Data Structure, Indexing and Canonicals

[Nobody1608156259162]

I was wondering if anyone would be able to share some data structure/indexing best practices.   We have a site that has pages designed to display National/State/City level data - all pages have slight variations in the data and descriptions - but we're seeing google index some of the city level data for national level keywords.

the URL structure is www.mysite.com/Country/State/City/Topic.html

For example - if the query was "what is the price of beans?"  we're seeing Google pick up localized versions - i.e. mysite.com/US/CA/San_Francisco/price-of-beans.html - when it should be picking up mysite.com/US/price-of-beans.html

I've toyed with the idea of using the national level page as the canonical for the state/city pages - but I don't want to hurt state/city level keywords.

Because some of the pages have only slight variances - we are also seeing a lot of soft 404 errors - We're assuming that Google is seeing the pages as duplicates even though the content is different.

Any insight/suggestions are appreciated.

[BlueprintMarketing]

Of course anytime. If you would like to give me other examples for a look at the site I can give you a lot more information.

Glad to be of help!

Tom

[Nobody1608156259162]

Thank You Tom!   This is a lot of information to digest - I will review and let you know if I have any additional questions - but I wanted to thank you for your prompt response!

[BlueprintMarketing]

I have underlined and italicized your questions and answer them the best I can this hour. I also gave you all references and I hope you will start using topic clusters and pillar pages or hub pages there are a few words these. Below I have outlined what I would do with the URL structure remember simple as possible.

Please let me know if you have any questions I know the information I'm giving you is a lot. I want to answer your question thoroughly and I know if you go through this you will have a much better understanding.

You want to create relevancy and make sure you're not going to deep or more than three clicks away from the homepage. You can also use tools like deep crawl to tell you the deep rank this is a score that is provided to show you the power of your internal links. You can use Oncrawls INscore to do the same thing.

Saving you a lot of the work described in the information below. At the end of the day, you want to build a pillar page and have topic clusters

• https://www.distilled.net/difference-between-url-structure-and-information-architecture/
• https://www.slideshare.net/dohertyjf/id2013-optimizing-your-websites-architecture-for-seo
• https://www.getcredo.com/talk-website-architecture-seo/
• https://moz.com/blog/15-seo-best-practices-for-structuring-urls
• https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/76329?hl=en&ref_topic=4617741
• https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/pillar-page-examples

"National/State/City level data - all pages have slight variations in the data and descriptions - but we're seeing Google index some of the city level data for national level keywords".

Are you going after more than one country?

_www.mysite.com/Country/State/City/Topic.html _ ( do not use capitals when making URLs. It makes a separate URL entirely)

You do not to the country unless you are using hreflang? remember if you're not you can determine the country you want to target  in Google search console the old version these are the instructions https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6059209?hl=en

• remember mobile first means shorter URLs

• hostname/2 letter country or language/state (abbreviation)/city

• www.example.com/us/tx/dallas/

• ideally/category = tx or (the state of Texas)/city

• www.example.com/tx/dallas/topic/

• /products/category/sub-category/slug

• Decisions about URL structures and decisions about the IA of your website both involve questions about grouping and hierarchies of pages. For example:

  URL: should the path of an individual product be:
  /product-slug
  /products/slug
  /products/category/slug
  /products/category/sub-category/slug

• IA: how should we group our product pages and link between them:
  Should there be a link “up” to the parent category?
  How many “levels” of sub-category page types should there be?
  How do we link between sibling products in the same (sub-)category?
  How many products can we reach in (e.g.) 3 clicks from the homepage?

• then as you add more things to the city of Dallas you can keep them in a pillar page

the categories to track are:

• Page URL
• Cluster topic
• Subcluster (if applicable)
• Keyword to rank for
• Is it linked to the pillar page? (Y/N)
• Is it relinked (if applicable)? (Y/N)
• Any other other actions needed
• Has the other action been taken yet? (Y/N)
• Links out to pages 1, 2, 3, and/or 4
• Is it also a sub-pillar page (if applicable)? (Y/N)

( if you do not do business outside of the United States do not place the country's name in the URL)

If you are getting good results with the "state/city pages" referenced below and replace their conical tag it will not index

_"I've toyed with the idea of using the national level page as the canonical for the state/city pages - but I don't want to hurt state/city level keywords." _

If you replace the state/city pages with the national level pages and the state/city pages are ranking well they will cease to rank well because you will have no index them.

I will add more to this tomorrow I hope this is better for help,

respectfully

Tom

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