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.
Topic Cluster: URL Best Practices
-
I'm trying to be mature and employ the Topic Cluster strategy to my content. In doing so I realized there are a few URL options. Some more difficult to execute than others.
-Is it important to call out the Pillar Topic in your subtopic URL?
-Does the Pillar Topic need to have its own landing page? (As opposed to just being part of the blog.)Here's an Example:
My Pillar is: Inbound vs. Outbound
My subtopic is: Marketing PlatformsHere are the URL options I can think of...
Option 1: https://pipelineinbound.com/blog/inbound-vs-outbound-marketing-platforms/
Option 2: https://pipelineinbound.com/blog/which-marketing-platforms/
Option 3: https://pipelineinbound.com/blog/marketing-platforms-inbound-vs-outbound/
Option 4 (Hardest): https://pipelineinbound.com/inbound-vs-outbound/marketing-platforms/
Are there some fundamental best practices for URL structure and Link Building as it pertains to Topic Clusters?
Thanks!
-
Have a page for the pillar topic and one for the sub topic if you have the word count to justify it.
Otherwise sub topics can be H2s
if you have two separate pages I would avoid keyword cannibalization were possible. Keep your keywords on the page that target them.
However it may be necessary to talk in the context of pillar content. If you do mention the Pillar keyword, make it a text link to the pillar page. That way google will attribute the use of that word to the pillar page when ranking - and it will in fact strengthen the pillar page.
Does that make sense?
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
-
What is SEO best practice to implement a site logo as an SVG?
What is SEO best practice to implement a site logo as an SVG?
Technical SEO | | twisme
Since it is possible to implement a description for SVGs it seems that it would be possible to use that for the site name. <desc>sitename</desc>
{{ STUFF }} There is also a title tag for SVGs. I’ve read in a thread from 2015 that sometimes it gets confused with the title tag in the header (at least by Moz crawler) which might cause trouble. What is state of the art here? Any experiences and/or case studies with using either method? <title>sitename</title>
{{ STUFF }} However, to me it seems either way that best practice in terms of search engines being able to crawl is to load the SVG and implement a proper alt tag: What is your opinion about this? Thanks in advance.1 -
Redirect URLS with 301 twice
Hello, I had asked my client to ask her web developer to move to a more simplified URL structure. There was a folder called "home" after the root which served no purpose. I asked for the URLs to be redirected using 301 to the new URLs which did not have this structure. However, the web developer didn't agree and decided to just rename the "home" folder "p". I don't know why he did this. We argued the case and he then created the URL structure we wanted. Initially he had 301 redirected the old URLS (the one with "Home") to his new version (the one with the "p"). When we asked for the more simplified URL after arguing, he just redirected all the "p" URLS to the PAGE NOT FOUND. However, remember, all the original URLs are now being redirected to the PAGE NOT FOUND as a result. The problems I see are these unless he redirects again: The new simplified URLS have to start from scratch to rank 2)We have duplicated content - two URLs with the same content Customers clicking products in the SERPs will currently find that they are being redirect to the 404 page. I understand that redirection has to occur but my questions are these: Is it ok to redirect twice with 301 - so old URL to the "p" version then to final simplified version. Will link juice be lost doing this twice? If he redirects from the original URLS to the final version missing out the "p" version, what should happen to the "p" version - they are currently indexed. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks
Technical SEO | | AL123al0 -
Image Height/Width attributes, how important are they and should a best practice site include this as std
Hi How important are the image height/width attributes and would you expect a best practice site to have them included ? I hear not having them can slow down a page load time is that correct ? Any other issues from not having them ? I know some re social sharing (i know bufferapp prefers images with h/w attributes to draw into their selection of image options when you post) Most importantly though would you expect them to be intrinsic to sites that have been designed according to best practice guidelines ? Thanks
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Correct linking to the /index of a site and subfolders: what's the best practice? link to: domain.com/ or domain.com/index.html ?
Dear all, starting with my .htaccess file: RewriteEngine On
Technical SEO | | inlinear
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.inlinear.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://inlinear.com/$1 [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^./index.html
RewriteRule ^(.)index.html$ http://inlinear.com/ [R=301,L] 1. I redirect all URL-requests with www. to the non www-version...
2. all requests with "index.html" will be redirected to "domain.com/" My questions are: A) When linking from a page to my frontpage (home) the best practice is?: "http://domain.com/" the best and NOT: "http://domain.com/index.php" B) When linking to the index of a subfolder "http://domain.com/products/index.php" I should link also to: "http://domain.com/products/" and not put also the index.php..., right? C) When I define the canonical ULR, should I also define it just: "http://domain.com/products/" or in this case I should link to the definite file: "http://domain.com/products**/index.php**" Is A) B) the best practice? and C) ? Thanks for all replies! 🙂
Holger0 -
Best Practices for adding Dynamic URL's to XML Sitemap
Hi Guys, I'm working on an ecommerce website with all the product pages using dynamic URL's (we also have a few static pages but there is no issue with them). The products are updated on the site every couple of hours (because we sell out or the special offer expires) and as a result I keep seeing heaps of 404 errors in Google Webmaster tools and am trying to avoid this (if possible). I have already created an XML sitemap for the static pages and am now looking at incorporating the dynamic product pages but am not sure what is the best approach. The URL structure for the products are as follows: http://www.xyz.com/products/product1-is-really-cool
Technical SEO | | seekjobs
http://www.xyz.com/products/product2-is-even-cooler
http://www.xyz.com/products/product3-is-the-coolest Here are 2 approaches I was considering: 1. To just include the dynamic product URLS within the same sitemap as the static URLs using just the following http://www.xyz.com/products/ - This is so spiders have access to the folder the products are in and I don't have to create an automated sitemap for all product OR 2. Create a separate automated sitemap that updates when ever a product is updated and include the change frequency to be hourly - This is so spiders always have as close to be up to date sitemap when they crawl the sitemap I look forward to hearing your thoughts, opinions, suggestions and/or previous experiences with this. Thanks heaps, LW0 -
ECommerce: Best Practice for expired product pages
I'm optimizing a pet supplies site (http://www.qualipet.ch/) and have a question about the best practice for expired product pages. We have thousands of products and hundreds of our offers just exist for a few months. Currently, when a product is no longer available, the site just returns a 404. Now I'm wondering what a better solution could be: 1. When a product disappears, a 301 redirect is established to the category page it in (i.e. leash would redirect to dog accessories). 2. After a product disappers, a customized 404 page appears, listing similar products (but the server returns a 404) I prefer solution 1, but am afraid that having hundreds of new redirects each month might look strange. But then again, returning lots of 404s to search engines is also not the best option. Do you know the best practice for large ecommerce sites where they have hundreds or even thousands of products that appear/disappear on a frequent basis? What should be done with those obsolete URLs?
Technical SEO | | zeepartner1 -
How best to redirect URL from expired classified ads?
We have problem because our content are classifieds. Every ad expired after one or two mounts and then ad becomes inactive and we keep his page for one mount latter like a same page but we ad a notice that ad is inactive. After that we delete the ad and his page but need to redirect that URL to search results page which contains similar ads because we don't want to lose the traffic form that pages. How is the best way to redirect ad URL? Our thinking was to redirect internal without 301 redirection because the httacces file will be very big after a while and we are thinking to try a canonicalization because we don't want engine to think that we have to much duplicate content.
Technical SEO | | Donaab0 -
Double byte characters in the URL - best avoided?
We are doing some optimisation on sites in the APAC region, namely China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Japan. We have set the url generator to automatically use the heading of the page in the URL which works fine for countries using Latin characters, but is causing problems, particularly in IE, when it comes to the double byte countries. For some reason, IE struggles with double byte and displays URLs in their rather ugly, coded form. Anybody got any suggestions on whether we should persist with the keyword URLs or revert to the non-descriptive URLs for the double byte countries? The reason I ask is it's a balance of SEO benefit vs not scaring IE users off with ugly URLs that look dreadful and spammy.
Technical SEO | | Red_Mud_Rookie0