Proper URL Structure. Feedback on Vendors Recommendation
-
Urgent! We're doing a site redesign and our vendor recommended new url structure as follows: website.com/folder/word1word2word3. Our current structure is website.com/word1-word2
They said that from SEO perspective, it doesn't make a difference if there are dashes between words or not and Google can read either URL. Is that true? I need experts to weigh on the above, as well as SEO implications if we were to implement their suggestion.
-
Hi there, I've got a few thoughts to drop about this, but I want to make sure I answer your specific question first, then answer what I think are the lead up or follow up questions that are either on your mind or that you'll land at in the end anyway.
There are specific instances where you may favor one URL structure over the other. For example, our landing pages are similar to your current structure, and the rest of the website is more similar to your vendor's proposed structure. Folders are a great way to categorize your content and help both Google and users navigate and understand your content. However, you do not want to lose the hyphens. That can make it difficult for users to read in search when they're deciding on a page to view and it can be difficult for Google to read. Let's say your URL has an acronym in it - maybe you're writing about basketball and NBA is in the URL. So your URL becomes: website.com/sports/hownbaistakingcharge Or website.com/sports/baskteballnbakobe. Are either of those readable? You have two stakeholders, Google and Users and your URL structure should support both. Compare the above to website.com/sports/how-nba-is-taking-charge or /basketball-nba-kobe. That's much better for Google because they can clearly read the different words and make sense of it, and it's much better for Users who are trying to quickly scan the URL on Google. I would push back on the vendor that the hyphenation is necessary.
I've listed a few other questions below that I would have for my vendor and team if we were proposing a major restructuring of the site's content.
A new URL structure means a few other things will likely change.
1. Have you thought about creating a redirect map for every page that is going to move?
2. How will the new URL structure interact with breadcrumbs on your site?
3. If you move to folders are you going to need to create head pages e.g. website.com/sports/how-nba-is-taking-charge is located under a main "sports" page that maybe doesn't exist yet. You WILL have users that attempt to reach the head page whether it exists or not and they'll be sent to a 404 instead.
4. Will changing your URL structure alter your main and sub navigation elements on the site? (in almost every instance, it should)And then my final question, knowing how much work it is to take a healthy site and improve it by changing the URL structure alone is this: what is the expected value? Why are we doing this? Sometimes there's a legitimate reason and sometimes it's pure vanity. The SEO upside to a major restructuring like this isn't normally enormous, but the effort involved can be titanic. So be sure your expectations are realistic going into it and get the details fleshed out as much as possible ahead of time.
Best of luck, let me know if I can answer anymore questions.
-
I would actually go with the folder structure most of the time. As in most cases that you come across there is no overlap in parts of the content that you have. That's why you sort of want to create mini silos on your site. For that I would always recommend to go that way so you can divide the content across multiple folders.
-
Hello there!
You should not think as: "what google wants?", think in what is best for users.
If you are using a site, what could be your more usefull structure for your understanding.In my opinion and my experience, works better this structure: website.com/word1-word2 WRONG
--EDIT--
Didn´t read the /folder/ in the first option.
So, then my advise is that to make a mix of both structures, something like this:
website.com/folder1/folder2/word1-word2,This helps you a lot to better structure the site, as Martjin said, to create silos and even more to create categories for different niches or contents in the site
Hope it helps.
Best luck.
GR
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
-
Create 100% new content in existing page/URL?
We have about 30 pages of content that we are hiding from the website as these articles had some issues. If these pages ranked well, would you recommend that the new content is written within these pages? Meaning, we would replace the content that's in those pages with the same topic and keywords. Or do you think it's best to start a new page instead?
On-Page Optimization | | kvillalobos0 -
Site Structure question?
Hey guys, Sorry for posting this again but the last thread got a bit too wayword. I'll sum it up better here. We're producing a WordPress theme every 3-6 months. Each is differently niched (eg: ecommerce, restaurant, magazine, etc...) Which option is better for our products going forward (even the ones we've yet to launch...eg...which method will get future projects more "trust juice" from google): A: create a subfolder for each theme eg: http://bigbangthemes.net/TicketLab_WP/wordpress-ticket-system & http://bigbangthemes.net/Showoff_WP/landing-page/ **This is currently what we're doing.**B: have them all under bigbangthemes.net/wordpress-themes/ eg: bigbangthemes.net/wordpress-themes/wordpress-ticket-system & bigbangthemes.net/wordpress-themes/showoff-startup-agency-theme Thanks for the help!
On-Page Optimization | | andy.bigbangthemes0 -
Any recommendations for an XML Sitemap for a large community website?
Hi all, Once of our clients is a large community website for parents/parenting. The standard Wordpress XML Sitemap plugin is throwing up lots of errors, etc, and is not ideal. Does anyone have any recommendations for either a tool that we could use to create a better one, or else a service that we could pay to use? Gavin
On-Page Optimization | | IcanAgency0 -
Strange URL resulting a page
Hi, my friend has asked me to take a look at his site. I only know the basics of SEO so I'm learning along the way. He has some duplicate title errors showing in Moz, resulting to this page: https://www.domainname.com/about/money-transfers/money-transfers/money-transfers/money-transfers/money-transfers/money-transfers/money-transfers/money-transfers/money-transfers/money-transfers/money-transfers/money-transfers/money-transfers/money-transfers/money-transfers/money-transfers/money-transfers/money-transfers/money-transfers/money-transfers/money-transfers/money-transfers/money-transfers/money-transfers/money-transfers/money-transfers/money-transfers/money-transfers/money-transfers/money-transfers/money-transfers/money-transfers This URL shows the 'About' page. I have tonnes of pages like this showing with really long URLs that result an actual page. Has anyone seen something like this before? I don't have a clue how this is showing the about page Any advice is greatly appreciated. Thanks James
On-Page Optimization | | Craze_Media0 -
URL Question
This url looks bad: http://www.patrickmunoz.com/#!classes/c1vw1 And when you click around the page change doesn't actually occur, it's a fade into the next page. I think this is a major problem for rankings. Although pages are crawled: https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.patrickmunoz.com%2F&oq=site%3A&aqs=chrome.2.69i57j69i58j69i59l3j69i61.3548j0j7&sourceid=chrome&espv=210&es_sm=122&ie=UTF-8 When I search for a simple page - "patrick munoz FAQs" nothing comes up:
On-Page Optimization | | tylerfraser
https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.patrickmunoz.com%2F&oq=site%3A&aqs=chrome.2.69i57j69i58j69i59l3j69i61.3548j0j7&sourceid=chrome&espv=210&es_sm=122&ie=UTF-8#q=patrick+munoz+|+FAQs Do you think this is a bad url configuration? Thanks! Tyler0 -
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 -
Getting Google to provide a different URL in SERP
For one of my client’s sites, I have several keywords that are ranking in the top 5 positions. However, they have a high bounce rate. I believe this is because Google is delivering a different URL than the page we have optimized for the keyword. Any suggestions on ways I can get Google to present our preferred page?
On-Page Optimization | | TopFloor0 -
Can bad text URLs hurt pages?
If you have some pages that contain plain text URLs (not anchored links) that used to be good URLs, but are now bad, either because the website shut down or because it has been acquired by someone else and is now parked (or worse) - are those URLs enough to cause quality problems? For example: This information was brought to you by Waymaker http://www.waymaker.net These aren't the only ones. And yes, I know I should fix them, but there are probably 10,000 pages like it. I will fix them, but its not something I can do in a few minutes. (this one is easy to fix programmatically, but others are a lot more complex) So my question is: do you have actual experience that these are bad enough to cause ranking problems (making them low quality)
On-Page Optimization | | loopyal0