New URL Strucutre

[kauffmantire]

Hello all!

I'm new to SeoMoz and would like to introduce myself and say thanks for all of the great content. This is definitely the premium website I have been looking for.

My question is regarding a new URL structure that will be implemented with our website redesign. We are looking to make our URL's more user and SEO friendly. We will be using 301 redirects to reroute our existing structure when the site goes live.

Background
I work in a company that retails automotive tires. I would consider class (performance, off-road, highway, etc.) to be the most important category, but based on our analytics we receive much more traffic from brand terms.  This is most likely because our customers are not educated on specific tire classes and generally do head term searches or search by brand / product name. Ultimately the will have to buy from a certain class based on driving habits.

Link and URL Structure
(Parameters)

• The model page includes links to individual tire size specific pages.
• We are using the model page as our primary SEO page because the only difference from the 5 - 60 tire size specific pages per model will be the tire size itself. This means that all of the remaining content will be duplicated multiple times over.
• All links to the tire size specific page from the model page will have a rel="nofollow" attribute attached to it.
• All tire size specific pages will have a rel="canonical" tag pointing back to the model page

Out of the following structures, which would you consider to be the best format:

1. http://www.company.com/category/brand/model
or
2. http://www.company.com/brand/category/model
or
3. http://www.company.com/tires/category/model

We will append the specific tire-size to the URL on the item specific pages.

Any other options or strategies will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance for your help!

[kauffmantire]

Thanks for the fast response guys!

The "By Brand" path is basically for SEO purposes only. 90% of our visitors use one of two forms to find their tire size.

The first form is a vehicle search which breaks down to the specific tire size and the minimum speed rating requirements. This form accounts for 80% of our form completions.

The second form is by the specific tire size.

When a visitor completes one of these forms, they are only given results that link to the specific item pages that match their vehicle.

We actually do not want people using the "by brand / category" method to find their products as this will almost always lead them down an empty path. Tires must match an exact size for that vehicle.

One the other hand, we do want to show up in search results for these products. Our current results bring us quite a bit of traffic. This method is just to get them into the website. We will have a "Do these tires match my vehicle" form on the this page. If they do not, we will take them to a page explaining why not and provide them with alternate, matching results. By Brand is great for browsing but at the end of the day the tire must be a fit for the vehicle.

Ultimately the end focus of the website will be for them to search by vehicle.

An example of an item level URL (based on Roberts reply) would be:

brand     category       model               item (tire size)
www.company.com/Michelin/Performance/Primacy-MXV4/2055516

This same page would be duplicated 40+ times for each tire size available, with links to these item pages originating from the model page:
www.company.com/Michelin/Performance/Primacy-MXV4/

Would the 40+ individual item pages leading from the model page produce duplicate content issues? These pages will contain the exact same content including our features and benefits and user reviews.

The path of "by brand" from the home page would look as follows:
Home -> Michelin -> Primacy MXV4 - > 205/55R16
or
Home -> Michelin -> Performance -> Primacy MXV4 - > 205/55R16
Whichever one would be deemed better.

I just want to make sure I get it right the first time.

Thanks for the responses!

[RobertFisher]

When looking at what people search on, besides tire or discount tires, the brands are right up there. Given that most recommend a structure of Category/sub category/product I would suggest: company.com/Michelin/all-terrain/60,000-mile or the same with 60,000-mile replaced with heavy duty or some other product descriptor. Here I am assuming all-terrain would be a model. (My guess is that all companies use their own independent model names and unless someone knows that model they would not necessarily search on it). An example would be a Michelin Primacy MXV4.....how many people search on that model??? Compared to how many search for automobile, light truck, off road, etc. I want to hit what the majority are searching on.

You said you are using the model page (again, Michelin Primacy? or something like All-Terrain?) as the primary SEO page and I am not sure about what you mean. Based on how people seem to search for tires, I would think having the Tire Brands optimized and then optimizing the model would be best (Frankly, short of the tire size links, I don't see a reason to not fully optimize any page - that way they are all working for you).

Another item you did not mention was the ability of the shopper to look up their auto, year, model, etc. and find the tire for their vehicle. Are you including that functionality on the homepage? I think most would like that as it is easier than trying to go figure out what type tire they have.

You said you retail tires so I am assuming you have a retail location (if you are also ECommerce, insure that your CMS will adjust for dynamic urls to search engine friendly like you are describing here). If you have retail locations insure that you have optimized for Google Places, etc.

With this, a final consideration for me (and I am not a subject matter expert in tire purchase habits) would be to be sure I was mobile compatible especially if I was retail.

Hope this helps, got any good deals on Goodyear P285 70 R17's..

[evolvingSEO]

I would structure the URLs in how the users are going to be navigating your site.  How will they GET to the specified page?

Homepage>click

Category>click

Brand>click

Model ?

Is yes, than your first option is the best choice.

The user should be able to look at the URL and deduce the hierarchy of the site from the "folder" structure (even though those folders may be virtual)

Hope this help!

-Dan