for this main category keyword may have a positive impact on our google ranking for the main category keyword. Any thoughts?1 -
Location Pages On Website vs Landing pages
We have been having a terrible time in the local search results for 20 + locations. I have Places set up and all, but we decided to create location pages on our sites for each location - brief description and content optimized for our main service. The path would be something like .com/location/example. One option that has came up in question is to create landing pages / "mini websites" that would probably be location-example.url.com. I believe that the latter option, mini sites for each location, would be a bad idea as those kinds of tactics were once spammy in the past. What are are your thoughts and and resources so I can convince my team on the best practice.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KJ-Rodgers0 -
Page Titles of Blog
Hi, Should all the page titles of our blogs include a Keyword(s) and\or our website name?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Studio330 -
Parent pages
Hi guys, A website has many venue pages, for example: www.example.com/venue/paris For some reason the parent www.example.com/venue/ is 301 redirecting to a minor page elsewhere on the website. Should I remove the 301 redirect and then create www.example.com/venue/ page that then links to all the venues? My thinking is: Google will expect there to be a /venue/ 'parent' page So if the parent page is redirecting to a minor page elsewhere within the website its telling Google all the venues like paris must be even less important. Should I do it? Any suggestions from fellow SEOMoz's would be appreciated! All the best Richard
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Richard5550 -
Product pages content
Hi! I'm doing some SEO work for a new client. I've been tasked with boosting some of their products, such as http://www.lawnmowersdirect.co.uk/product/self-propelled-rear-roller-rotary-petrol-lawnmowers/honda-hrx426qx. It's currently #48 for the term Honda Izy HRG465SD, while http://www.justlawnmowers.co.uk/lawnmowers/honda-izy-hrg-465-sd.htm is #2, behind Amazon. Regarding links, there's no great shakes between the pages or even the domains. However, there's major difference in content. I'm happy to completely revamp it, I just wanted to check I'm not missing anything out before starting to rewrite it altogether! Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | neooptic0 -
Why is a page with a noindex code being indexed?
I was looking through the pages indexed by Google (with site:www.mywebsite.com) and one of the results was a page with "noindex, follow" in the code that seems to be a page generated by blog searches. Any ideas why it seems to be indexed or how to de-index it?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | theLotter0 -
Resources for how to code pages...
I'm looking for some nuts and bolts ideas about how to best layout the HTML code for a webpage. Can you point to some case studies? Perhaps you've done some testing yourself? This could be folded into the Tom Critchlow's question about what should be included in a updated developers SEO cheat sheet.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 19prince0 -
Static index page or not?
Are there any advantages of dis-advantages to running a static homepage as opposed to a blog style homepage. I have be running a static page on my site with the latest posts displayed as links after the homepage content. I would like to remove the static page and move to a more visually appealing homepage that includes graphics for each post and the posts droppping down the page like normal blogs do. How will this effect my site if I move from a static page to a more dynamic blog style page layout? Could I still hold the spot I currently rank for with the optimized index content if I turn to a more traditional blog format? cheers,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NoCoGuru0