Directory Structuring - Im so confused what to do...
-
So there's no way I could type out my thoughts / questions. If you're bored, have a cup of coffee and some oreos, and are interested in a strange situation that I can't figure out the solution to, I'd appreciate your input:
I should note ahead of time: It really is important to me to do things "by the book" and "to the letter" with SEO. So while there may be some gray areas, I would like to really do the one thing that is BEST in this situation. Thanks for any input.
-
I wouldn't go beyond 2 levels deep on any sub-directory except on rare occasions when it's still a short URL. The directory structure does not matter so much for SEO if done correctly. However, with WordPress, the breadcrumbs, navigation and site-wide links will end up with poorly prioritized interlinking. This could be bad if you do have important pages in sub-directory structures such as yourself.
For example, your 1st level directory pages such as /guides/, /treatments/ and /social/ are cannibalizing page authority simply because they are linked to more (and in better positions) than your Men's Guide page is linked to. I recommend beefing up the internal links to the Men's Guide page and improving a lengthening the content on that page as you mentioned you plan to do.
Instead of linking to the page with the anchor "Introduction" use "Men's Hair Loss Guide."
It's a good idea to keep URLs as short as possible so that your keywords have the opportunity to appear in bold in the URL of a search listing. This makes the listing more attractive.
You may also want to consider placing the Men's and Women's Guide at the top level of your menu instead of the sub-menu if possible.
I've also noticed you have a lot of old content being indexed with a different website design, such as the About Us page. I'm not sure if this is intentional, but I would suggest migrating it to the new design or redirecting where appropriate.
I hope these suggestions are of some use. Feel free to get in touch if you would like to discuss this or more advanced SEO further.
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
-
[Advice] Dealing with an immense URl structure full of canonicals with Budget & Time constraint
Good day to you Mozers, I have a website that sells a certain product online and, once bought, is specifically delivered to a point of sale where the client's car gets serviced. This website has a shop, products and informational pages that are duplicated by the number of physical PoS. The organizational decision was that every PoS were supposed to have their own little site that could be managed and modified. Examples are: Every PoS could have a different price on their product Some of them have services available and some may have fewer, but the content on these service page doesn't change. I get over a million URls that are, supposedly, all treated with canonical tags to their respective main page. The reason I use "supposedly" is because verifying the logic they used behind canonicals is proving to be a headache, but I know and I've seen a lot of these pages using the tag. i.e: https:mysite.com/shop/ <-- https:mysite.com/pointofsale-b/shop https:mysite.com/shop/productA <-- https:mysite.com/pointofsale-b/shop/productA The problem is that I have over a million URl that are crawled, when really I may have less than a tenth of them that have organic trafic potential. Question is:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Charles-O
For products, I know I should tell them to put the URl as close to the root as possible and dynamically change the price according to the PoS the end-user chooses. Or even redirect all shops to the main one and only use that one. I need a short term solution to test/show if it is worth investing in development and correct all these useless duplicate pages. Should I use Robots.txt and block off parts of the site I do not want Google to waste his time on? I am worried about: Indexation, Accessibility and crawl budget being wasted. Thank you in advance,1 -
Keywords in URL: sub-directory or single layer keywords?
Hi guys, im putting together a proposal for a new site and trying to figure out if it'd be better to (A) have a keyword split across multiple directories or duplicate keywords to have the keyword hyphenated? For example, for the topic of "Christmas decor" would you use; (A) - www.domain.com/Christmas/Decor (B) - www.domain.com/Christmas/Christmas-Decor in example B the phrase 'Christmas' is duplicated which looks a little spammy, but the key term "Christmas decor" is in the URL without being broken up by directories. which is stronger? Any advice welcome! Thanks guys!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JAR8971 -
Different URL structure Desktop VS Mobile Regarding SEO when building a new seperate mobile site
Hi I have a old OScommerce webshop, that i will keep for now, but i have build a complete new mobile site for mobile devices, but it has another url structure. Can i launch this site without any problems when its Google Mobile Search Engine that index the mobile site, and then just make the neccesary rel alternate tags for the desktop site for the product pages and main categories that i can. There will be some differences in the urls i cant make a alternate for.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | noerdar0 -
How to structure articles on a website.
Hi All, Key to a successful website is quality content - so the Gods of Google tell me. Embrace your audience with quality feature rich articles on your products or services, hints and tips, how to, etc. So you build your article page with all the correct criteria; Long Tail Keyword or phrases hitting the URL, heading, 1st sentance, etc. My question is this
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mark_Ch
Let's say you have 30 articles, where would you place the 30 articles for SEO purposes and user experiences. My thought are:
1] on the home page create a column with a clear heading "Useful articles" and populate the column with links to all 30 articles.
or
2] throughout your website create link references to the articles as part of natural information flow.
or
3] Create a banner or impact logo on the all pages to entice your audience to click and land on dedicated "articles page" Thanks Mark0 -
Adding a Directory to Successful Article Website
We are considering adding roughly 1,300 pages to a 2,300 page website within the drug rehab niche. Our website is generating roughly 10,000 uniques from Search / month. **Is there a way to estimate the change in traffic to the existing content on the site when we add 30-40% pages in the form of a directory? ** **Is there a way to estimate the effect of the existing traffic and links to our newly added part of the site (the directory)? **
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | alltreatment0 -
What is best practice SEO approach to re structuring a website with multiple domains and associated search engine rankings for each domain?
Hello Mozzers, I'm trying to improve and establish rankings for my website which has never really been optimised. I've inherited what seems to be a mess and have a challenge for you! The website currently has 3 different www domains all pointing to the one website, two are .com domains and one is a .com.au - the business is located in Australia and the website is primarily targeting Australian traffic. In addition to this there are a number of other non www domains for the same addresses pointing to the website in the CMS which is Adobe Business Catalyst. When I check Google each of the www domains for the website has the following number of pages indexed: www.Domain1,com 5,190 pages
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JimmyFlorida
www.Domain2.com 1,520 pages
www,Domain3.com.au 149 pages What is best practice approach from an SEO perspective to re organising this current domain structure? 1. Do I need to use the .com.au as the primary domain given that we are in this market and targeting traffic here? Thats what I have been advised and it seems to be backed up by what I have read here. 2. Do we re direct all domains to the primary .com.au domain? This is easily done in the Adobe Business Catalyst CMS however is this the same as a 301 redirect which is the best approach from an SEO perspective? 3. How do we consolidate all of the current separate domain rankings for the 3 different domains into the one domain rankings within Google to ensure improved rankings and a best practice approach? The website is currently receiving very little organic search traffic so if its simpler and faster to start again fresh rather than go through a complicated migration or re structure and you have a suggestion here please feel free to let me know your ideas! Thank you!0 -
How much % of directories are punished?
Hi I was checking a site and I found lots of directory listings. 70% of the directories are punished in the list which I created (pagerank 0). Except from the directories which are listed here in seomoz, how much % of the others outside are punished? Also I noticed that this punished directories with pagerank 0 have most of them authority 30-40 according to the seomoz tool bar. I should bother to put a link or not? Why I see this difference? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nyanainc0 -
Best website structure for product benefits and features.
I'm in disagreement with my partner over how best to represent our products' benefits and features on the homepage of our website. I'm interested in this from primarily a SEO perspective but it obviously has an impact on conversions as well. I believe that a homepage shouldn't contain too much information so as not to overwhelm the user, a brief sentence or two about each benefit with a link to another page with in depth info about the related feature. Each of these inner pages would be optimized and contain much more content that you could put on the homepage example below. Each Please see wireframe A He believes in more information on the homepage. There is more content to index which he believes is important for the homepage. Also, by using tabs most of the content is hidden from initial view so its doesn't clutter the page and the user doesn't have to leave the page to decide whether he is interested in the software. Please see wireframe B below. I'd really love to hear from other Moz'ers which they would choose and why?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Riona0