Basic URL Structure Question
-
Hi,
Putting together a URL for a product we are selling. We sell IT Training courses and the structure is normally
Top Folder=Main Courses section
Sub Folder=Vendor
Page Specific=Course Name + Term
An example is
courses/microsoft/mcse-training
However I have a product where the vendor and course name are the same. How should I best organise the URL - double mention or single mention
So a)
courses/togaf/togaf-foundation-training
or b)
courses/togaf/foundation-training
-
Pranav, I suspect you are misinterpreting what has been said and you are also getting your words confused.
Characters are different to words. For example the url http://www.this-is-an-example.com has four words (this is an example) and 33 characters. What you have been saying is that character number 1 has more weight than character 33. This is inaccurate.
What I believe you are trying to say, is what Matt Cutts mentions in the interview you posted, that multiple keywords in a URL are given less weight after about the fourth or fifth keyword. I suggest that you read the articles you quote more carefully before offering erroneous advice.
-
Crimson,
John Doherty is one of the foremost authorities in SEO.
And please find below my comment where Google's Matt Cutts says that after 5 words Google gives less weight to the other words.
-
**1. If you see Google's blog you'll realize that keyword value decreases with each character in the URL. **
http://www.johnfdoherty.com/lessons-from-google-about-url-lengths/
Pranav, I fail to see where you are getting this information from. Firstly, the link you posted is not from Google's blog, it is a blog post from an SEO. Secondly, he does not provide hard evidence to support your claim that keyword value decreases with each character.
-
Also you can check out this resource -
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/seo-best-practices-for-url-structure/7216/
According to Google’s Matt Cutts if there are more than 5 words…
Algorithms typically will just weight those words less and just not give you as much credit.”
-
Does the order of the words in the URL matter?
-
Irving,
1. If you see Google's blog you'll realize that keyword value decreases with each character in the URL.
http://www.johnfdoherty.com/lessons-from-google-about-url-lengths/
But your point is also correct that the file name has more value than the folder name.
3. Agree that it's important to put all required keywords into the URL. And sites like Quora have really long URL's.
But one should try to keep the URL length to a minimum I feel as shorter URL's tend to have higher click through rates.
-
Crimson, The URL is not the only factor in the ranking.
Many other factors including -
1. Off pages SEO
2. Content
3. Domain authority
Etc.
The points in my answer above display how to optimize your URL.
But you can't just optimize your URL and reach the top of the rankings.
-
i personally wouldnt entertain subfolder/aftersubfolder/aftersubfolder but look at how you may be able to do something like /subfolder-productx-examplez. Dont bury the pages too far in your url structure.
-
I'm going to thumbs up Irving's response on this. I will add that my preference would be to use this URL structure if you only have one type of training per vendor:
/courses/togaf-foundation-training
/courses/microsoft-msce-training
And if you have multiple training courses per vendor, I would use the following:
/courses/togaf/foundation-training
/courses/microsoft/msce-training
Hope this helps!
-
This information is misleading and inaccurate.
A search for [car insurance] in google UK returns a moneysupermarket page at number 1 that contains 39 characters in the URL. Looking further down the results there is a post office result with over 50 characters in the URL.
Also, your theory about the 'value of the keyword reducing with each character' is total nonsense.
-
Personally, I would go with the second option:
courses/togaf/foundation-training
Mainly because it looks a lot neater and you don't really need to mention 'togaf' twice in the URL.
Really you should try to keep your URLs as neat and user friendly as possible whilst keeping the relevant keywords. I generally try to keep them as short as possible without sacrificing essential keywords and pay no attention to the advice about keeping the length of your URL to 35 characters because google only displays 35, this is incorrect.
Hope that helps,
Adam.
-
1. The value of the Keyword reduces with each character. The first character has highest value and the last the lowest. where did you hear that? the file name is more important than the folder name for SEO
2. Google only counts the first mention of a Keyword and the 2nd mention of Toga doesn't add any value. Agree, more than one instance is stuffing. This is exponentially true when you create URLs that have a keyword mentioned twice in the URL, and then if the page is linking several times to these sections you create too high of a keyword density. Google prefers less and doesn't want keywords shoved down their throat.
3. Plus Google only displays 35 characters of the URL so one should aim to keep the total length of the URL below 35 chars. I respectfully disagree, just because Google only shows 35 characters in the display doesn't mean they disregard the keywords in the remainder of the URL - they are just doing that to keep the display looking clean - 35 characters is nothing. Most blogs go WAY over that with autogenerated filenames, it's all a matter of making sure you don't keyword stuff.
-
B. courses/togaf/foundation-training
1. The value of the Keyword reduces with each character. The first character has highest value and the last the lowest.
2. Google only counts the first mention of a Keyword and the 2nd mention of Toga doesn't add any value.
3. Plus Google only displays 35 characters of the URL so one should aim to keep the total length of the URL below 35 chars.
Hope this helps.
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
-
WP URL issue - Concatenated URLs (LOTS of them)
WP is doing this somehow, and creating URLs for hundreds of pages that don't exist. HOW is this happening, and how do I stop It? I have many, many URLS like this: https://www.atouchofrust.com/terms-of-use/atouchofrust.com/vendor-news. Of note, atouchofrust.com/terms-of-use, and atouchofrust.com/vendor-news are both legit pages on the site. Why they are being concatenated is beyond my limited understanding of WP. Please, somebody, help. Cori
Technical SEO | | FlyingC0 -
URL Question: Is there any value for ecomm sites in having a reverse "breadcrumb" in the URL?
Wondering if there is any value for e-comm sites to feature a reverse breadcrumb like structure in the URL? For example: Example: https://www.grainger.com/category/anchor-bolts/anchors/fasteners/ecatalog/N-8j5?ssf=3&ssf=3 where we have a reverse categorization happening? with /level2-sub-cat/level1-sub-cat/category in the reverse order as to the actual location on the site. Category: Fasteners
Technical SEO | | ROI_DNA
Sub-Cat (level 1): Anchors
Sub-Cat (level 2): Anchor Bolts0 -
301 for a Very Long URL
Hey gang, Thanks ahead of time for the help. I have a url somehow that is very very long: http://www.colbysphotography.com/wedding-caterers-knoxville-east-tennessee/Here is an extensive list of wedding venues in the Knoxville and East Tennessee region. If you find that any of these links are not working, that the venues are no longer in business, or have a suggestion for an additional venue (at no charge), please contact Colby. Colby's Photography works hard on keeping this list helpful. I have tried Yoast Premium on a wordpress site to redirect the url but it doesn't seem to keep. I've tried a few other redirect plugins with not help either. I would love some suggestions on this one! Colby
Technical SEO | | littlecolby0 -
Questions about Redirects
Hi, I am trying to make sure that I can determine if a site has a 301 redirect set up to redirect the site from domain.com to www.domain.com and am hoping that you can confirm the following for me, or let me know if I am off track: is http://www.internetofficer.com/seo-tool/redirect-check/ a reliable way to check if a 301 redirect is set up? is Screaming Frog SEO Spider a good tool to use to see if a redirect is in place? if I search for site:www.domain.com and site:domain.com, I should only get results for the site being indexed, not for the site that has the 301 redirect set up, right? For example, if www.domain.com is set up to redirect to domain.com, then I should get no search results for site:www.domain.com and only show indexed pages for domain.com. If I search for site:www.domain.com and site:domain.com and get results for both, then does this mean that the redirect is not set up? if a redirect is set up from www.domain.com to domain.com, should the crawl report should only show one page crawled on www.domain.com? if a crawl report shows same number of pages for www.domain.com as for domain.com, does that mean that redirect is not set up properly? Thanks in advance for your help! Carolina
Technical SEO | | csmm0 -
Basic Multi-Site Question
Newb question. We run a site in multiple cities under the same domain. Often times one city will provide content that is "syndicated" to other cites. For example, here is the master post: http://www.styleblueprint.com/food-and-entertaining/kale-salad-quick-healthy/ The content will also show up in the following domains: http://atlanta.styleblueprint.com/food-and-entertaining/kale-salad-quick-healthy/ http://birmingham.styleblueprint.com/food-and-entertaining/recipes/kale-salad-quick-healthy/ Should I be marketing the posts in Atlanta and Birmingham as "no index, no follow" for SEO purposes? Thanks in advance, Jay
Technical SEO | | SSBCI0 -
Regarding Canonical Url
We have a e-commerce website. Our own homegrown:-) We recently visited Google Webmaster tools and could see that Google mention we have double Meta tags for some main and subcategories. Each Product Category on our site have a subcategory/ Sub url - "Bestseller", "On Sale", "just arrived". The sub url is not a really a real category and we can therefore not make totally unique description and title for does urls. domain.com/category domain.com/category/bestseller
Technical SEO | | areygie
domain.com/category/on-sale
domain.com/category/just-arrived We are thinking about 2 solutions. 1. Canonical Url on subcategory pointing to main category.
2. Or add a word bestseller, on sale or just arrived in front of the meta title/description. We can do this from code. I personally opt for option 1. But I am little unsure what is the best way to go. Thanks in advance for your advice0 -
URL Structure Question
Hey folks, I have a weird problem and currently no idea how to fix it. We have a lot of pages showing up as duplicates although they are the same page, the only difference is the url structure. They seem to show up like: http://www.example.com/page/ and http://www.example.com/page What would I need to do to force the URLs into one format or the other to avoid having that one page counting as two? The same issue pops up with upper and lower case: http://www.example.com/Page and http://www.example.com/page Is there any solution to this or would I need to forward them with 301s or similar? Thanks, Mike
Technical SEO | | Malarowski0 -
Site Hosting Question
We are UK based web designers who have recently been asked to build a website for an Australian Charity. Normally we would host the website in the UK with our current hosting company, but as this is an Australian website with an .au domain I was wondering if it would be better to host it in Australia. If it is better to host it in Australia, I would appreciate if someone could give me the name of a reasonably priced hosting company. Thanks Fraser
Technical SEO | | fraserhannah0