Seeking URL Advice
-
Hey Moz Community,
I'm looking for some URL structure advice for a new directory of a website. We're trying to rank for the term 'internships abroad in <country>'</country> We have roughly 100 pages targeting specific countries.
Right now the URL structure is www.gooverseas.com/internships-abroad/china, but some of my colleagues believe this structure would be better: www.gooverseas.com/internships-abroad/intern-in-china. I personally prefer the shorter structure, but we couldn't come to any agreement so we thought we'd pose the question to the community.
Any thoughts?
Thanks!
-
Thanks for the correction Keri. You are absolutely correct and I fixed my reply based on your sharp eyes
-
Thanks again for your feedback!
These pages are all pretty new (4 weeks tops), but we are aware of the link juice issue. Our purposed solution has been to create a page that lists all of our country pages (approx. 125) and have this page linked to from our homepage. Hopefully Google can then get from our homepage to all of our country pages in two jumps.
Sound?
-
I would go with the shorter URL structure in this case (http://www.gooverseas.com/internships-abroad/china) and use on-page key term targeting (as stated above) to help with semantic definition of the page content.
I noticed that none of the country specific pages have Page Authority (using SEOmoz toolbar) -- I'm not an expert on Drupal so not sure if the pages are brand new (they all have very recent cache dates and don't show up in the Internet Archive) -- or if the 'CTools jump menu' is preventing link juice from passing which will be difficult getting them to rank (unless they receive inbound links at some point).
-
Thanks, Anthony, for your response. Just to clarify how our CMS works, however, internships-abroad is actually a subdirectory of gooverseas.com. Removing the slash is not possible in this situation.
Does this alter your advise?
Thanks!
-
Ryan, I presume you didn't mean to include a space between internships and abroad, and that the primary recommendation should read mysite.com/internships-abroad/china?
-
Hi Andrew -
Shorter URLs generally out perform longer URLs. Also, fewer directories or file paths in he URL makes it easier to distribute link juice to the detail pages throughout the site (this necessitates a fairly flat file structure though and may not be the right solution for larger sites with diverse content, products & information requiring more complex taxonomies - this doesn't seem to be necessary in your case however).
I would suggest www.gooverseas.com/internships-abroad-china ... you get your keyword phrase in the URL with an economy of words in the process - leaving out '-in-' will save 4 character spaces. You can make up for this in your on-page key term targeting using meta tags, H1's, etc to create the semantic drill-down.
TY
-
I'm looking for some URL structure advice for a new directory of a website. We're trying to rank for the term 'internships abroad in <country>'</country>
My primary recommendation is:
mysite.com/internships-abroad/china
The above URL is a logical structure. You have one page for each country. You also can offer a category page providing general information such as general advice applicable to anyone considering an internship in another country. The URL has relevancy for your keywords, your site structure and readers. It's not spammy as keywords are not repeated.
Another URL structure that works is:
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
-
Does Plus Sign "+" in url affect SEO and Ranking?
there are customized pages on the client's site, they contain brand pages related to Samsung, iPhone, ZTE, LG, Motorola, and HTC Mobile phones.
On-Page Optimization | | dietsuave
For Example:
https://www.unlockninja.com/unlock-apple+phone
https://www.unlockninja.com/unlock-zte+phone
https://www.unlockninja.com/unlock-samsung+phone
Should I recommend them to change the URL structure. ?0 -
Should I utilize URL re-writes to include keywords and other optimised page elements on my website?
Hi there, I am working on a medical recruitment website: https://wave.com.au/ I have noticed that our Job Search and Job Listings section of the website is lacking a little bit in terms of SEO optimisation. For example, at the moment this is our search page (with locum work type selected): https://wave.com.au/search-locum/results If you add a location, for example, NSW and then click search again, it updates the URL to: https://wave.com.au/search-locum/results?LocumSearchForm_Location[]=NSW&action_doSearch=Search+jobs I did a check what some competitors and leaders in the recruitment industry were doing and I came across: https://www.ochrerecruitment.com.au/jobs/anaesthetics/new-south-wales/locum/ If you click the different filters/options, it updates the URL to include more clearly defined categories. Some websites would even have a H1 heading tag that would update based on the filters/options you selected. Should I set up a set of URL re-writes and re-structure my website a little bit so that dynamic URLs change to static etc.? Does anyone have any best practice knowledge in regards to this? I have been referencing the following article: https://moz.com/blog/dynamic-urls-vs-static-urls-the-best-practice-for-seo-is-still-clear
On-Page Optimization | | Wavelength_International0 -
URL, Breadcrumb/Site Hierarchy Display, User (and Bot) Expectations
TL;DR: Do parts of URLs that are used throughout the web quite consistently have any influence on robots (or users)? Are there any studies? What would you use for pages that are something between a tag-page and a wiki-like article? Long version: On a site with a lot of content, I decided to go for tags to present articles on that topic together. My first thought was to simply list those under the URL /tag/{Tag_Name}. Short. Simple. Grabs the core meaning - on this page you'll find stuff about the tag. But: those tag-pages will be more than just lists of the tagged pages (let's say they are articles on various topics and products with certain attributes and the same tag can apply to a product and an article). The tag pages themselves will often talk a lot about the use of said tag - extensively, without blabbering. It is aimed at being a landing page and hub for the tag/keyword. Having this in mind, I pondered using /wiki/. It does fit in some respects, but it really is not a wiki. /info/, /lexicon/, /knowledge/ and other ideas came to mind but the more I thought the weirder I did find most ideas. What I am now wondering: Do these parts of URLs (/tag/, or /product/, or /wiki/) that are not really keywords in most cases have any influence on search engines? They are used quite consistently across the web and therefore could be used as signals. I suspect, though, that they might have more influence on shaping user expectation. (If I see /wiki/ in an URL or site hierarchy display (breadcrumb), I expect ... well, a wiki-style page; if I see /tag/ I expect a collection of stuff with that tag.) What would you chose if it is not quite a tag, nor quite a wiki but something in-between? Or do you think it does not matter at all? (Breadcrumbs will be used and google has used them for display in just about all SERPs.) Are there perchance any studies concerning these parts of URLS? Regards Nico
On-Page Optimization | | netzkern_AG0 -
Ecommerce URLs with numbers
Hi everybody! I have to optimize an ecommerce where somebody has previously done the SEO optimization, although the URLs have numbers before the product's name They have told me that these numbers are useful to find the products, so I think it shouldn't be really bad if I don't redirect them to "clear" ones. For example: /colesterol-sobrepeso/2217-hc-grass-capsulas-duras-15-capsulas.html > /colesterol-sobrepeso/hc-grass-capsulas-duras-15-capsulas.html Am I right? After all, they contain the keywords and the subfolders are also ok. Or it would be better if I redirect the whole site? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | Estherpuntu0 -
URL structure
Hello all, I am about to sort out my websites link structure, and was wondering which approach to our services page would be best. should we have: services/digital-marketing & services/website-design etc or: digital-marketing/website-design & digital-marketing/seo Basically I see digital marketing as the top level category that is the umbrella term for all of our digital services. But would it make more sense to have service to be the main category and digital marketing within that (along with all the other services from web design to seo)? all thoughts welcome!
On-Page Optimization | | wseabrook0 -
Redirect both / and non-/ URLs?
I am doing SEO on WP site. Due to some duplicate pages (rel canonical was done before) I am doing 301 redirects at the moment. And I wonder if I need to redirect both links w/ and w/o trailing slash. Default is non www, w/o trailing slash. Like there is .com/category/news but there is same page linked in .com/news (well it works when permalink structure is set to /%category%/%postname% and returns 404 error when structure is set to /%postname%).
On-Page Optimization | | OVJ
I redirected .lt/naujienos to .lt/category/naujienos. Should I also redirect .lt/naujienos/ (with trailing slash)? There's absolutely no problem redirecting this, but there are some more pages which I want to edit their URLs and I wonder If I should do both redirects from links /w and w/o slash?1 -
Large Site - Advice on Subdomaining
I have a large news site - over 1 million pages (have already deleted 1.5 million) Google buries many of our pages, I'm ready to try subdomaining http://bit.ly/dczF5y There are two types of content - news from our contributors, and press releases. We have had contracts with the big press release companies going back to 2004/5. They push releases to us by FTP or we pull from their server. These are then processed and published. It has taken me almost 18 months, but I have found and deleted or fixed all the duplicates I can find. There are now two duplicate checking systems in place. One runs at the time the release comes in and handles most of them. The other one runs every night after midnight and finds a few, which are then handled manually. This helps fine-tune the real-time checker. Businesses often link to their release on the site because they like us. Sometimes google likes this, sometimes not. The news we process is reviews by 1,2 or 3 editors before publishing. Some of the stories are 100% unique to us. Some are from contributors who also contribute to other news sites. Our search traffic is down by 80%. This has almost destroyed us, but I don't give up easily. As I said, I've done a lot of projects to try to fix this. Not one of them has done any good, so there is something google doesn't like and I haven't yet worked it out. A lot of people have looked and given me their ideas, and I've tried them - zero effect. Here is an interesting and possibly important piece of information: Most of our pages are "buried" by google. If I dear, even for a headline, even if it is unique to us, quite often the page containing that will not appear in the SERP. The front page may show up, an index page may show up, another strong page pay show up, if that headline is in the top 10 stories for the day, but the page itself may not show up at all - UNTIL I go to the end of the results and redo the search with the "duplicates" included. Then it will usually show up, on the front page, often in position #2 or #3 According to google, there are no manual actions against us. There are also no notices in WMT that say there is a problem that we haven't fixed. You may tell me just delete all of the PRs - but those are there for business readers, as they always have been. Google supposedly wants us to build websites for readers, which we have always done, What they really mean is - build it the way we want you to do it, because we know best. What really peeves me is that there are other sites, that they consistently rank above us, that have all the same content as us, and seem to be 100% aggregators, with ads, with nothing really redeeming them as being different, so this is (I think) inconsistent, confusing and it doesn't help me work out what to do next. Another thing we have is about 7,000+ US military stories, all the way back to 2005. We were one of the few news sites supporting the troops when it wasn't fashionable to do so. They were emailing the stories to us directly, most with photos. We published every one of them, and we still do. I'm not going to throw them under the bus, no matter what happens. There were some duplicates, some due to screwups because we had multiple editors who didn't see that a story was already published. Also at one time, a system code race condition - entirely my fault, I am the programmer as well as the editor-in-chief. I believe I have fixed them all with redirects. I haven't sent in a reconsideration for 14 months, since they said "No manual spam actions found" - I don't see any point, unless you know something I don't. So, having exhausted all of the things I can think of, I'm down to my last two ideas. 1. Split all of the PRs off into subdomains (I'm ready to pull the trigger later this week) 2. Do what the other sites do, that I believe create little value, which is show only a headline and snippet and some related info and link back to the original page on the PR provider website. (I really don't want to do this) 3. Give up on the PRs and delete them all and lose another 50% of the income, which means releasing our remaining staff and upsetting all of the companies and people who linked to us. (Or find them all and rewrite them as stories - tens of thousands of them) and also throw all our alliances under the bus (I really don't want to do this) There is no guarantee this is the problem, but google won't tell me, the google forums are crap, and nobody else has given me an idea that has helped. My thought is that splitting them off into subdomains will have a number of effects. 1. Take most of the syndicated content onto subdomains, so its not on the main domain. 2. Shake up the Domain Authority 3. Create a million 301 redirects. 4. Make it obvious to the crawlers what is our news and what is PRs 5. make it easier for Google News to understand Here is what I plan to do 1. redirect all PRs to their own subdomain. pn.domain.com for PRNewswire releases bw.domain.com for Businesswire releases etc 2. Fix all references so they use the new subdomain Here are my questions - and I hope you may see something I haven't considered. 1. Do you have any experience of doing this? 2. What was the result 3. Any tips? 4. Should I put PR index pages on the subdomains too? I was originally planning to keep them on the main domain, with the individual page links pointing to the actual release on the subdomain. Obviously, I want them only in one place, but there are two types of these index pages. a) all of the releases for a particular PR company - these certainly could be on the subdomain and not on the main domain b) Various category index pages - agriculture, supermarkets, mining etc These would have to stay on the main domain because they are a mixture of different PR providers. 5. Is this a bad idea? I'm almost out of ideas. Should I add a condensed list of everything I've done already? If you are still reading, thanks for hanging in.
On-Page Optimization | | loopyal0 -
URL extensions naming
I have always wrote URL extensions as www.mysite.com/two_words.html .... when I need to separate two words, I use _ as the separator ... I am a first time SEO Moz user ... I While looking around the tools on SEO Moz, I happened to stumble across the on-page analysis. A great tool indeed, rather worryingly though, one issue it flagged to me was my URL extension "Characters which are less commonly used in URLs may cause problems with accessibility, interpretation and ranking in search engines. It is considered a best practice to stick to standard URL structures to avoid potential problems." Can someone advice me if this really is a problem, its just not this project, its tons of sites I have already developed that I am also worried about ... I always write file extensions with more than one word using _ to separate the words. How should I write the extension, I am almost embarrassed to ask this question ... Surely, even Google's algorithms are not smart enough to decipher two words without some some sort of spacing .... Regards J
On-Page Optimization | | Johnny4B0