SEO - New URL structure
-
Hi,
Currently we have the following url structure for all pages, regardless of the hierarchy: domain.co.uk/page, such as domain/blog name.
Can you, please confirm the following:
1. What is the benefit of organising the pages as a hierarchy, i.e. domain/features/feature-name or domain/industries/industry-name or domain/blog/blog name etc.
2. This will create too many 301s - what is Google's tolerance of redirects? Is it worth for us changing the url structure or would you only recommend to add breadcrumbs?
Many thanks
Katarina
-
Hey all!
I am asking question in replies as i don't have free trial any more. Well, my question is about technical and off-page seo. I get confused about the both more often. Can someone please clarify the difference between the two? I am new to seo and applying my learnings to my technology blog for improving the search ranking. -
How wonderful Adam. I am currenctly working on a smaller <a href="https://cryptocasinosverige.com/">Bitcoin Casino</a> site and I hope that eventually Google will notice it. It is not easy but Moz gives great insight on how all SEO related things work.
-
I had a really working and profitable website made by qualified employees of the company https://seotwix.com/ . I liked their professionalism, efficiency and friendly attitude to clients. There was a truly impressive work - created a unique design with original findings and innovations. Adequate understanding of the needs of my company and careful attention to all my complex needs, especially in the design of the structure of the site, as well as its further promotion on the Internet.
-
Hi there! There seems to be a bit of confusion in this thread between URL structure and Information Architecture. Having more folders in a URL doesn't reduce the authority but pages with more folders in the URL tend to be deeper in the sites linking architecture, which means they tend to have less authority because they aren't as close to the surface. The difference between internal links and url format is an important one. There's a blog post here which explains in more depth.
From my perspective, here are the benefits of having pages within folders;
- There is an opportunity to put more relevant keywords in the URL without stuffing
- Easier folder-level reporting in Google Analytics, Search Console etc.
- Some increased understanding for Google of how pages hang together - there is some evidence that Google uses folder structure for ranking before it knows much about the page for example.
In terms of managing authority for pages and signals of relevance I'd be looking much more towards the internal linking to those pages. I wouldn't rely on Google intuitively understanding the topical connection between two pages unless both of those pages target that topic or have relevant links between them. So for example, say you have two pages;
If those pages are both subcategories of trinkets you could reformat them to be;
Having "trinkets" in the url might help both pages rank for "trinkets" type keywords, like "doodad trinkets" for example. However, I wouldn't rely on this change to help Google understand that widgets are related to doodads - you can handle that much more effectively with relevant internal links between /widgets and /doodads that make the relation clear.
In terms of whether there is a risk to making this change - this is essentially a migration and definitely comes with risks associated, even if all of your redirects are 1:1 and direct. It'll take time for Google to find the redirects and new pages, and as a rule of thumb, link equity isn't passed perfectly along a 301 redirect so I wouldn't expect these new pages to just inherit the strength of the old ones.
I think it comes down to weighing up whether the benefits I listed above outweigh the risk of an in-site migration. If you think the keyword targeting opportunities will make enough of a difference then great but I wouldn't rely on url structure as a way to get Google to understand your site differently - the impact of internal links is going to be a far greater factor.
-
Google's tolerance for 301 redirects is pretty high as long as you use speedy ones (implement via NginX - 'engine X', not via .htaccess lines). If the redirects are logical and they don't chain or contact with incorrect redirect types (Meta refreshes, 302s etc) then usually you're ok. Still it will take Google time to digest all the changes and you could see a small interim performance dip
Flat URL structure tends to build the 'authority' of URLs better, making them more powerful. Deeper and more nested URL structures serve 'relevance' better as they give much more context. If your domain's overall SEO authority is low to begin with, then a flatter structure may be better for now. If you have lots of SEO authority then you may be able to 'irrigate' more deeply nested URLs more effectively, thus reaping long-tail gains (so each structure has strengths and weaknesses, depending upon your current standing on the web)
Flatter structures rank better for larger terms, but only if you have the SEO authority to power them. Deeper structures rank better for longer-tail terms (but thousands of them) - again though without the right SEO authority metrics, there will be very few droplets of 'SEO juice' which end up reaching the lower-level pages
In the end most sites evolve to a point where they adopt the more deeply nested structure, but they usually suffer growing pains as they transition. In the long run it can be superior, but only for sites which can make good use of it (e.g: eCommerce web stores with categories, products, collections, product variants etc). If a site is services based it often doesn't have so much SEO authority and also - the deeper structure isn't really so relevant! A services based site will usually offer far fewer services than an eCommerce store offers products (tens vs hundreds of thousands)
A strong publisher with lots of ranking power (online magazines, newspaper digital editions) will often switch to the deeper structure for listing their content and (in the long run) see a lot of benefit from that. For smaller publications (blogs, blog or news pages on business / non-publisher sites) - it's often not worth the move
-
Hi,
Thanks for your answer. We sell B2B software.
The website is structured as global, /us, /au etc. It's just the urls appear all equal atm.
Thanks
Katarina
-
It all depends what you're selling & where you're selling it, also if your hierarchy structure allows for the inclusion of keywords including geo locations, all the better.
Somewhat dated but useful article https://moz.com/learn/seo/url
-
One additional thought to add extra complexity, adding hierarchy is fine, but try to avoid increasing page depth while doing so.
John Mueller discussed this in a few places in the past year that page depth > URL structure.
-
Thanks for your time.
Excellent! Now I'm super scared haha But I understand what you are saying and will share your advice with the team.
Many thanks.
Katarina
-
Hi
No your sweet on the redirects/301's - many sites have 95% redirects from http to https for example. So no chains and you are fine.
Well my view on above is that advice on a hierarchical structure is dangerous. Our job is to always adopt a "first do no harm" approach. We have many clients - no hierarchical structure and awesome rankings. Do we very slowly build hierarchical structures into them - yes. It makes life easier for all. But would we touch the top traffic driving pages - 100% no. It is too high a risk. So you need to do a proper evaluation of the site and what pages are ranking - getting clicks and what are not. There may be sections, a low risk that can move into a hierarchical structure - start there. But do not make a change for change sake to follow what is now good practice.
Hope that helps.
-
Hi,
Thanks for your answer.
'...if the site is ranking well under current strategy...' - I mean, we don't know as there is nothing to compare with. Recently we have been presented with an idea of creating subfolders and clearly showing the site hierarchy via urls. Apparently, it should make an instant difference and should improve our ranks. I'm really unsure if this is guaranteed.
FYI - we would never 301 one url more than just once so no chain. However, I wonder if we had 95% of all site urls redirected if this would impact us negatively.
Also - one more thing we are doing now (and we never used to have) is creating portfolio pages - very relevant pages linking from one main page to demonstrate the hierarchy further.
I'm trying to find out if adding so many 301s and putting all the effort into creating a hierarchy via additional articles, pages, breadcrumbs etc would definitely result in a positive outcome.
Thanks
Katarina
-
Hi
Not clear 100% on the question. Firstly if the site is ranking well under current strategy then recommend where appropriate that continues. It sounds like every page hangs straight off the root domain? However, if the opportunity presents to build out a hierarchical structure then we would recommend same.
The benefit of a hierarchical structure is it builds out topical authority or makes it easier for search engines to interpret the site. All google has done is roll the old dewy library system into the site maps. By analogy the more books you have hanging off the History section (parent subfolder) the better the site should be seen in the context of providing answers to history. Then it comes down to the quality of pages hanging off the subfolder and how much shared.
So in short to answer your question a hierarchical structure makes your site easier for Google to understand and builds out topical authority which long term is future proofing against voice search.
Onto the second part of the question, there is no problems with 301's per se as long as it is one hop.. so to redirect a page more than 3 times is a big negative as Google often does not crawl those pages. Recommended practice to change the redirects from page 1 > page 4 and page 2 > page 4, page 3 > 4, etc so all old redirects point in one hop to the final destination page.
Hope that helps.
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
-
Site Category structure detrimental to SEO?
Hi Guys, I am hoping that you may be able to help with an internal debate on whether our currently category structuring could be damaging from an SEO point of view. Our site sells t shirts primarily and as such we have a large product base of around 7000+ products. Our category structure currently works like so: Mens/T-Shirts/Movie&TV/TV/ Which I think is fairly typical, though this where it gets interesting, within this end category of "/TV/" there are around 120 categories that are used from a filtration point of view to contain items for each specific show etc, IE Mens/T-Shirts/Movie&TV/TV/Breaking_Bad, Mens/T-Shirts/Movie&TV/TV/Game_of_Thrones. The vast majority of these categories have between 1 and 3 products within them and the rest higher. Multiply this by the large amount of categories that we have on site and these end level "Band Title" categories amount to around 13,000+ categories in the directory. If at this point we put the filtration element aside, what is the communities opinion of the benefits or drawbacks of having the category structure like this? Thanks in advance for any feedback.
Technical SEO | | timsilver0 -
Changing URLs for SEO
Hi, Currently we have a page, /business, but we have shifted our strategy to optimize for this page for the keyword "enterprise" instead of "business". The page authority of this page is 18 and our domain authority is 35. I've already updated content and title tags to more of an enterprise focus. Would it be wise to move the page to /enterprise and create a 301 redirect from /business to /enterprise? Or is this too risky from an SEO standpoint? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | mikekeeper0 -
SEO impact of the anatomy of URL subdirectory structure?
I've been pushing hard to get our Americas site (DA 34) integrated with our higher domain authority (DA 51) international website. Currently our international website is setup in the following format... website.com/us-en/ website.com/fr-fr/ etc... The problem that I am facing is that I need my development framework installed in it's own directory. It cannot be at the root of the website (website.com) since that is where the other websites (us-en, fr-fr, etc.) are being generated from. Though we will have control of /us-en/ after the integration I cannot use that as the website main directory since the americas website is going to be designed for scalability (eventually adopting all regions and languages) so it cannot be region specific. What we're looking at is website.com/[base]/us-en. I'm afraid that if base has any length to it in terms of characters it is going to dilute the SEO value of whatever comes after it in the URL (website.com/[base]/us-en/store/product-name.html). Any recommendations?
Technical SEO | | bearpaw0 -
What is better for SEO, keeping a current blog or creating a new one?
We are working with a client to build a new website. They are asking if we should keep their existing blog or create a new one. If they keep the current blog, should we move it so we can incorporate it into their new site or keep it as a separate URL? Or, should we build the new site into the current blog––they are using Wordpress, so we would be able to build out the blog to incorporate the new website.
Technical SEO | | thinkcreativegroup0 -
Question/Concern about URL structure
Hey! I have some doubts concerning structuring a websites URL’s and what would be the best practise for this case. The site has 4 (main) categories with a maximum of 4 products in each category. For example: domain -> category (natural-stones) -> product (flooring) Which I would give the follow url: www.companysite.com//natural-stones/flooring Nothing odd so far, but here is the tricky part: the category isn’t an actual page a user wouldn’t be able to visit. The category is just an item in the mainmenu. If a user hovers over the category in the main menu they will get a dropdown in which they can select a product. E.g. flooring, wall strips etc. My question is: Is the url structure as I suggested: www.companysite.com//natural-stones/flooring the best practise. Even though the category isn’t an actually page. Or would it be better to structure the site: www.companysite.com/flooring My concern with this type of structure would be that the site would seem ‘flat’ with in-depth structure. Or would a third (and maybe best?) option be to create an actual page for the category itself. Thanks for taking the time to help me with my question/concern. If you need more information let me know.
Technical SEO | | RvG0 -
Duplicate content with same URL?
SEOmoz is saying that I have duplicate content on: http://www.XXXX.com/content.asp?ID=ID http://www.XXXX.com/CONTENT.ASP?ID=ID The only difference I see in the URL is that the "content.asp" is capitalized in the second URL. Should I be worried about this or is this an issue with the SEOmoz crawl? Thanks for any help. Mike
Technical SEO | | Mike.Goracke0 -
New domain
Hi, I have a domain with no keywords on it, and I´ve been using it for years. Now I bought another domain with the keyword on it. I whant to work on seo for the second domain, with the keyword. What is the better way to work this out? 301? Duplicate de site? redirect in another way?
Technical SEO | | mgfarte0 -
SEO Benefit/Liability of changing URLs of a 2 year old site
I sell RV Parts online. Our organization is called The ROUTE 66 RV Network, so we brand everything around ROUTE 66. When we launched our store 2 years ago, we launched it with the domain: parts66.com We have a PR of 2, and we have been doing an SEO linkbuilding campaign ever since it has been around. Our primary keyword that we are trying to rank for is RV PARTS We also own the domain: rvparts66.com My question is: Is there a significant benefit to switching our URL to RVPARTS66.COM? Does having our primary keyword a part of our URL give us an SEO benefit? If so, what is the best way to keep any credit we have built for our original domain? We are in the process of a complete site overhaul which will launch in a couple weeks, so if there is ever a time to switch domains, the time is now. Thanks! jc
Technical SEO | | steve-2886180