Proper URL Structure. Feedback on Vendors Recommendation
-
Urgent! We're doing a site redesign and our vendor recommended new url structure as follows: website.com/folder/word1word2word3. Our current structure is website.com/word1-word2
They said that from SEO perspective, it doesn't make a difference if there are dashes between words or not and Google can read either URL. Is that true? I need experts to weigh on the above, as well as SEO implications if we were to implement their suggestion.
-
Hi there, I've got a few thoughts to drop about this, but I want to make sure I answer your specific question first, then answer what I think are the lead up or follow up questions that are either on your mind or that you'll land at in the end anyway.
There are specific instances where you may favor one URL structure over the other. For example, our landing pages are similar to your current structure, and the rest of the website is more similar to your vendor's proposed structure. Folders are a great way to categorize your content and help both Google and users navigate and understand your content. However, you do not want to lose the hyphens. That can make it difficult for users to read in search when they're deciding on a page to view and it can be difficult for Google to read. Let's say your URL has an acronym in it - maybe you're writing about basketball and NBA is in the URL. So your URL becomes: website.com/sports/hownbaistakingcharge Or website.com/sports/baskteballnbakobe. Are either of those readable? You have two stakeholders, Google and Users and your URL structure should support both. Compare the above to website.com/sports/how-nba-is-taking-charge or /basketball-nba-kobe. That's much better for Google because they can clearly read the different words and make sense of it, and it's much better for Users who are trying to quickly scan the URL on Google. I would push back on the vendor that the hyphenation is necessary.
I've listed a few other questions below that I would have for my vendor and team if we were proposing a major restructuring of the site's content.
A new URL structure means a few other things will likely change.
1. Have you thought about creating a redirect map for every page that is going to move?
2. How will the new URL structure interact with breadcrumbs on your site?
3. If you move to folders are you going to need to create head pages e.g. website.com/sports/how-nba-is-taking-charge is located under a main "sports" page that maybe doesn't exist yet. You WILL have users that attempt to reach the head page whether it exists or not and they'll be sent to a 404 instead.
4. Will changing your URL structure alter your main and sub navigation elements on the site? (in almost every instance, it should)And then my final question, knowing how much work it is to take a healthy site and improve it by changing the URL structure alone is this: what is the expected value? Why are we doing this? Sometimes there's a legitimate reason and sometimes it's pure vanity. The SEO upside to a major restructuring like this isn't normally enormous, but the effort involved can be titanic. So be sure your expectations are realistic going into it and get the details fleshed out as much as possible ahead of time.
Best of luck, let me know if I can answer anymore questions.
-
I would actually go with the folder structure most of the time. As in most cases that you come across there is no overlap in parts of the content that you have. That's why you sort of want to create mini silos on your site. For that I would always recommend to go that way so you can divide the content across multiple folders.
-
Hello there!
You should not think as: "what google wants?", think in what is best for users.
If you are using a site, what could be your more usefull structure for your understanding.In my opinion and my experience, works better this structure: website.com/word1-word2 WRONG
--EDIT--
Didn´t read the /folder/ in the first option.
So, then my advise is that to make a mix of both structures, something like this:
website.com/folder1/folder2/word1-word2,This helps you a lot to better structure the site, as Martjin said, to create silos and even more to create categories for different niches or contents in the site
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
-
How do you implement an SEO site structure with content that falls under two silos?
We primarily produce two different types of content: concise fact sheets on topics and video briefings + transcripts of topics. Often these two content types cover the same topic area and since we're currently siloing by content type, these pages end up competing against each other for rankings. Advice on a site structure that'd avoid these issues?
On-Page Optimization | | jay_elsie1 -
Duplicate home page URL on crawl test
Hi i just recently made a crawl test but before doing that i made sure that i have no more duplicates on my site i am using joomla and as of now i only have 11 links on my site but when my crawl test is done i saw duplicate url of my homepage the duplicate url has a trailing backslash so basically i have all the 11 links + 1 duplicate URL http://mangthomas.com http://mangthomas.com/ can you guys give advise how i can remove the duplicate i dont even know which one to retain. THANKS A LOT, cris
On-Page Optimization | | crisbasma0 -
WordPress image urls - need a WP maven
We were having a conversation re urls that are indexed for images that are stored in various media plugins in WP. My question for anyone who is an uberWP person is: What is your opinion re best media storage plugins and how these URLs affect pages on a site for ranking, etc. I realize this is broad, but it is driven out of my concern that I cannot touch everything. When I see a url like this: http://www.drumbeatmarketing.net/wp-content/themes/drumbeat2/img/DB-LOGO-White.png I know there is no way with all the sites and clients we handle that I can get it perfect but this just bugs me for some reason. Should I just chill since it (seemingly) affects so little....?
On-Page Optimization | | RobertFisher1 -
How to Structure URL's for Multiple Locations
We are currently undergoing a site redesign and are trying to figure out the best way to structure the URL's and breadcrumbs for our many locations. We currently have 60 locations nationwide and our URL structure is as follows: www.mydomain.com/locations/{location} Where {location} is the specific street the location is on or the neighborhood the location is in. (i.e. www.mydomain.com/locations/waterford-lakes) The issue is, {location} is usually too specific and is not a broad enough keyword. The location "Waterford-Lakes" is in Orlando and "Orlando" is the important keyword, not " Waterford Lakes". To address this, we want to introduce state and city pages. Each state and city page would link to each location within that state or city (i.e. an Orlando page with links to "Waterford Lakes", "Lake Nona", "South Orlando", etc.). The question is how to structure this. Option 1 Use the our existing URL and breadcrumb structure (www.mydomain.com/locations/{location}) and add state and city pages outside the URL path: www.mydomain.com/{area} www.mydomain.com/{state} Option 2 Build the city and state pages into the URL and breadcrumb path: www.mydomain.com/locations/{state}/{area}/{location} (i.e www.mydomain.com/locations/fl/orlando/waterford-lakes) Any insight is much appreciated. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | uBreakiFix0 -
Importance of URL Structure
We are trying to restructure our onpage SEO and want to make sure we have our URLs correct. The problem is we did the URLs incorrectly in the first place and the ones we currently have are several years olds. We have some URLs such as: http://www.firebrandtraining.co.uk/courses/management/prince2.asp and
On-Page Optimization | | RobertChapman
http://www.firebrandtraining.co.uk/courses/cisco/ccna_2007.asp which are not ideal but user experience aside does it make sense for us to change the URLs and use 301 redirects to the new ones or is the damage done to our natural rankings simply not worth making the change? I have read different articles saying different things, some say that URL structure has little weight (if any weight at all) on rankings while other people seem to say it is quite important. In addition we have heard that changing the URLs with a 301 redirect will cause a large drop in ranking which will take months to recover from and contrarily that 301s are now considered "ok" by Google and we shouldn't see too much change at all in our rankings. Any advice would be much appreciated.0 -
How to Define Best Structure of Title Tag and Meta Description?
I want to define best structure of Title Tag and Meta Description for my eCommerce website. There are too many categories over there and many be increase in near future. There are 7K+ products live on website so, it's quite hard to develop Title Tag and Meta Description for all product pages. That's why I have set automatic Title Tag and Meta Description creation with help of developers. I want to do similar stuff for my category pages. Can anyone suggest me structure of Title Tag and Meta Description which suppose to help me in well over Google's organic result. I have define structure as follow. Title Tag: Category Name: FREE Shipping & Discount Category Name | Vista Stores Meta Description: Category Name with FREE shipping, 100% price guarantee, Buy and save 20% to 40% on attractive, modern and discount Category Name. Meta Keywords: Category Name I also want to give real time example with specific URL. (http://www.vistastores.com/69_21/outdoor/patio-umbrellas.html) Category Name = Patio Umbrellas so with help of above structure Title Tag and Meta Description will be as follow. Title Tag: Patio Umbrellas: FREE Shipping & Discount Patio Umbrellas | Vista Stores Meta Description: Patio Umbrellas with FREE shipping, 100% price guarantee, Buy and save 20% to 40% on attractive, modern and discount Patio Umbrellas. Meta Keywords: Patio Umbrellas So, Does it matter for good performance? If any inputs in same direction so I am eager to read it.
On-Page Optimization | | CommercePundit0 -
Internal link structure for large site
I am working on a very large directory site which is undergoing a complete redesign. I am considering the internal link structure from first principles. When a site has over 100,000 pages, how do you ensure that each page is linked to from somewhere so that there are no orphans? Trying to get my head around the structure makes my brain hurt. Any tips?
On-Page Optimization | | mascotmike0 -
Long or Short URLs. Who's Coming to Dinner?
This has been discussed on the forums in some regard. My situation. Example 1 Long Keyword URL: www.abctown.com/keyword-for-life-helping-keywords-everywhere-rank-better Example 2 Short Keyword URL: www.abctown.com/keyword In both examples I want to improve rankings for the "keyword" phrase. My current URL is example 1. And I've landed a page one ranking in Google (7) with that URL. In attempts to improve rankings further (top 5), I was toying with the idea of going simpler with all my URLs in favor of the example 2 model. Might this method help or hurt my current rankings? In recent articles I've read it seems that going with the simpler more human approach to my SEO efforts. Any thought would be appreciated. Cheers,
On-Page Optimization | | creativedepartment0