Suggested url structure for hierarchical data
-
For an existing web site we are developing a local info web site section where each area would get a review and information about local bars and restaurants.
The site manages areas in the following hierarchy:
Country > Broader region > Perfecture > Municipality > Neighborhood
e.g. Italy > Northern Italy > Lombardia > Milano > Center
Local Info pages would exist for all the above levels
so you could have a page for Italy as a whole, a page for Lombardia, and a separate page for the Center of Milano.
On certain countries there are many synonyms especially in the Neighborhood level but also a few in the Municipality level.
We would like to build a generic SEF url structure/pattern that would be able to represent the above and be as short as possible for the purpose of SEO.
1. the obvious solution would be to incorporate the unique identifier of
e.g.
www.example.com/local-info/Italy-10
www.example.com/local-info/Milano-12363
www.example.com/local-info/Center-789172but this does not represent the hierarchy and does not include the interesting keyword of e.g. Milano when looking at the neighborhood level
2. Another option would be to include all levels
e.g.
www.example.com/local-info/Italy/Northern-Italy/Lombardia
www.example.com/local-info/Italy/Northern-Italy/Lombardia/Milano
www.example.com/local-info/Italy/Northern-Italy/Lombardia/Milano/CenterBut this would end up with large URLs
3. I am thinking of another solution which would include the current level and its parent at any page. Not capturing the hierarchy very well but at least it includes the parent name for richer keywords in the url itself.
www.example.com/local-info/Northern-Italy/Lombardia
www.example.com/local-info/Lombardia/Milano
www.example.com/local-info/Milano/Center4. Or a hybrid where the first levels are always there and the rest are concatenated on a single segment
www.example.com/local-info/Italy/Northern-Italy/Lombardia
www.example.com/local-info/Italy/Northern-Italy/Lombardia-Milano
www.example.com/local-info/Italy/Northern-Italy/Lombardia-Milano-Centerany thoughts?
thanks in advance
-
Is the site aimed locally or globally? The only reason I ask is because it will affect the keywords you are trying to hit, and that's really what you need to bear in mind, the main keywords should be in the URL, and the rest can likely be cut.
Also how attached are you to /local-info/ it's not particularly descriptive, and if you could change it to /italy-info/ or simply /restaurants/ that cuts an entire level off the string.
I'm in the UK and if I was searching for the content you've described I'd probably just type "restaurants in central milan", Americans would probably use something more like "restaurants in milan italy" which would indicate URLs along the lines of:
www.example.com/restaurants/italy/milan/
www.example.com/restaurants/italy/milan-central
Neither would really think about putting Northern Italy nor Lombardia because they are much broader. You could still account for those just by adding them on the same level despite the hierarchical discrepancy.
www.example.com/restaurants/italy/lombardia/
www.example.com/restaurants/italy/northern-italy/
If you're catering to Italians you could just cut things down to:
www.example.com/restaurants/lombardia/milano/
They aren't going to specify Italy or Northern Italy as part of their searches.
So basically think about what your audience will search for and include those items in the URL, it doesn't have to make absolute hierarchical sense so long as it makes sense to your customers.
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
-
Structured data and Google+ Local business page are conflicting
Hi, A few (almost 8 now) months ago we have added structured data to our website. which according to the testing tool should work. (Our url: https://www.rezdy.com) However when searching for our company name, our old local business page from Google+ shows up. I have reached out to google to tell them that we aren't a local business anymore and want the data from the page to be removed. But this all takes painfully long. I want my search result to be shown like the large businesses (examples: Adroll, Hubspot), including logo, twitter feed etc. etc. Will this all work, if so, is there a way to speed up the process, any suggestions?
Technical SEO | | Niek_Dekker1 -
What directory should a site go in (url structure)?
Hi All, The is the first actual SEO campaign i've worked on and I had a few question about where the site should live on the server and url structure. The site is in WP and we're using Yoast SEO. Anyway the site lives in a a folder called Coastal, which is a child of the WWW folder. So the permalink of the homepage is mcoastalwindows.com/coastal/. The URL is mycoastalwindows.com. The thing is I can still get to the homepage or any of the pages on the site by typing in the /coastal/. Another example is permalink mycoastalwndows.com/coastal/siding/ and url mycoastalwindows.com/siding/. The urls always display without the /coastal/, so I'm not too worried about people linking to them, but Yoast puts a canonical element to the permalink and always includes the /coastal/. Also I'm seeing that Google displays a lot of the urls with the /coastal/, which is an issue seeing as we don't link to the pages that way. My original thought was to solve this at the source and just move everything out of the coastal directory, but the developer swears that it's more secure being in another folder especially with WP. What would you all do and what is best practice? Would you move everything out of the coastal folder, 301 re-direct, do something with. htaccess, or another solution? Appreciate the input thanks!
Technical SEO | | Mario.Souza0 -
Should I change the URL now?
Hi all, I have a client website that got hit in the latest algorithm update. It since appears that it had over 100 suspect links to it. I performed the Disavow procedure a few weeks ago via my Google Webmaster account, but have not received a message yet to say its been actioned. The majority of these suspect links go to one page. I am considering changing the base category (in Wordpress) to a different keyphrase and then submitting a new sitemap for indexing. This way there will be no actual link from a suspect website to a page on my website. Do you see what I mean? Will this help do you think? Thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | BrandC0 -
Canonical URLs in an eCommerce site
We have a website with 4 product categories (1. ice cream parlors, 2. frozen yogurt shops etc.). A few sub-categories (e.g. toppings, smoothies etc.) and the products contained in those are available in more than one product category (e.g. the smoothies are available in the "ice cream parlors" category, but also in the "frozen yogurt shops" category). My question: Unfortunately the website has been designed in a way that if a subcategory (e.g. smoothies) is available in more than 1 category, then itself (the subcategory page) + all its product pages will be automatically visible under various different urls. So now I have several urls for one and the same product: www.example.com/strawberry-smoothie|SMOOTHIES|FROZEN-YOGURT-SHOPS-391-2-5 and http://www.example.com/strawberry-smoothie|SMOOTHIES|ICE-CREAM-PARLORS-391-1-5 And also several ones for one and the same sub-category (they all include exactly the same set of products): http://www.example.com/SMOOTHIES-1-12-0-4 (the smoothies contained in the ice cream parlors category) http://www.example.com/SMOOTHIES-2-12-0-4 (the same smoothies, contained in the frozen yogurt shops category) This is happening with around 100 pages. I would add canonical tags to the duplicates, but I'm afraid that by doing so, the category (frozen yogurt shops) that contains several non-canonical sub-categories (smoothies, toppings etc.) , might not show up anymore in search results or become irrelevant for Google when searching for example for "products for frozen yoghurt shops". Do you know if this would be actually the case? I hope I explained it well..
Technical SEO | | Gabriele_Layoutweb0 -
Approved Word Separators in URLs
Hi There, We are in the process of revamping our URL structure and my devs tell me they have a technical problem using a hyphen as a word separator. There's a whole lot of competing recommendations out there and at this point I'm just confused. Does anyone have any idea what character would be next-best to the hyphen for separating words in a URL? Any reason to prefer one over another? Some links I've found discussing the topic: This page says that "__Google has confirmed that the point (.), the comma (,) and the hyphen (-) are valid word separators in URL’s.": http://www.internetofficer.com/seo/google-word-separator/ This page suggests the plus (+) symbol would be best: http://labs.phurix.net/posts/word-separators-in-urls This guy says he's tested and there's a whole bunch of symbols that will work as word separators: http://www.webproguide.com/articles/Symbols-as-word-separators-a-look-inside-the-search-engine-logic/ I'm leaning towards the tilde (~) or the plus (+) sign. Usage would be like so: http://www.domain.com/shop/sterling~silver OR /shop/sterling+silver etc... Thanks in advance for your help!
Technical SEO | | Richline_Digital1 -
What's the best URL Structure if my company is in multiple locations or cities?
I have read numerous intelligent, well informed responses to this question but have yet to hear a definitive answer from an authority. Here's the situation. Let's say I have a company who's URL is www.awesomecompany.com who provides one service called 'Awesome Service' This company has 20 franchises in the 20 largest US cities. They want a uniform online presence, meaning they want their design to remain consistent across all 20 domains. My question is this; what's the best domain or url structure for these 20 sites? Subdomain - dallas.awesomecompany.co Unique URL - www.dallasawesomecompany.com Directory - www.awesomecompany.com/dallas/ Here's my thoughts on this question but I'm really hoping someone b*tch slaps me and tells me I'm wrong: Of these three potential solutions these are how I would rank them and why: Subdomains Pros: Allows me to build an entire site so if my local site grows to 50+ pages, it's still easy to navigate Allows me to brand root domain and leverage brand trust of root domain (let's say the franchise is starbucks.com for instance) Cons: This subdomain is basically a brand new url in google's eyes and any link building will not benefit root domain. Directory Pros Fully leverages the root domain branding and fully allows for further branding If the domain is an authority site, ranking for sub pages will be achieved much quicker Cons While this is a great solution if you just want a simple map listing and contact info page for each of your 20 locations, what if each location want's their own "about us" page and their own "Awesome Service" page optimized for their respective City (i.e. Awesome Service in Dallas)? The Navigation and potentially the URL is going to start to get really confusing and cumbersome for the end user. Think about it, which is preferable?: dallas.awesomcompany.com/awesome-service/ www.awesomecompany.com/dallas/awesome-service (especially when www.awesomecompany.com/awesome-service/ already exists Unique URL Pros Potentially quicker rankings achieved than a subdomain if it's an exact match domain name (i.e. dallasawesomeservice.com) Cons Does not leverage the www.awesomecompany.com brand Could look like an imposter It is literally a brand new domain in Google's eyes so all SEO efforts would start from scratch Obviously what goes without saying is that all of these domains would need to have unique content on them to avoid duplicate content penalties. I'm very curious to hear what you all have to say.
Technical SEO | | BrianJGomez0 -
Should me URLs be uppercase or lowercase
I'm in the middle of doing a bunch of 301 redirects for me site. Should I make them Lowercase, uppercase, or does it matter? Also, do I want to be using hyphens (-), or underscores (_)? Any other tips? EX: http://www.stupid.com/golf-slippers.html OR http://www.stupid.com/Golf-Slippers.html
Technical SEO | | JustinStupid0 -
URL Rewrite
We are trying to convince a client to do a massive rewrite from all URL's looking like this: "www.company.com/category/categoryId=82374" to something like "www.company.com/womens/jackets/rain" How would you describe the importance and impact of doing URL rewrites to an ecommerce site? What evidence/research can we share with them to convince them it is worth the time and effort to do?
Technical SEO | | Hakkasan0