Is my URL structure ideal?
-
.
-
Thanks everyone. This was very helpful. I will NOT include the state abbreviation. Ryan - I have an uppercase letter in every word. I will go ahead and format everything so that only lowercase letters are used. Thanks!
-
Simon and Yannick both offer good advice. One item I would add, it is a best practice to only use lower case letters in your URLs. If you do make a change, switch to all lower case letters as well.
I would also not ever change a URL in an attempt to stuff a keyword into it. URLs beyond the domain name are a very very low ranking factor. I would more likely want to change from your proposed URL to your current URL rather then vice-versa. In all likelihood, you can change your URL to mydomain/page=10 and it wont change your ranking.
To be clear, your current URL structure is desirable mostly because it is easy for people to read which can benefit CTR, and if someone links to your site using the URL they will include your important keywords. It may be a ranking factor but think of it as 0.001% type of thing which is not likely to ever make a difference. Your loss of link juice from the redirect is more impacting then such an incredibly minor change.
-
Hi Alexander, a good question.
I'm not sure it will benefit yourself or your visitors by adding in a State element such as FL to your URL structure. Main reason being 'semantic search', Google will know that FL means Florida and vice versa.
The actual decision probably lies with your keyword research, as in what the differences tend to be in search volumes between States and State Abbreviations for your main target keyword searches.
The shorter option without eg. FL looks neater from a user experience perspective, slightly easier to read. So long as you optimise the on-page well such as Titles, Descriptions, H1 tags etc then you'll be able to cater for both with the shorter URL.
Hope that helps, Regards, Simon
-
Hi there Alexander
Personally i would look at the following seeing that you want to have areas in your service at urls'.
mydomain.com/Florida/surety-bonds/Contractor-License-Bond/
That way you can build relevance over the area for other services too such as below if you know what i mean
-
The only thing you might want to change in your site/url structure is drill down to city level. If applicable? Don't live in the US so...
-
My title structure is properly in place. I just want to make sure there's nothing additional I can do since we are addressing URL Keywords today.
-
I'd put more effort in constructing the perfect title tag than the perfect url's. What you are talking about isn't really structure, it is more like: what to put in the url's.
Simply use the first url you mentioned. And in the title mention Florida Contractor license bond.
So the FL will not make any difference. Just make sure you mention it in your title and on-page of course, because that will help!
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
-
Updating url name of a key page
One of my key pages has a url name that is completely non descriptive ('About') with no keywords in it that match the important content on that page. Should I create a new page with a proper url name and move the contents there (lose the authority of the current page), or create the url name only and redirect to the existing About page?
On-Page Optimization | | ppopov0 -
From an SEO perspective, which is preferable in the URL for a non-English site: local language or English?
For example, the article is titled ' गर्मी में त्वचा की देखभाल कुछ यूँ करें' (English Meaning: Skin Care Tips for Summer), which one of these three URLs is best for SEO purpose? 1. example.com/ गर्मी-में-त्वचा-की-देखभाल/ (URL in local language, Hindi in this case) 2. example.com/summer-skin-care-tips/ (URL uses English words with English translation) 3. example.com/garmi-mein-twacha-ki-dekhbhaal/ (Hindi words, but written in Roman English) A response will be much appreciated, Amit
On-Page Optimization | | DusBus0 -
Two URL's for the same page
Hi, on our site we have two separate URL's for a page that has the same content. So, for example - 'www.domain.co.uk/stuff' and 'www.domain.co.uk/things/stuff' both have the same content on the page. We currently rank high in search for 'www.domain.co.uk/things/stuff' for our targeted keyword, but there are numerous links on the site to www.domain.co.uk/stuff and also potentially inbound links to this page. Ideally we want just the www.domain.co.uk/things/stuff URL to be present on the site, what would be the best course of action to take? Would a simple Canonical tag from the '/stuff' URL which points to the '/things/stuff' page be wise? If we were to scrap the '/stuff' URL totally and redirect it to the 'things/stuff' URL and change all our on site links, would this be beneficial and not harm our current ranking for '/things/stuff'? We only want 1 URL for this page for numerous reasons (i.e, easier to track in Analytics), but I'm a bit cautious that changing the page that doesn't rank may have an affect on the page that does rank! Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | Jaybeamer2 -
Our urls for adwords are slightly different from current urls presented on site (weused htaccess to help create shorter urls). How important is it that the adwords url match the sitemap url for keywords on those pages?
Hello, We have dynamic urls that we have made into short urls through htaccess and code manipulation. Some of our adwords urls are different from our page urls - for example a) Latest version of page www.abc.com/x-y-z.html b) Previous version of url www.abc.com/x+y+z.html c) raw original version www.abc.com/yyy/zzz?category=X&Product-code=Y etc etc. Would my ranking for keywords on the page improve if I diligently made all of them the same? They all go to the same page even now, and no 404 errors or anything. Thanks Sam
On-Page Optimization | | samgold0 -
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 -
URL Extensions (with or without??!!)
Hello, SEOers~ Today I have a question about URL extensions. Which one is more search engine friendly between URL with extensions and without extensions? e.g. URL with extension : www.example.com/tv/lcd.jsp URL without extension : www.example.com/tv/lcd I heard that URL without extensions is in trend considering user experience. User experience is also important but I would like to know from SEO perspective. Please people~ Help me out with this~! Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | Artience0 -
Forcing keywords into domain structure
Hi there, Over the last few years, I've seen people structuring their site so that their main content is all housed in a folder named after the site's primary keywords. For example, if I had some content about home insurance, normally naming conventions state that I might put the content at a URL such as: www.mydomain.com/home-insurance However, some sites, may change this structure to include their main keyword again in the URL string: www.mydomain.com/insurance/home-insurance The folder 'insurance' would normally hold the site's Sitemap to increase internal linking strategy too. I'd be really interested to hear whether anyone has seen any serious benefits from re-structuring their site in this way? What are your thoughts on this? Thanks,
On-Page Optimization | | theshortstack0 -
2 URLs, same content, 1 with keywords. Does this hurt me?
I'm in the process of adding some new features to our site and have a question about our URLs. Most of our URLs consist of either sitename.com/contentname or sitename.com/content/contentid I'm in the process of building a directory to those pages. The directory has a number of filters which will ultimately point to the destination page. sitename.com/filter1/filter2/contentid or sitename.com/filter1/filter2/contentname The destinations will have references. From an SEO perspective, I would think I want the filter1/filter2 version of the link indexed since this will add keywords that someone might search for. However, since the filters are dynamic, if someone just searches for contentname I would want to have sitename.com/contentname returned in the search results. Do I get any SEO benefit out of building those filter links as described if they are not the canonical links?
On-Page Optimization | | JoeCotellese810