Ecommerce Site Structure -- "/our_locations" page: helpful or harmful?
-
Hello!
We are a retailer with brick and mortar stores in different cities. We have a website (ourbusiness.com), which includes
- a blog (ourbusiness.com/blog) and
- a separate ecommerce site for each store in subfolders (ourbusiness.com/Boston-store and ourbusiness.com/Atlanta-store).
- NB: We do this for non-business reasons and have no choice.
So, this is not like REI (for example) or other stores with lots of locations but one central ecommerce operation.
Most experts seem to recommend a site structure that echoes REIs. IE:
- a home page principally devoted to ecommerce (rei.com)
- includes an Our Locations-type page (rei.com/stores) which links to local store pages like
- (rei.com/stores/fresno)
I understand how this would help REI, since their homepage is devoted to ecommerce and they need a store locator page that doesn't compete with the shopping experience. But since we can't send people to products directly from our home page, is there any reason for us not to put the store locator function right on the home page?
That is, is there any reason in our case to prefer (A) ourbusiness.com/our_locations/Boston_store over (B) ourbusiness.com/Boston-store?
As i see it, the extra page (/our_locations/) could actually hurt, as it puts products one click further away from customers, and one link deeper for bots.
On the other hand, it may make the multi-store structure clearer to bots (and maybe people) and help us in local search.
Finally, would it make a difference if there were 10 stores vs 2?
Thanks for any thoughts!
-
Hi there!
I do not have any resource or study for those statements.
- for the extra clic, it a well known fact that, for any extra clic that the user does, the conversion rate decreases.
- On how usefull is that landing hub, it is something to be experimented in your case. Theoretically it helps, but its really difficult to estimate how much.
Hope it helps.
Best luck.
GR -
Thanks for the response. I think you boiled it down to the basic questions very nicely.
If you have any research you can point me to to help me understand just how useful the extra page might be to google bot, or (on the other hand) how much traffic we may lose to the extra click, i'd be most grateful for a pointer.
thanks again!
-
Hi there,
On one hand, my opinion, its a little helpful to GoogleBot, having that folder stating that you have several stores.
So I'd go with A: ourbusiness.com/stores/locationOn the other hand, there is no need to increase an extra click to users, all links could be directly to the stores and not making the users to choose. Also, that extra folder, could be used as an internal link page (also called, landing HUB) were you link all your stores. This would also help a little to GoogleBot.
On a third hand, there is no way to forecast how much your traffic will improve. So analyze and take into consideration how much time and effort you and your dev team need for this improvement.
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
-
I've submitted my site to google search console, and only 6 images of 89 images have been indexed in 2 weeks. Should I be worried?
I've submitted my site to google search console, and only 6 images of 89 images have been indexed in 2 weeks. Should I be worried? My site is http://bayareahomebirth.org Images are a pretty big part of this site's content and SEO value. Thanks for your help!
Local Website Optimization | | mattchew0 -
Search result page
I need an answer how google sees this page. if somebody searches in carhub.com , normally goes to http://www.carhub.com/Results.aspx?CarState=Used&MakeName=BMW&MakeId=ENKWD0M8TR7W&Location=Los_Angeles but pushes the webpage http://www.carhub.com/Results.aspx , User sees the webpage like these.. but not seen any title, description and h1
Local Website Optimization | | carhub0 -
Site Getting hacked
Hi There, My one Website gets hacked Again and Again, I had Reset Many times ,But again, Also generating unnecessary URLs to My website in Webmaster tools, Can anyone Help Me To Solve This Problem please? please help, thx in advance,
Local Website Optimization | | nupuriepl0 -
How to create sites with powerful individual pages to achieve top results.
How to create sites with powerful individual pages to achieve top results . According to MOZ I need to have powerful individual pages to achieve top results my site has a 0 authority so for this reason I need to focus on powerful pages but how do I know if my pages are powerful or not.
Local Website Optimization | | A.V.S0 -
How best to clean up doorway pages. 301 them or follow no index ?
Hi Mozzers, I have what is classed as doorway pages on my website. These have historically been location specific landing pages for some of our categories but from speaking to a number of different webmasters , then general consensus is that they are not in google guidelines so I will be getting punished by having them. My options are : I can 301 the pages back to their original category pages . This will conserve some link juice to pass back to the respective category page. I can set these as Follow No index. Not sure what will happen here with regards to link value etc. What would be best ?... Some of the pages do currently rank "fairly well" for some of the locations so I am getting traffic from them but I also know I will be getting a algorithmic penalty for having them so how best I clean these up ?. Also , by cleaning up the site structure , would I see any benefit here ? or will I have to wait for a new panda update/ refresh ? I thought the panda refresh won't use a new dataset thanks Pete
Local Website Optimization | | PeteC120 -
Disproportionate Links to Home Page
I'm a professional magician and mentalist who travels nationally for corporate events, social functions, and trade shows. Unfortunately, the landing pages are all for different venues and locations, but the product stays the same. How do you recommend optimizing for somebody whose product is essentially themselves? The pages have similar content, videos, etc., so I don't want to be dinged for duplicate content.
Local Website Optimization | | KevinViner0 -
Schema for same location on multiple sites - can this be done?
I'm looking to find more information on location/local schema. Are you able to implement schema for one location on multiple different sites? (i.e. - Multiple brands/websites (same parent company) - the brands share the same location and address). Also, is schema still important for local SEO? Thank you in advance for your help!
Local Website Optimization | | EvolveCreative0 -
Perfect Site Structure help please and EMD question
Hello to all, I appreciate your time and trouble greatly, so thank you in advance. Question - 1 - I just watched a video regarding onsite <acronym title="Search Engine Optimization">seo</acronym>. This video explained to instead of using a services page to list each service, instead if possible make a page and menu item for the most popular search terms. So my families business site is allspecialtybuildings.com We do construction. I currently have it setup to have a services page then the listings of the services with its own page under the menu. But from watching this video, would you also suggest that it would be best to take maybe the top 3 or 4 services, then list the services as actual page menus? So say instead of this: Service Menu Link -
Local Website Optimization | | Berner
-Pole Barns
-Indoor Riding Arenas
-Garages
-Horse Barns
-Loafing Sheds Would it be best to have each service as a menu in itself like this: Home
Pole Barns
-Pole Barn Construction
-Pole Barn Kits
-Pole Barn Color Charts Indoor Riding Arenas
-Indoor Riding Arena Construction
-Indoor Riding Arena Kits
-Indoor Riding Arena Color Charts Same- Different word
Same- Different Word So basically create specific and relevant pages and remove the popular pages from a service page. Not sure if this make sense, or is basically not needed? Last Question - Branding- I got 2 <acronym title="Search Engine Optimization">seo</acronym> companies reviews back, and was told to change my branding and domain. See the issue is that the company name is All Specialty Buildings. So All is basically thrown out of some search results, almost like its a stop word. So "Specialty Buildings" shows up on many results. I would like to counter this. So I am curious if I get a new domain, like say something like ColoradoBarnConstruction.com Would this be a better domain for <acronym title="Search Engine Optimization">seo</acronym> rankings and memory for people? Or would I risk an EMD penalty? When I look for dentists, or <acronym title="Search Engine Optimization">seo</acronym> help, I get coloradodentist, or coloradoseo(dot)com's So they all rank well, I just want something brandable and easy to remember. I figured the company name would be best, But these companies that want 3500 a month for <acronym title="Search Engine Optimization">seo</acronym> services are saying different. Again thank you for your time, your ideas, and your advice. Thank you Chris0