URL Best Practices (for site with millions of records)
-
We have a company information database where we also list companies located in a specific building/property. We plan to add more information to these pages basically to create a Property/building database. From an SEO standpoint, what is the best URL structure? Please note we will have information on millions of properties, across the US. Currently this is an example of what we are displaying http://www.buzzfile.com/Lists/Companies-located-at-45-Broadway,-New-York,-NY,-10006/6959468
When we change this, we plan to also migrate to https. For the above page, we are considering changing it to something like the following:
1 - https://www.buzzfile.com/Property/45-Broadway,-New-York,-NY,-10006/6959468
2 https://www.buzzfile.com/Property/6959468
Most users will search for these pages by address. What do you recommend we change our URLs to in order to get maximum SEO lift?
Thank you,
-
Isn't New-York just a waste of url length? Shouldn't it be New-York-City,-NY? And you're busting the recommended url length. Adrian
-
As you can also read from the article on Moz here, the optimal URL structure would be the semantically structured url, the one that includes the keywords, as it is a factor that affects your site's SEO.
Depending on the keywords that you will be targeting for every page, there might be an even better option of choosing your URL structure, but between the options you provide, the first one is much better for SEO:
https://www.buzzfile.com/Property/45-Broadway,-New-York,-NY,-10006/6959468Daniel Rika - Dalerio Consulting
https://dalerioconsulting.com/
info@dalerioconsulting.com
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
-
Best Approach for GMB/Local Optimization for Central Office with Multiple Locations
Hello, Our site is designed to place people in different locations or houses. We have six locations total; each one has its own name, physical address and landing page. We also have a central office for the brand with its own NAP. All addresses fall under the guidelines of Google My Business (i.e. people visit each location and our office...etc.). Unless it’s ideal, we most likely wouldn’t be running a full-scale local campaign for each location due to restrictions on resources and wouldn’t want to spread ourselves too thin. Our question is; would it be best to set up a GMB listing for each location including our central office, only use the central office or just the 6 locations? – We know multiple locations is not an issue for GMB but we weren’t sure if that’s the ideal way to approach it in this case. Essentially, would it be better to focus on our central office for GMB/local efforts and just make sure that our other location landing pages are the highest quality possible or better to use GMB for every location (including the main office) and over time start local work on all of the above. Also, if we do only use just the central office; should we be avoiding listing the other addresses on each landing page to avoid confusing Google as to where we are located? Any help or insight on how to approach this would be very much appreciated. Looking forward to hearing from all of you! Thank you. Best,
Local Listings | | Ben-R1 -
Best Listings for Service Area Business?
Hi Moz community! I'm wondering the best places to get a local service area business listed online? I'm working with a client who installs synthetic grass around Vancouver, but could apply to any local SAB ... I found this resource from Local Visibility Systems but it's almost 5 years old at this point ... http://www.localvisibilitysystem.com/2012/08/13/can-you-rank-well-in-local-google-without-revealing-your-street-address-anywhere/ I started setting up an Apple Maps Connect account but it doesn't seem like they support the concept. Is there a way to hide an address in Apple Maps Connect? Is it worth submitting at all? Does anyone have a comprehensive list of modern directories that matter for local SEO that support SABs? Thanks very much everyone! - Paul
Local Listings | | paulz9991 -
SEO issues with Physician and Practice not ranking for their own names
I've inherited an SEO client who's got all kinds of ranking problems. Currently his name Dr. Laddis shows up for his old practice, Saratoga Cardiology Associates (http://saratogacardiology.com/) instead of his current one Cardiology Specialty Services (http://cardiologyspecialtyservices.org/ ) He's also showing up with a G+ for the old practice that's listed as closed. The 2nd listing is for his bio on the hospital page.(<cite class="_Rm">https://saratogahospital.org/doctor/theodoros-laddis-md-facc/ )</cite> Then come the usual Dr directories. His YouTube channel shows up. But his actual website isn't until the middle of the 2nd page. I'm also having similar issues getting the practice to show up in search (http://cardiologyspecialtyservices.org/ ). As I was coming on board, they also had a name change from Saratoga Cardiology Specialty Services to Cardiology Specialty Services. Their G+ local business page has the custom URL for Saratoga Cardiology Specialty Services but the name on the page is Cardiology Specialty Services. Their website is actually part of the hospital multisite with a URL redirect. While the site shows up for "cardiologist Saratoga" their G+ page doesn't show up.(https://plus.google.com/+Saratogacardiologyspecialtyservices/about ). I've also done on-page SEO and am still in the process of submitting to directories. Any thoughts on what the hangup is or what I can do to clear up this mess would be appreciated.
Local Listings | | IT-dmd0 -
A site is preforming well for 1 local term, but with a slight change to the term it dosnt rank.
Ive got a site thats currently ranking #2 in the local 7 pack listings for the search term : "garden design [city]" but is not ranking at all for "garden designer [city]" (note the "er" at the end of designer). The search traffic for these 2 terms is pretty much the same, and id like to get the site ranking for "garden designer [city]". The only thing i can think of is thats different is that in the <title>tag for the homepage of the site we have "Garden Design [City] - .....", is there any other way i can try and up the local 7 pack ranking for my site other than changing the title tag ?</p> <p>Im thinking of running a link building campaign for the phrase "garden designer [city]", but apart from that i cant think of anything else that could help up my rankings for this, any ideas ?</p></title>
Local Listings | | Sam-P0 -
Local sites to make sure I'm listed in - which ones?
I'd love to know what sites this community deems most important when looking at whether my business & site are listed there. I know the obvious - Google Places, Yahoo Maps, Bing Local, Yelp. Foursquare. What others do you consider to be "mission critical" to the general market? Thanks!
Local Listings | | wcksmith10 -
Site: operator and GWT mismatch
On using the site: operator for our site on Google search, I see a large drop in total results. We had around 900,000 pages till yesterday and now I see this number around 350,000! The funny thing is that on GWT, I see that we have 725,000 pages submitted in sitemaps and around 645,000 of these are indexed! Not sure if this is a blip in Google and related to a huge drop in the structured data that we are also seeing in GWT! In addition, there seems to be a drop in rankings on a number of keywords that we were ranking on as well. For reference, the site is mycity4kids.com TIA, Asif
Local Listings | | prsntsnh0 -
Can I use a fake email address for Moz Local submission? This is for a medical practice, that has been advised not to publish an email address due to HIPAA concerns.
I work with medical practices, who due to HIPAA do not want to publish an email address in listings. Would it cause a problem if I just submitted a non-working address (like noreply@client.com) that is not set up at all, so any email sent there would just bounce? Obviously, one option is to use a HIPAA compliant email account, but there are other considerations (timeliness of responses related to clinical issues, for example) that make it less than ideal for a many medical practices to publish a public email address of any sort. I'm interested in any options or solutions that could allow me to use Moz Local (which requires an email address) for businesses with HIPAA concerns. Ira
Local Listings | | irapasternack0 -
Google Places for Business Image URL Suggestions
Hi All, Currently am grandfathered on the old Bulk Upload version of Google Places for Business. I am being told that the ability to upload images using their upload tool will not be available any longer. Therefore, I am being forced to house the images for each of my 900+ locations on an outside server and then reference the web url location for each image for each location. I can handle creating the spreadsheet for this, but my question is, does anyone know of a good place to store images in folders that will create clean urls? Example, I have location 1. I have a folder on my hard drive called location 1 that has 10 unique image .jpg files in that folder. I want to be able to upload that folder to an image host/server and have the url come out something like, www.example.com/pics/location1/image1.jpg I have tried multiple online storage options so far, such as dropbox, shutterfly, and some one offs, but have not found anything that can do what I need. I don't have the ability to buy a new hosting account with FTP to create my own image storage library, so must be a free solution. Greatly appreciate any help anyone can offer
Local Listings | | dsinger0