What is better for SEO keywords in folder or in filename - also dupe filename question
-
Hey folks,
I've got a question regarding URL structure. What is best for SEO given that there will be millions of lawyer names and 4 pages per lawyer
www.lawyerz.com/office-locations/dr-al-pacino
www.lawyerz.com/phone-number/dr-al-pacino
www.lawyerz.com/reviews/dr-al-pacino
www.lawyerz.com/ratings/dr-al-pacino
OR
www.lawyerz.com/office-locations-dr-al-pacino
www.lawyerz.com/phone-number-dr-al-pacino
www.lawyerz.com/reviews-dr-al-pacino
www.lawyerz.com/ratings-dr-al-pacino
OR
www.lawyerz.com/dr-al-pacino/office-locations
www.lawyerz.com/dr-al-pacino/phone-number
www.lawyerz.com/dr-al-pacino/reviews
www.lawyerz.com/dr-al-pacino/ratings
Also, concerning duplicate file names:
In the first example there are 4 duplicate file names with the lawyers name. (would this cause Google to not index some)
In the second example there are all unique file names (would this look spammy to Google or the user)
In the third example there are millions of duplicate file names (if 1 million lawyers then 1 million files called "office-locations" etc (could so many duplicate filenames cause ranking issues)
Should the lawyers name (which is the main keyword target) appear in the filename or in the folder - which is better for SEO in your opinion? Thanks for your input!
-
I like all of the answers here and I would definitely focus on how the user is searching for the lawyers. If you have a site with millions of lawyers, they would each have an area of practice so it would make sense to develop a structure around this first:
lawyerz.com/practice-area/state/city/attorney-name
WIth this structure, a searcher that types in "estate planning lawyer" would be sent to the estate planning lawyers page and allowed to search further for their city and then lawyer names. I would attach the contact info, reviews directly on that lawyer's page.
Since your higher volume keywords are going be found within the "practice areas", this would seem the next step after the main domain target of "attorney" or "lawyers". Then, location can come third, attorney name is most likely a lesser searched keyword but using a url structure such as "attorney-john-doe" reinforces.
I would LOVE to hear all the expert opinions about this as I am a newbie to seomoz but am finding some great experts and advice over here.
-
while pages with such file names can be indexed, the long-term view dictates avoiding pages with filenames in the URL due to future potential conversion to other frameworks. It makes a site less than ideal for portability.
For example, if every page has index.php or whatever.asp and you change platform, you'll end up with every page needing a 301 redirect. So it's better to avoid that whenever possible.
-
Although the filename will be duplicate, the content on those filenames will be okay. Google will look more at the content on the page rather than anything else. There are sites out there that have weird file structures, like:
/index.php
/services/index.php
/products/index.php
Some CMS's will automatically do this, but they rank fine because they have quality content, even though the index.php is technically a duplicate filename.
You should be fine with this method.
-
It's about users for sure. The last set you show communicates "lawyer name" is more important/valuable. Which is the valid perspective, since all of those elements relate to that lawyer. If some users still want to find lawyers based on reviews, you can offer a filter for that in your database sorting. Same with locations.
On the other side of the coin, instead of "locations", if you had town names, you could group by those so it would be /town-name/lawyer-name/ where all lawyers in the same town fall within that town-name grouping. If it's just /locations/ that's an invalid sort hierarchy.
-
yes navigation-wise this definitely makes the most sense
www.lawyerz.com/dr-al-pacino/office-locations
i guess what I am mostly looking for an answer about is which is better for rankings, the keyword in the folder or file name and if duplicate file names will harm rankings.
thanks so much for your assistance guys.
-
Ok gotcha- well if that is the case, then think about how the user will navigate to the end result if they started from the home page. Logically, you could assume the following
If URL structure is as follows:
www.lawyerz.com/office-locations/dr-al-pacino
then /office-locations/ should contain links to all office locations of multiple lawyers.
But with this structure
www.lawyerz.com/dr-al-pacino/office-locations
/dr-al-pacino/ should contain links to the 4 other pages. **This option will probably be your best structure. **
-
If I am not mistaken it really depends on what users are searching
if they are only searching lawyers names than just find a structure that looks pretty and has the lawyer name in it.
But if there is any traffic data that points that people search the city or phone number along with the lawyer name than it might be wise to have that in the url structure
also ever thought of using subdomains? havent seen that in a lawyer directory yet but some of the major article sites switched to subdomains
-
Assume there will be enough content on these pages to not get hit by panda.
The reason for doing this is to hopefully secure more than one first page result since these are names and very low competition, we see some sites doing this successfully.
We will have locations pages too which will list all the docs in that city
-
Is there any particular reason why office location, phone number, reviews, and ratings need to be on 4 separate pages? I could see there being a lot of thin content which won't really rank well or provide a ton of user value. Can you give some more info as to why this would be? I could easily see all 4 of these pages combined into one.
With that, you can focus your URL structure into categories or local regions or both, depending on how dynamic you want the site to be. For example:
http://www.lawyerz.com/nevada/personal-injury/dr-al-pacino
OR
http://www.lawyerz.com/personal-injury/dr-al-pacino
OR
http://www.lawyerz.com/nevada/dr-al-pacino
Unless there is something that I missing, I think no matter how you structure your URLs, thin content just won't rank.
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
-
SEO rank down 35%
So I recently switched from an Opencart website to a Magento 2 website and my rank has dropped by 35% two weeks later, this is bad news. My old Magento website was 5 years old and was in desperate need of an upgrade, hence the Magento 2 site. I realised today that the canonical URLs on my stores were set to the individual stores as opposed to one store, thus I expect resulting in duplicate content issues (even though Google Webmaster Tools didn't show it). I'm just wondering if anyone else can see something I may be missing? My sites are: thespacecollective.com (primary) thespacecollective.com/us/ (canonical to primary) Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | moon-boots0 -
Greek SEO Menu Catecory Keywords with Lowercase or Hypercase? With tones or not?
Hello to all, Αs you know the Greek language is very special, wonderful but so difficult at the same time...! The same difficulty i face when im trying to use the adwords keyword planner tool, to choose the wright words for a new menu category when i built new SEO for a new site. I encounter a major problem with keywords who have the same meaning and some people use the right spelling and others use wrong spelling! I give you an example with word "κάρτα μνήμης" who means in english "sd card". In Greek language we have tones and we can wrote the word "κάρτα μνήμης" without a tones -> "καρτα μνημης" and without wright spelling and without tones at the same time -> "καρτα μνημησ". Keyword planner give me another results for each word whatever it has the same meaning! ex. (καρτα μνημης = 0 clicks, κάρτα μνήμησ = 210 clicks and καρτα μνημησ = 2400 clicks!!!) If i put the menu keywords with Hypercase you think that i am ok? I wonder if i use the wright spelling and orthography and i put them with Lowercase if I have a problem and didn't take the full of clicks of all keywords with the same meaning! I prefer for better design Lowercase's but if i have a problem with Seo i will change it! Thanks, Kalogeropoulos Marios
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | marioskal0 -
Recommended SEO Companies
Looking for advice here.... We are a small business looking to secure/increase rankings in the search engines. What are some recommended SEO agencies/companies that are effective with today's search engine optimization standards. _ Thank you_
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wickerparadise0 -
To redirect or not to redirect, that is the question
I work for a software company that is redeveloping the website (same domain.) We have tons of content in the form of articles and documents for support, how to use the product better, case studies, and blog posts. I've downloaded a landing page report and many of these have low impressions and little or no clicks (some ranked high other very low.) Should I redirect all this content to the new site where some of it won't exist or forget about it because of the lack of juice? Is there a rule-of-thumb threshold for redirecting for content?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Nobody15969167212220 -
Keyword targeting
Hi guys, Are there any restrictions around targeting for keywords? For eg: a competitors name can we target for that keyword? Would appreciate some advice around this Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | edward-may1 -
Do allow or disavow, that is the question!
We're in the middle of a disavow process and we're having some difficulty deciding whether or not to disavow links from Justia.com and prweb.com - justia.com alone is giving us 23,000 links with just 76 linked pages. So, to allow, or disavow? That's the question! What do you think guys? Thank you. John.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Muhammad-Isap0 -
Structured Data Questions
I am showing 2 items with errors. These products have both been removed from the site, and will trigger a 404 Page Not Found. I am still seeing the page URLs in Webmaster Central > Search Appearance > Structured Data. They are shown as items with errors, the errors being that they are missing price too. Should I 301 redirect these on an htaccess file, or should I remove the page url in some other way from Google? Also, I have a site with over 50,000 products and 2,000 category level pages. In Structured Data, there are only 2,848 items. Does it seem like Google is collecting very little data compared to how many urls I have on my site?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | djlittman0 -
HTML entities and SEO
I recently came across an article on HTML entities that discussed how their appear in search results. The same article also mentioned that their use might be considered spam. Since I know nothing of them (other than what I read in the one article) are they a good or bad idea to make meta descriptions stand out from the crowd?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | casper4340