Site Architecture & URL length
-
Hello SEO Folks,
Wanting to have an expert advice on which one we should give preference. We understand a well put-together site architecture is one of the major factor ranking factor. In the other hand shorter URL also an important factor. Since our site aim to have many pages and destination wise product pages, in order to have shorter URL we avoid to follow the best site structure. in our site a product page do not have the right path to have right architecture, would it hurt our DA ?
Thanks in advance
John
Adventure Emirates
-
I would concentrate on creating the most logical site structure from a user perspective and less on the length of URLs. That combined with highly descriptive, clear and concise Meta Page titles will make your site rock.
-
You need to be aware DA is secondary to your question, that is DA has to do with back link quality and URLs have to do with the search engine and users be unable to find what they're looking for.
The URL structure should be clean easy to read and easy to navigate. I won't be overly worried about the length although keep it to a minimum where possible like the following: www.domain.com/products/air-conditioning/portable-air-conditioner-unit
-
Hi John,
Neither site URL length or architecture are ranking signals, although it could be argued that a very poor architecture could hamper efforts by causing technical issues.
The best thing to do is create a site that has a good, clean structure but as for URL length, just make sure it makes sense. Of course, you don't want a URL that is overly long for no reason - just keep it simple.
Would either of these affect DA? Have a read here where MOZ explain how it is calculated.
-Andy
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
-
Need Advice on Categorizing Posts, Using Topics, Site Navigation & Structure
Hey there, My site had terrible categorization. I did a redesign, and essentially decided to start over using Topics instead of categories - which appear as my site's main navigation. Now I need to assign a Topic to all my posts. Is it safe to assign posts to multiple parent Topics from an SEO point of view? I want to do it since it would be helpful for users to find them in multiple locations some of the time, but I certainly don't want any SEO issues. Also, should I de-categorize all of my posts since I'm assigning them to my new hierarchical taxonomy - Topics? This is very important to finalize. Any help or advice is greatly appreciated. Thanks, Mike
Technical SEO | | naturalsociety0 -
URL Parameters
On our webshop we've added some URL-parameters. We've set URL's like min_price, filter_cat, filter_color etc. on "don't Crawl" in our Google Search console. We see that some parameters have 100.000+ URL's and some have 10.000+ Is it better to add these parameters in the robots.txt file? And if that's better, how can we write it down so the URL's will not be crawled. Our robotos.txt files shows now: # Added by SEO Ultimate's Link Mask Generator module User-agent: * Disallow: /go/ # End Link Mask Generator output User-agent: * Disallow: /wp-admin/
Technical SEO | | Happy-SEO1 -
In Facebook when i place my site URL the image does not load?
In Facebook when i place my site URL the image does not load? It loads some generic image or logo but not other image thats related to the page. Is there any Tag we need to add in the website so the image loads? Is it good to use a tag as this for description? property="og:description" content="Some data" />
Technical SEO | | bsharath0 -
Site architecture & breadcrumbs
Hi A client hasn't structured site architecture in a silo type format so breadcrumbs are not predicating in a topical hierarchy as one would desire (or at least i think one would prefer) For example: say the site is called www.fruit.com and it has a category called 'types of fruit' and then sub/content pages called things like 'apples' and 'pears'. So in terms of architecture that should be: www.fruit.com/types-of-fruit/apples and www.fruit.com/types-of-fruit/pears etc etc The client has kept it all flat so instead architecture is: www.fruit.com/types-of-fruit and www.fruit.com/apples and www.fruit.com/pears As a result breadcrumbs follow suit and hence since also not employing logical predication dont reflect the topical & sub-topical hierarchy I have seen that some seo's at least used to think this was better for seo since kept the page/s nearer the root but surely its better to structure site architecture in a logical topical hierarchy so long as dont go beyond say 3 or 4 directories/forward slashes in the url's? Also is it theoretically possible to keep url structure as is (flat) and just edit/customise the breadcrumbs to reflect a topical hierarchy in a silo structure rather than change the entire site architecture & required 301'ing etc in order to do this (or is that misleading or just not possible?) Cheers Dan
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
SEO URLs?
What are the best practices for generating SEO-friendly headlines? dashes between words? underscores between words? etc. Looking for a programatically generated solution that's using editor-written headlines to produce an SEO-friendly URL Thanks.
Technical SEO | | ShaneHolladay0 -
I have altered a url as it was too long. Do I need to do a 301 redirect for the old url?
Crawl diagnostics has shown a url that is too long on one of our sites. I have altered it to make it shorter. Do I now need to do a 301 redirect from the old url? I have altered a url previously and the old url now goes to the home page - can't understand why. Anyone know what is best practice here? Thanks
Technical SEO | | kingwheelie0 -
Crawl reveals hundreds of urls with multiple urls in the url string
The latest crawl of my site revealed hundreds of duplicate page content and duplicate page title errors. When I looked it was from a large number of urls with urls appended to them at the end. For example: http://www.test-site.com/page1.html/page14.html or http://www.test-site.com/page4.html/page12.html/page16.html some of them go on for a hundred characters. I am totally stymied, as are the people at my ISP and the person who talked to me on the phone from SEOMoz. Does anyone know what's going on? Thanks So much for any help you can offer! Jean
Technical SEO | | JeanYates0