Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
SEO effect of URL with subfolder versus parameters?
-
I'll make this quick and simple. Let's say you have a business located in several cities. You've built individual pages for each city (linked to from a master list of your locations).
For SEO purposes is it better to have the URL be a subfolder, or a parameter off of the home page URL:
https://www.mysite.com/dallas which is essentially https://www.mysite.com/dallas/index.php
or
http://www.mysite.com/?city=dallas which is essentially https://www.mysite.com/index.php?city=dallas
-
Thanks Miriam, This is very helpful and makes a lot of sense. What do you think of towns and villages, or boroughs of a large city. Do you think the close proximity is dangerous territory re: keyword permutations?
I take your point about unique content tailored to the people of the city - it makes a lot of sense. But what about locations that are closer to each other?
I know it's a tricky question but any insight would be most welcome.
-
That's a good question, Andrew. It's true that it's no longer a best practice to build out a set of pages featuring slightly different permutations of a keyword (car repair, auto repair, repairing cars, fixing cars, etc.). That approach is now quite dated. Honestly, it never made any sense beyond the fact that when Google wasn't quite so sophisticated, you could trick your way into some additional rankings with this type of redundant content.
The development of location landing pages is different. These are of fundamental use to consumers, and the ideal is to create each city's landing page in a way that is uniquely helpful to a specific audience. So, for example, your store in Detroit is now having a special on winter clothing right now, because it's still snowing there. Meanwhile, your store in Palm Beach is already stocking swim trunks. For a large, multi-location Enterprise, location landing pages can feature highly differentiated content, including highlights of regional-appropriate inventory and specials, as well as unique NAP, driving directions, reviews from local customers, and so much more.
The key to avoiding the trap of simply publishing a large quantity of near-duplicate pages is to put in the effort to research the communities involved and customize these location pages to best fit local needs.
-
Hi Searchout,
Good for you for creating a unique page for each of your locations. I like to keep URLs as simple as possible, for users, so I'd go with:
etc.
From an SEO perspective, I don't think there's a big difference between root URLs and subfolders. If you're using one structure, I doubt you'd see any difference from doing it differently (unless you were using subdomains, which is a different conversation).
-
Of course that cities will be counted.
That´s why im always reinforcing the idea of creating UNIQUE and Special pages for each keyword.
Google is getting smarter and smarter, so simple variations in a few words are easly detected.Hope it helps.
Best luck.
GR. -
Hi
Thanks for your response I'm interested in this too. I've been targeting cities with their own pages but I head recently that google are going to be clamping down on multiple keyword permutations. Do you think cities will be counted in this?
-
Hi there!
In my opinion, for SEO purposes it is correct to have a unique page (really different from other, not just changing the city name and location) por each big city you are optimizing.
Thus said, a subfolder is useful in order to show google the name of the city in the URL. It is common that google considers parameters different than folders.Also, remember to avoid duplicate content. /dallas/ and /dallas/index.php should not be accesible and indexable for google. Redirect one to the other or canonicalize one to the other. Same with www, non-www, http and https versions.
Hope it helps.
Best luck.
GR.
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
-
Merging Pages and SEO
Hi, We are redesigning our website the following way: Before: Page A with Content A, Page B with Content B, Page C with Content C, etc
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | viatrading1
e.g. one page for each Customer Returns, Overstocks, Master Case, etc
Now: Page D with content A + B + C etc.
e.g. one long page containing all Product Conditions, one after the other So we are merging multiples pages into one.
What is the best way to do so, so we don't lose traffic? (or we lose the minimum possible) e.g. should we 301 Redirect A/B/C to D...?
Is it likely that we lose significant traffic with this change? Thank you,0 -
Why is rel="canonical" pointing at a URL with parameters bad?
Context Our website has a large number of crawl issues stemming from duplicate page content (source: Moz). According to an SEO firm which recently audited our website, some amount of these crawl issues are due to URL parameter usage. They have recommended that we "make sure every page has a Rel Canonical tag that points to the non-parameter version of that URL…parameters should never appear in Canonical tags." Here's an example URL where we have parameters in our canonical tag... http://www.chasing-fireflies.com/costumes-dress-up/womens-costumes/ rel="canonical" href="http://www.chasing-fireflies.com/costumes-dress-up/womens-costumes/?pageSize=0&pageSizeBottom=0" /> Our website runs on IBM WebSphere v 7. Questions Why it is important that the rel canonical tag points to a non-parameter URL? What is the extent of the negative impact from having rel canonicals pointing to URLs including parameters? Any advice for correcting this? Thanks for any help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Solid_Gold1 -
CDN for SEO (or not)?
Does CDN impact on SEO or not? There seems conflicting ideas as to whether they impact positively or negatively, I realise that if the page loads quicker this is a good thing for SEO and usability of course. Does Google see CDN as just cheating and a get-around for not doing the work from the ground up and using good hosting etc? Do you have any direct experience? All constructive input much appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoman101 -
Pagination parameters and canonical
Hello, We have a site that manages pagination through parameters in urls, this way: friendly-url.html
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | teconsite
friendly-url.html?p=2
friendly-url.html?p=3
... We've rencently added the canonical tag pointing to friendly-url.html for all paginated results. In search console, we have the "p" parameter identified by google.
Now that the canonical has been added, should we still configure the parameter in search console, and tell google that it is being use for pagination? Thank you!0 -
Are these URL hashtags an SEO issue?
Hi guys - I'm looking at a website which uses hashtags to reveal the relevant content So there's page intro text which stays the same... then you can click a button and the text below that changes So this is www.blablabla.com/packages is the main page - and www.blablabla.com/packages#firstpackage reveals first package text on this page - www.blablabla.com/packages#secondpackage reveals second package text on this same page - and so on. What's the best way to deal with this? My understanding is the URLs after # will not be indexed very easily/atall by Google - what is best practice in this situation?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
Canonical URL & sitemap URL mismatch
Hi We're running a Magento store which doesn't have too much stock rotation. We've implemented a plugin that will allow us to give products custom canonical URLs (basically including the category slug, which is not possible through vanilla Magento). The sitemap feature doesn't pick up on these URLs, so we're submitting URLs to Google that are available and will serve content, but actually point to a longer URL via a canonical meta tag. The content is available at each URL and is near identical (all apart from the breadcrumbs) All instances of the page point to the same canonical URL We are using the longer URL in our internal architecture/link building to show this preference My questions are; Will this harm our visibility? Aside from editing the sitemap, are there any other signals we could give Google? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tomcraig860 -
Majestic SEO Versus MOZ for Link Tracking
I have subscribed to Majestic SEO for three years and am considering cancelling it as it cost $600/year. Is this a false economy? Will I be losing essential data? Also, MOZ seems really deficient in the link tracking department. Its data seems plain wrong, showing far fewer domains pointing at my site than either Google Webmaster Tools or Majestic SEO. If I get rid of Majestic SEO are there any free/low cost tools that could take it's place? Thanks, Alan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan10 -
What should I cover in a SEO proposal ?
What should I cover in a SEO proposal? Is there any sample SEO Proposal template in SEOMoz?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kashyaplakkad1