Website Page Structuring and URL re writing - need helpful resources
-
Hello,
I am not technically very sound and I need some good articles that teach me how to think about and go about website pages structuring and url rewriting that is seo friendly.
I will be most obliged if some of you great seomoz-ers can pitch in with help.
Regards,
Talha
-
A web crawler will start at the top of a page and work it's way to the bottom, discovering links and content on the way down. The first links it encounters will be used for anchor text association and weighed more then other links to the same page. Links in content are given greater weight then links in navigation so it is preferable to have those links discovered first.
HTML code can be adjusted to position the navigation after the content. You can look at xenforo which is a forum software developer who designs their software in this manner. If you view the page's source code you will notice the navigation is at the bottom of the HTML code.
With respect to your question on content structuring, there are many pages covering this topic. In general I have two pieces of advice.
1. Have your content reviewed by an English teacher. I am not looking for grammatical corrections (although that helps too) but more along the idea of properly presenting a topic. A good header, intro sentence and paragraph, etc.
2. Examine the wikipedia approach. Most wiki pages perform the basics of SEO content presentation very effectively.
A WBF article which may be of interest: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/improving-content-shareability-whiteboard-friday
-
Hello Ryan...
thank you very much for your suggestion. Had that in mind already.
About website page structuring... I was actually asking about content structuring...
BUT I am surely, surely appreciate if you could also give me a bit of insight (or links) into html structuring.... the suggestion about placing navigation code is extremely interesting... can I know more please sir???
-
Thanks a lot for your response Steven... im most obliged.
I am on my way to understanding url re-writing.
Can you also help me with the remaining part of my question - I want to understand about HOW TO STRUCTURE A WEBSITE FOR MAXIMUM NOTICE BY SEARCH ENGINE SPIDERS.... OR we can rephrase it to be WHAT IS CRAWL FRIENDLY WEBSITE STRUCTURE???
I am sure your answer will be very helpful for mr.
Thanks bro
Peace!
-
Hi Talha.
Since you are an IT company I am guessing you are asking about the general structure of URLs as opposed to the technical details of how to implement the change.
The primary change I recommed with your present URLs is to remove the technology suffix. Change http://www.zigzagsolutions.co.uk/jobs.html to http://www.zigzagsolutions.co.uk/jobs. Also for the home page drop the index.html.
These changes make your URL shorter and friendlier in appearance. You also benefit from more stable URLs. If you later decide to change your web pages to php or another technology, your existing URLs can continue to work without needing to redirect your whole site.
For web page structure, can you offer a bit more detail as to what you are seeking? Are you looking for technical details such as how to structure your html? An example would be placing your navigation code at the bottom of your HTML so search engines see your content first. Or are you asking about how to present your content?
-
I assume you are talking about Mod_rewrite with apache.
Apache's rewrite would be a good start http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/misc/rewriteguide.html. You say you are not technically strong, but you should be able to copy details from that and just change things around. The matching pattern works on regular expressions so if you have every used this you will find the syntax makes sense. If you haven't then it can look daunting when you first start but its really not that bad and through trial and error you can quickly pick it up.
This is the full reference for mod_rewrite http://httpd.apache.org/docs/current/mod/mod_rewrite.html.
Alternatively once you have decided on your friendly URL to actual file mapping, post those in here and I am sure people will be able to help you create the rewrite rules
-
What web server are you using?
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
-
Linking to a Resource from a multi-language Page
I have a multi-language page where the content is available in several versions (translated). I want to link to a resource that is only available in one English. Is it a good idea to link to this resource from all language versions or should I better include the link only in the English version of my page? In the first scenario for example a Spanisch and a German language version would link to a page in English. Is this ok or could it be considered spam?
Technical SEO | | ConverterApp0 -
Changing URL structure of site, including AMP - redirect AMP too?
So, I'm changing all the URLs of a site, including all its AMP URLs, I'll be redirecting all the normal URLs, but do I need to also redirect all the AMP pages?
Technical SEO | | alksfjasldfu934341 -
Wrapping my head around an e-commerce anchor filter issue, need help
I am having a hard time understanding how Google will deal with this scenario, I would love to hear what you guys think or suggest. Ok a category page on the site in question looks like this. http://makeupaddict.me/6-skin-care All fine and well, But a paginated page or a filtered category pages look like these http://makeupaddict.me/6-skin-care#/page-2 and http://makeupaddict.me/6-skin-care#/price-391-1217 From my understanding Google does not index an anchor without a shebang (#!), but that doesn't mean that they do not still crawl them, correct? That is where the issue comes in, since anchors are not indexed and dropped from the urls, when Google crawls a filtered or paginated page, it is getting different results. From the best of my understanding, and someone can correct me if I am wrong but an anchor is not passed in web languages like a querystring is. So if I am using php and land on http://makeupaddict.me/6-skin-care or http://makeupaddict.me/6-skin-care#/price-391-1217 and use something like .$_SERVER['SELF'] to get the url both pages will return http://makeupaddict.me/6-skin-care since the anchor is handled client side. With that being the case, is it imagined that Google uses that standard or is it thought they have a custom function that grabs the whole url anchor in all? Also if they are crawling the page with the anchor, but seeing it anchor less how are they handling the changing content?
Technical SEO | | LesleyPaone0 -
How can I see the SEO of a URL? I need to know the progress of a specific landing-page of my web. Not a keyword, an url please. Thanks.
I need to know the evolution on SEO of a specific landing-page (an URL) of my web. Not a keyword, a url. Thanks. (Necesito saber si es posible averiguar el progreso de una URL específica en el posicionamiento de Google. Es decir, lo que hace SEOmoz con las palabras clave pero al revés. Yo tengo una url concreta que quiero posicionar en las primeras posiciones de Google pero quiero ver cómo va progresando en función a los cambios que le voy aplicando. Muchas gracias)
Technical SEO | | online_admiral0 -
Same page from different locations has slight different URL, is it a negative SEO practice?
Hi, Recently we made change in our website link generation logic, and now I can reach the same page from different pages with slightly different URLs like this: http://www.showme.com/sh/?h=wlZJNya&by=Featured_ShowMe and http://www.showme.com/sh/?h=wlZJNya&by=Topic Just wondering is this a bad practice and should we avoid it? Thank you, Karen
Technical SEO | | showme0 -
Page rank 2 for home page, 3 for service pages
Hey guys, I have noticed with one of our new sites, the home page is showing page rank two, whereas 2 of the internal service pages are showing as 3. I have checked with both open site explorer and yahoo back links and there are by far more links to the home page. All quality and relevant directory submissions and blog comments. The site is only 4 months old, I wonder if anyone can shed any light on the fact 2 of the lesser linked pages are showing higher PR? Thanks 🙂
Technical SEO | | Nextman0 -
Discrepency between # of pages and # of pages indexed
Here is some background: The site in question has approximately 10,000 pages and Google Webmaster shows that 10,000 urls(pages were submitted) 2) Only 5,500 pages appear in the Google index 3) Webmaster shows that approximately 200 pages could not be crawled for various reasons 4) SEOMOZ shows about 1,000 pages that have long URL's or Page Titles (which we are correcting) 5) No other errors are being reported in either Webmaster or SEO MOZ 6) This is a new site launched six weeks ago. Within two weeks of launching, Google had indexed all 10,000 pages and showed 9,800 in the index but over the last few weeks, the number of pages in the index kept dropping until it reached 5,500 where it has been stable for two weeks. Any ideas of what the issue might be? Also, is there a way to download all of the pages that are being included in that index as this might help troubleshoot?
Technical SEO | | Mont0 -
URL Duplicate Content Issues (Website Transition)
Hey guys, I just transitioned my website and I have a question. I have built up all the link juice around my old url styles. To give you some clarity: My old CMS rendered links like this: www.example.com/sweatbands My new CMS renders links like this: www.example.com/sweatbands/ My new CMS's auto-sitemap also generates them with the slash on the end. Also throughout the website the CMS links to them with the slash at the end and i link to them without the slash (because it's what i am used to). I have the canonical without the slash. Should I just 301 to the version with the slash before google crawls again? I'm worried that i'll lose all the trust and ranking i built up to the one without the slash. I rank very high for certain keywords and some pages house a large portion of our traffic. What a mess! Help! 🙂
Technical SEO | | Hyrule0