Including spatial location in URL structure. Does subfolder number and keyword order actually matter?
-
The SEOMoz On-Page report for my site brings up one warning (among others) that I find interesting:
-
Minimal Subfolders in the URL
My site deals with trails and courses for both races and general running. The structure for a trail is, for example:
/trails/Canada/British-Columbia/Greater-Vancouver-Regional-District/Baden--Powell-Trail/trail/2
The structure for courses is:
/course/28
In both cases, the id at the end is used for a database lookup.
I'm considering an URL structure that would be:
/trail/Baden-Powell-Trail/ca-bc-vancouver
This would use the country code (CA) and sub-country code (BC) along with the short name for the region.
This could be good because:
-
it puts the main keyword first
-
the URL is much shorter
-
there are only 3 levels in the URL structure
However, there is evidence, from Google's Matt Cutts, that the keyword order and URL structure don't matter in that way: See this post: http://www.seomoz.org/q/all-page-files-in-root-or-to-use-directories
If Matt Cutts says they aren't so important then why are they listed in the SEOMoz On-Page Report?
I'd prefer to use /trail/ca-bc-vancouver/Baden-Powell-Trail.
I'll probably do a similar thing for courses.
Is this a good idea? Thoughts?
Many thanks, in advance, for your help.
Cheers,
Edward
-
-
Thanks for your responses, Ryan and Alan.
Ryan's response included a comment about the number of clicks away from the home page. This makes me question my site architecture so I've asked a question about spatial location and site architecture.
-
Let me start off by sharing the description of the "Minimal Subfolders in the URL" metric from the On Page report:
The quantity of subfolders in a URL appears to correlate to rankings. URLs with fewer trailing slashes perform better than those with more. Additionally, search engine representatives have recommended that excessive, subfolders in a URL string may be a signal that the page is very deep in a site's structure and may be less valuable/worthwhile to crawl, index and rank.
Your On Page report, like many SEO tools, seeks to call your attention to possible issues on your site. There is a correlation to more folders being an increased number of clicks away from the home page. If that is a concern on your site, then the warning is valid. If that is not a concern, you can disregard the warning.
There are other reasons to shorten your URL structure other then rankings. Click Through Rate can be affected by URL appearance. It has been clearly shown users wish to know the URL of the page prior to clicking on the link. Your current URL cannot be seen completely in SERPs. I performed a search in Google.com for the URL path you shared, "/trails/Canada/British-Columbia/Greater-Vancouver-Regional-District/Baden--Powell-Trail/trail/2". Notice the result URL? It is cut off and you never get to see what is presumably the most important part.
Of your ideas, I like your preference the best as a URL structure, /trail/ca-bc-vancouver/Baden-Powell-Trail.
Whatever your decision, there is absolutely no need to stuff every keyword in the URL. mysite.com/baden-powell-trail works just fine. If the extra folders make sense for your users and site, by all means use them. I would advise against adding any keywords to a URL in a pure attempt to influence rankings.
-
I seem to remeber Matt saying that it should not be too long, True its how many clicks from the home page, not how many folders deep. but the folder structure can not be endless.
As for order, I suggest it does matter, it does in every other on page piece of realeaste, having SEO Australia will rank you higher for SEO Australia then it would for Australia SEO.Dont take every thing Matt Cutts says as the best advice for you, What he says is the best for google not SEO's. Sometimes you need to read between the lines, the second video is a good example, where he does not really say No, he states the question, does it have a Significant impact, he never claims it does not have an impact, and then adds he line about spending your time creating great content. I would take rtghe answer to that as a Yes it has an impact.
i dont think I have every heard matt say, Yes that works you do that and you will get good rankings. , the best you will get is an answer like the second video. He will advise you not to do things but rarly advise of a good idea to beat the search engines.
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
-
50 Duplicate URLS, but not the same
Hi According to my latest site crawl, many of my pages are showing up to 50 duplicate urls. However this isn't the case in real life. http://www.fortusgroup.com.au/browse-products/rubber-tracks/excavator-rubber-tracks/hitachi/ex-33mu.html is showing 31 duplicate URL. Examples include: http://www.fortusgroup.com.au/browse-products/rubber-tracks/excavator-rubber-tracks/parts/x430.html
Technical SEO | | JDadd
http://www.fortusgroup.com.au/browse-products/rubber-tracks/excavator-rubber-tracks/case/cx-75sr.html Obviously these URL's are very similar and I know that Moz judges URLs by 90% of their similarity, but is this affecting my actual raking on google? If so, what can I do? This pages are also very similar in code and content, so they are also showing as duplicate content etc as well. Worried that this is having an affect on my SERP rankings, as this pages arent ranking particularly well. Thanks, Ellie0 -
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 -
Special characters in URL
Will registered trademark symbol within a URL be bad? I know some special characters are unsafe (#, >, etc.) but can not find anything that mentions registered trademark. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | bonnierSEO0 -
URL Structure for "Find A Professional" Page
I've read all the URL structure posts out there, but I'm really undecided and would love a second opinion. Currently, this is how the developer has our professionals directory working: 1. You search by inputting your Zip Code and selecting a category (such as Pool Companies) and we return all professionals within a X-mile radius of that ZIP. This is how the URL's are structured... 1. Main Page: /our-professionals 2. The URL looks like this after a search for "Deck Builders" in ZIP 19033: /our-professionals?zipcode=19033&HidSuppliers=&HiddenSpaces=&HidServices=&HidServices_all=[16]%2C&HidMetroareas=&srchbox= 3. When I click one of the businesses, URL looks like this: viewprofile.php?id=409 I know how to go about doing this, but I'm undecided on the best structure for the URL's. Maybe for results pages do this: find-professionals/deck-builders/philadelphia-pa-19033 And for individual pro's profiles do this: /deck-builders/philadelphia-pa-19033/Billys-Deck-Service Any input on how to best structure this so that we can have a good chance of showing in SERPs for "Deck Builders near New Jersey" and the such, would be much appreciated.
Technical SEO | | zDucketz0 -
301 an old URL with a ? in the URL?
I am redoing a site and the URL's are changing structure. The client's site was in magento and in the store they would get two URLs, for example: /store/categoryname/productname and /store/categoryname/productname?SID=dslkajsfdoiu947598whouieht983hg98 Do I have to 301 redirect both of these URL's to their new counterpart? Both go to the same content but magento seemed to add these SIDs into the navigation and Google has both versions in the index.
Technical SEO | | DanDeceuster0 -
Help with steps to take when fixing cannonical url structure?
I would like to 301 redirect all the variations of my site to a single url but would like some clarification on some issues. I have always been confused about how to handle cannonicalization and hopefully this can clear it up for me and others. This particular site is about 1 year old and gets approximately 15k uniques a month in a great niche. I want to make sure I do this correctly as to not hurt my existing rankings which are quite good. Here is is what I am unsure about. Basically I should pick the best url structure to redirect all the others to correct? What determines what url is best to redirect all the rest to? is it www.domain.com, http://domain.com or http://www.domain.com? Is the best one to redirect to always standard and something I should set up at the beginning of my site? Or is picking the best url to redirect to based on what url starts to rank in google and you then use that one? Should I be going through each of my rankings and seeing what url is ranking in google for each page? On this particular site ALL of my urls in google have no www. or http but instead show up in the SE as domain.com or domain.com/inner-page/html. In that case what do I do? I know the slow way to do redirects. I use my hostgator account and do it in cpanel and do it one by one. Is there a faster way where I can go and make lots of changes at once? Maybe I can choose all the variations and put in the one I want them all to redirect to? After I figure the above out is fixing all of this as simple as redirecting ALL variations to the one I will use moving forward for each page on my site? Then I am done? Thanks again for the help! Jake
Technical SEO | | PEnterprises0 -
Magento URL Question
Calling all Magento Kings out there! I'm working on a client' site - powered by magento. I'm looking to rewrite a lot of the URLs. I know there is the URL rewrite tool, but I think what I need to do may go beyond this. Typical example would be: Old URL - http://www.xxxxxxxx.co.uk/fabric/product/product-black-screen-print-and-silver-fabric.html New URL - http://www.xxxxxx.co.uk/fabric/product/silver I know that magento's URLs seem to be created through categories so wanted to double check with someone the best way to do this. Also, I've heard that 301 redirects of non www to www in the .htaccess has a knock on effect on discounts? All comments greatly appreciated.
Technical SEO | | PerchDigital0