Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hello Moz Community!

Our company has its own blog (www.awarablogs.com) - the blog was created some time ago by means of a simple blog-engine. Now we see that the structure of the blog is bad for SEO (it has long URLs, many useless folders, subdomains and so on), so we'd like to simplify it. But the engine doesn't allow to change its structure in the way we 'd like to. Our webmaster suggested that we use "Alias". Will this method really help us make our blog SEO-friendly? Or is it better to choose another blog software like Wordpress?

Thank you very much!

Thanks. Could you clarify more in detail what you mean by the below, if I use www.mydomain.com/en

Make sure the home page is actually www.mydomain.com (and not www.mydomain.com/en). Not using the root domain means throwing away backlinks and thereby site authority, so make sure it's available whether you use /en on the rest of the site or not.

Thanks. One more question: does this also mean that the main page www.example.com/index.php (whether the index.php is shown to the user or not) gets all the same domain authority as the domain itself (www.example.com) as it is the main page?

Hi,

When doing link building and getting my URL to other websites, is it necessary that the other websites include http:// before the domain? Example: I want to increase the number of links to my site www.example.com . When I ask other websites to add a link to my site, should I ask them to use http://www.example.com or is www.example.com enough (without http://)? Or it really does not matter?

Thanks in advance,

Sam

Hi,

Our site has two languages: English and Russian.

My question is that should I use Cyrillic letters in the URL structure and file naming of the Russian version of the site, as Russian users are searching for information by using Russian words not English words?

Thanks in advance,

Sam

Hi,

We are setting up a new site, and currently considering the URL and folder structure of the site. We will have 2-3 different language versions, and we have decided to use sub folders for this.

My question is regarding the homepage URL. We want the English language site (en) to be the default one, from where you can then change the language.

Should I have a folder for each of the language versions (as described below)?

www.mydomain.com/en
(this would be the default page where everyone would always come if they type www.mydomain.com to webrowser)

www,mydomain.com/ru

www.mydomain.com/es

Or, would it be better for SEO to have www.mydomain.com as the default URL where we would have the English version of the site, and then have two other folders (as below) where we would have the 2 other language versions:

www,mydomain.com/ru

www.mydomain.com/es

Thank you in advance,

BR

Sam

Thanks a lot for your comments and advice, now things are starting to get more clear for me. However, I have one more question. I have now completed a detailed level of analysis and I discovered the following.

Our company is having these domains (same structure as in these):

namegroup.com

name-group.com

When you go to either of these addresses, it is directed by using 301 to the following URL: http://namegroup.com/en/accounting-outsourcing-and-legal-services (no external linking root domains)

In addition, in the past some part of the link building has been made to http://www.namegroup.com (15 linking root domains), some to http://namegroup.com (1 linking root domain), some to www.name-group.com (6 linking root domains), some to http://namegroup.com/en/main (2 linking root domains). And now all is directed by using 301 to http://namegroup.com/en/accounting-outsourcing-and-legal-services (no external linking root domains). These pages have been the main page at the time these links were created.

It would make the most sense for me to start using www.namegroup.com as the main URL (as this URL has the most linking root domains), and then redirect all the rest here by using 301. And when possible, change the link in the rest of the linking domains to direct to www.namegroup.com

It is quite a big mess now, and I would like to bring some order and consistency here (also use in the future only this form). Why I am wondering whether I should make this, is that since I optimized the title tags and changed the URL for the current one (http://namegroup.com/en/accounting-outsourcing-and-legal-services) some weeks ago, we are ranking very well in Google for some of the most important keywords that we now have in the title tag and URL (we are in first page of SERP, in third and sixth place). I think it is mostly because of optimizing the title tags (but perhaps there is effect of the URL change as well).

Should I still do the change, and start using www.namegroup.com as the main domain, and redirect all others by using 301 there? What do you think?

If I would not change anything, and would keep the current main page URL, should I focus my link building for the URL http://namegroup.com or http://namegroup.com/en/accounting-outsourcing-and-legal-services? Somehow I feel like I would not like to focus the link building for the current URL, in case we decide to change it in the future (it is also quite long) and would prefer to focus link building for http://namegroup.com or www.namegroup.com.

Thank you in advance for your valuable comments.

Best regards

Sam

Hi,

I have two questions.

Question 1: is it worthwhile to redirect the main site to keyword-rich subfolder / specific page for SEO? For example, my company's webpage is www.example.com. Would it make sense to redirect (301) the main site to address www.example.com/service-one-in-certain-city ? I am asking this as I have learned that it is important for SEO to have keywords in the URL, and I was thinking that we could do this and include the most important keywords to the subfolder / specific URL. What are the pros and cons of this? Should I create folders or pages just the sake of keywords?

Question 2: Most companies have their main URL shown as www.example.com when you access their domain. However, some multi-language sites show e.g. www.example.com/en or www.example.com/en/main when you type the domain to your web browser to access the site. I understand that this is a common practice to use subdomains or folders to separate different language versions.

My question is regarding subfolders. Is it better to have only the subfolder shown (www.example.com/en) or should I also include the specific page's URL after the subfolder with keywords (www.example.com/en/main or www.example.com/en/service-one-in-certain-city)? I don't really understand why some companies show only the subfolder of a specific language page and some the page's URL after the subfolder.

Thanks in advance,

Sam

Hi,
I have two questions.

Question 1: is it worthwhile to redirect the main site to keyword-rich subfolder / specific page for SEO? For example, my company's webpage is www.example.com. Would it make sense to redirect the main site to address www.example.com/service-one-in-certain-city ? I am asking this as I have learned that it is important for SEO to have keywords in the URL, and I was thinking that we could do this and include the most important keywords to the subfolder / specific URL. What are the pros and cons and how important is it to include keywords to folders and page URLs. Should I create folders or pages just the sake of keywords?

Question 2: Most companies have their main URL shown as www.example.com when you access their domain. However, some multi-language sites show e.g. www.example.com/en or www.example.com/en/main when you type the domain to your web browser to access the site. I undertstand that this is a common practice to use subdomains or folders to separate the language versions.

My question is regarding the subfolder. Is it better to have only the subfolder shown (www.example.com/en) or should you also include the specific page's URL after the subfolder with keywords (www.example.com/en/main or www.example.com/en/service-one-in-certain-city)? I don't really understand why some companies show only the subfolder of a specific language page and some the page's URL after the subfolder.

Thanks in advance,

Sam

Hi,

I have two questions.

Question 1: is it worthwhile to redirect the main site to keyword-rich subfolder / specific page for SEO? For example, my company's webpage is www.example.com. Would it make sense to redirect (301) the main site to address www.example.com/service-one-in-certain-city ? I am asking this as I have learned that it is important for SEO to have keywords in the URL, and I was thinking that we could do this and include the most important keywords to the subfolder / specific URL. What are the pros and cons of this? Should I create folders or pages just the sake of keywords?

Question 2: Most companies have their main URL shown as www.example.com when you access their domain. However, some multi-language sites show e.g. www.example.com/en or www.example.com/en/main when you type the domain to your web browser to access the site. I understand that this is a common practice to use subdomains or folders to separate different language versions.

My question is regarding subfolders. Is it better to have only the subfolder shown (www.example.com/en) or should I also include the specific page's URL after the subfolder with keywords (www.example.com/en/main or www.example.com/en/service-one-in-certain-city)? I don't really understand why some companies show only the subfolder of a specific language page and some the page's URL after the subfolder.

Thanks in advance,

Sam