URL structure - Page Path vs No Page Path
-
We are currently re building our URL structure for eccomerce websites.
We have seen a lot of site removing the page path on product pages e.g. https://www.theiconic.co.nz/liberty-beach-blossom-shirt-680193.html versus what would normally be https://www.theiconic.co.nz/womens-clothing-tops/liberty-beach-blossom-shirt-680193.html
Should we be removing the site page path for a product page to keep the url shorter or should we keep it? I can see that we would loose the hierarchy juice to a product page but not sure what is the right thing to do.
-
Thanks, Nigel I really appreciate your comment
Regards
-
Hi Roman,
I work with a lot of e-commerce companies and I have to say from one SEO to another this is great advice!
Best Regards
Nigel
-
First, let me tell you that a SEO-friendly URL differs per type of website. There are a few ground rules, but I strongly encourage you to keep the visitor in mind when setting up your URL structure.
No matter what kind of website you have, there are a couple of ground rules that apply to all websites.
- The main thing to keep in mind is that your URLs should be focused. Strip your URLs of stop words like ‘a’, ‘of’, ‘the’ etc. In 99% of the cases, these words add nothing of value to your URL. If possible, strip your URLs of verbs as well. Words like ‘are’ or ‘have’ are not needed in your URL to make clear what the page is about.
- The length of your URL isn’t really a factor in this. We do recommend to keep your URLs as short as possible. It’s not that Google doesn’t like lengthy URLs, but shorter URLs are most probably more focused. Keep in mind that if you use breadcrumbs on your site, as we do, these could appear instead of the full URL:
- Length isn’t that much of an issue: Google will show what they think is important for that visitor. Keep in mind that meta titles and descriptions are cut off at 512 pixels, and so is your URL.
SEO-friendly URLs for your company website
If your website holds information about your company and/or services and that is basically it, no matter how many pages you have, I’d go with the shortest URL possible.SEO-friendly URLs for your online shop
If your website is an online shop, there are two ways to go about:Some content management systems (like Magento) create both. In that case, use rel=”canonical” to point Google to the one you want to appear in Google.
The question remains what URL structure to use. In this case, SEO-friendly URLs should also be helpful URLs for your visitor. If your shop contains categories that make your visitor’s life easier, by all means, include these categories in your URL as well. That way your URL, breadcrumbs, and menu will remind the visitor where they are on your website:
See what I mean? Decide for yourself if your categories add that value to the product and URL. If so, it’s also better for SEO to include the category, as category and product are very much related.
SEO-friendly URLs for your blog or news site
If your website is a blog or news website, there are a number of ways to construct your URL.- http://example.com/post-title/
- http://example.com/category-name/post-title/
- http://example.com/mm/dd/yyyy/post-title/
Let's define your question, you are talking about URL structure and the best way to implement it. That means that the main topic of your question is your site-structure.
Let's take 2 examples
- Backlinko
- Yoast
Both are successful websites with different approaches
Backlinko has 50 or 60 pages so Brian Deans put emphasis on short URLs and the structure is very simple www.website.com/keyword/
Yoast, on the other hand, put emphasis on the taxonomy www.website.com/category/sub-category/single-page
There are two main reasons why you should focus on optimizing your
category page:1 Category archives are landing pages
Your category archives are more important than individual pages and posts. Those archives should be the first result in the search engines. That means those archives are your most important landing pages. Thus, they should also provide the best user experience. The more likely your individual pages are to expire, the more this is true. In a shop, your products might change, making your categories more important to optimize. Otherwise, you’d be optimizing pages that
are going to be gone a few weeks/months later.2 Categories prevent individual pages from competing
If you sell boxers and you optimize every product page, all those pages will compete for the term ‘boxers’. You should optimize them for their specific brand and model, and link them all to the ‘boxers’ category page. That way the category page can rank for ‘boxer’, while the product page can rank for more specific terms. This way, the
category page prevents the individual pages from competing. -
For me, I work it like this. if it is not hurting my rankings or user experience I would not change it. the risk is pretty high if it's not done right and I don't think you will gain enough out of it to take the risk.
Are you wanting to change it because you feel it will help with rankings?
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
-
Question regarding Site and URL structure + Faceted Navigation (Endeca)
We are currently implementing the SEO module for Endeca faceted navigation. Our development team has proposed URLs to be structured in this way: Main category example: https://www.pens.com/c/pens-and-writing/ As soon as a facet is selected, for example "blue ink" - The URL path would change to https://www.pens.com/m/pens-and-writing/blue-ink/_/Nvalue (the "N" value is a unique identifier generated by Endeca that determines what products from the catalog are served as a match for the selected facet and is the same every time that facet is selected, it is not unique per user). My gut instinct says that this change from "/c/" to "/m/" might be very problematic in terms of search engines understanding that /m/pens-and-writing/blue-ink/ as part of the /c/pens-and-writing/ category. Wouldn't this also potentially pose a problem for the flow of internal link equity? Has anyone ever seen a successful implementation using this methodology?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | danatanseo0 -
Landing pages for paid traffic and the use of noindex vs canonical
A client of mine has a lot of differentiated landing pages with only a few changes on each, but with the same intent and goal as the generic version. The generic version of the landing page is included in navigation, sitemap and is indexed on Google. The purpose of the differentiated landing pages is to include the city and some minor changes in the text/imagery to best fit the Adwords text. Other than that, the intent and purpose of the pages are the same as the main / generic page. They are not to be indexed, nor am I trying to have hidden pages linking to the generic and indexed one (I'm not going the blackhat way). So – I want to avoid that the duplicate landing pages are being indexed (obviously), but I'm not sure if I should use noindex (nofollow as well?) or rel=canonical, since these landing pages are localized campaign versions of the generic page with more or less only paid traffic to them. I don't want to be accidentally penalized, but I still need the generic / main page to rank as high as possible... What would be your recommendation on this issue?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ostesmorbrod0 -
Multilingual SEO - site using Google translate within existing URL structure
Hi everyone - I've just been looking at a site that simply uses Google Translate through its website. So basically, on any page you can Google Translate the content to any language you like - there's no change to the URL structure according to language, etc. I haven't come across this approach before (simply allowing users to Google Translate withing the existing page) - and it doesn't sit well with me - let me have your thoughts re: the SEO implications. Thanks in advance, Luke
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 -
Incorrect cached page indexing in Google while correct page indexes intermittently
Hi, we are a South African insurance company. We have a page http://www.miway.co.za/midrivestyle which has a 301 redirect to http://www.miway.co.za/car-insurance. Problem is that the former page is ranking in the index rather than the latter. The latter page does index occasionally in the same position, but rarely. This is primarily for search phrases like "car insurance" and "car insurance quotes". The ranking was knocked down the index with Penquin 2.0. It was not ranking at all but we have managed to recover to 12/13. This abnormally has only been occurring since the recovery. The correct page does index for other search terms like "insurance for car". Your help would be appreciated, thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | miway0 -
How to do a 301 redirect for url's with this structure?
In an effort to clean up my url's I'm trying to shorten them by using a 301 redirect in my .htaccess file. How would I set up a rule to grab all urls with a specific structure to a new shorter url examples: http://www.yakangler.com/articles/reviews/other-reviews/item/article-title http://www.yakangler.com/reviews/article-title So in the example above dynamically redirect all url's with /articles/reviews/other-reviews/item/ in it to /reviews/ so http://www.yakangler.com/articles/reviews/boat-reviews/item/1550-review-nucanoe-frontier http://www.yakangler.com/articles/reviews/other-reviews/item/1551-review-spyderco-salt http://www.yakangler.com/articles/reviews/fishing-gear-reviews/item/1524-slayer-inc-sinister-swim-tail would be... http://www.yakangler.com/reviews/1550-review-nucanoe-frontier http://www.yakangler.com/reviews/1551-review-spyderco-salt http://www.yakangler.com/reviews/1524-slayer-inc-sinister-swim-tail with one 301 redirect rule in my .htaccess file.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mr_w0 -
Can your site be penalized for changing the url structure and if so how long till you get back?
I'm doing well on yahoo and bing and the only reason I can think of for why I'm not showing on Google is because I changed the url structure a couple of months ago. I have solid on and off page done for this site.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | deciph220 -
Multiple URLs for the same page
I am working with a client and recently discovered that they have several URLs that go to the same page. http://www.maps.com/FunFacts.aspx
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WebMarketingandDesign
http://www.maps.com/funfacts.aspx
http://www.maps.com/FunFacts.aspx?nav=FF
http://www.maps.com/FunFacts.aspx?nav=FS
http://www.maps.com/funfacts.aspx?nav=FF
http://www.maps.com/funfacts.aspx?nav=ffhttp://www.maps.com/FunFacts.aspx?nav=MShttp://www.maps.com/funfacts.aspx?nav=
http://www.maps.com/FunFacts.aspx?nav=FF#
http://www.maps.com/FunFacts
http://www.maps.com/funfacts.aspx?.nav=FF I am afraid this is happening all over the site. So, my question is: Is this hurting the SEO and how? If so what is the best way to go about fixing this problem? Thanks for your help!0