Wordpress Woocomerce Recommended SEO URL structure
-
Hi Mozzers !
Thanks for looking.
I have a new shop in development (http://www.vintageheirloom.biz), I'm now using WordPress & Woocommerce.
I've asked Woocommerce whether it is possible to remove the 'shop' and 'product-category' categories. They say it is, but it isn't recommended, it can slow site speed & create possible duplicate pages.
I'm wondering what seasoned SEO experts opinions are on my particular structure? I've heard that a flat structure is recommended, but ecommerce shops as I understand pose their own issues, so any feedback would be appreciated.. Here's some URL examples:
http://vintageheirloom.biz/shop/bags/ - this for the category bags
http://vintageheirloom.biz/product-category/bags/shoulder-bags/ - this for shoulder bags a child of bags category
http://vintageheirloom.biz/shop/2-55-bags/vintage-chanel-caviar-skin-2-55-bag/ - a product
The last URL contains the category 2-55 bags. The products name also includes the phrases 2-55 bag. Should this level of repetition be avoided or is it best to keep the whole phrase 'vintage-chanel-caviar-skin-2-55-bag/' for SEO purposes?
Thanks for any help you can give me around this issue!
Kevin
-
Glad it was helpful!
If you are going to have a true blog then that is enough in order to segment it out. Having the date in there can be helpful to compare the hits you are getting to old blogs vs newer blogs (i.e. how long your content is staying relevant).
If you are going to have other types of content such as shopping guides / product comparisons / etc that are more "timeless" pieces of content then you might want to think about the kinds of articles you are going to write and create prefixes that match those types of articles.
You could definitely do product guides and product comparisons in a blog but it can be harder to segment out if it is just "blog".
Hope that helps. Cheers!
-
Joshua,
Many thanks, that really is helpful.
When you mention a prefix for the blog, would simply adding blog be ok?
http://vintageheirloom.biz/blog/2013/08/vintage-heirloom-turns-4/
Thanks for the links I'm off to have a look !
Cheers !
-
Thanks Jon,
We get vintage bags, mostly unique but not always, e.g. we get several vintage Celine box bags over the year, so we do get duplicate titles and do need to add a serial number.
Biz is my dev area, but thanks for the info !
-
One thing to keep in mind with the urls is how you can segment them in analytics for easy data analysis. You want them to be semantic and pretty but also easily segmented. I would encourage you to think about how you will be able to segment your urls in analytics so that you can easily see patterns in how people are browsing the site and what types of pages are successful.
For instance we have the following url structures for brands, equipment, replacement parts, and a learning center.
- brand/[brand-name]
- equipment/type/[category] - for the categorization of equipment
- equipment/brand/[product] - for easy segmentation of products
- part/type/[category]
- part/brand/[part]
- learn/[cat]
- learn/article/[article-title]
This gives us a lot of flexibility in moving products around in the menu system without messing up urls while still being semantic, and allowing for easy segmentation in analytics. For instance, with this setup we can see if people prefer navigating by equipment catalog or by brand. It also allows us to easily pull out the learning center articles and all the visit we get to them to see how eCommerce only visits are doing.
One thing I would suggest with your blog is to have some kind of prefix that allows you to easily exclude those pages (or only include those pages) in analytics. If you simply go by year without a prefix it will be harder to segment out the data.
You should check out a mozinar that Moz did with Everett Sizemore that deals with a lot of these issues (he specifically talks about SEO and url structure).
Also, you probably have already seen this, but yoast's plugin for wordpress will allow you to remedy much of the duplicate content that wordpress can create.
Cheers!
-
You should ideally be able to write unique titles for every product and post without the need for serial numbers or dates to prevent duplication. But it won't do any harm to have the date in your post URLs if you want to.
I'd look at whether you can get a different domain to .biz as they aren't considered as trustworthy by web users.
-
Thanks for this Jon,
I tweaked the perma links and now have this for a product:
http://vintageheirloom.biz/shop/vintage-chanel-caviar-skin-2-55-bag/
It's a bit closer to the so named 'flat structure' and I think the URL still contains the reference that it is a 2.55 bag, hopefully this works. I'll get around duplications by adding a serial number or unique database number at the end.
We are blogging too so it might be worth keeping these categories, could avoid potential issues down the road.
I did notice I have a very flat structure for our blogs e.g.
http://vintageheirloom.biz/vintage-bamboo-gucci-bags/
This looks like it could lead to duplicates, so I've changed it to:
http://vintageheirloom.biz/2013/07/vintage-bamboo-gucci-bags/
Would you agree this is better?
Thanks
-
What you have looks fine to me, I don't think there will be an issue with repeating 2-55 bags in the product title as it would be useful for differentiating that bag from another bag of the same name that isn't a 2-55, eg vintage-chanel-caviar-skin-bag.
You could definitely remove the /shop/ or /product-category/ if your site is a shop and nothing else. If you have a blog, and want a 'bags' category then keeping /product-category/ might be preferable to avoid confusion and potential duplication.
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
-
What to do with existing URL when replatforming and new URL is the same?
We are changing CMS from WordPress to Uberflip. If there is a URL that remains the same I believe we should not create a redirect. However, what happens to the old page? Should it be deleted?
Technical SEO | | maland0 -
Starting a Blog and URL Structure Advice
Hello SEOmoz Community, We are going to start a blog on our website and have a slight dilemma. Our site is a .Net site and the blog platform we've chosen (BlogEngine) only allows us to use the following url structure: www.domain.com/blog/post/post-name. We've looked at other .Net blog software and this one meets all of our needs except for the ideal URL Structure. We would like to remove the /post/ directory; however have not technically found a way to do it. We wanted to get some opinions on whether or not we should just start with this URL structure and not worry about the extra directory, or work to find another solution that eliminates this extra directory. Ideally we want to keep the posts as close to the root as possible for link juice distribution, and the extra directory could get in the way. Also, if anyone has any advice on a more flexible .Net blog platform, suggestions would be greatly appreciated. We thank you so much in advance for your time and help.
Technical SEO | | All-Star-Vacation-Homes0 -
URL Structure for Deal Aggregator
I have a website that aggregates deals from various daily deals site. I originally had all the deals on one page /deals, however I thought that maybe it might be more useful to have several pages e.g. /beautydeals or /hoteldeals. However if I give every section it's own page that means I have either no current deals on the main /deals page or I will have duplicate content. I'm wondering what might be the best approach here? A few of the options that come to mind are: 1. Return to having all the deals on one page /deals and linking internally to content within that page
Technical SEO | | andywozhere
2. Have both a main /deals page with all of the deals plus other pages such as /beautydeals, but add re="canonical" to point to the main /deals page
3. Create new content for the /deals page... however I think people will probably want to see at least some deals straight away, rather than having to click through to another page.
4. Display some sub-categories on the main /deals page, but have separate URLs for other more popular sub-categories e.g. /beautydeals (this is how it works at the moment) I should probably point out that the site also has other content such as events and a directory. Any suggestions on how best to approach this much appreciated! Cheers, Andy0 -
OSE says URL redirects to URL with trailing slash but it doesn't.
Site is www.example.com/folder/us and OSE says this URL redirects to www.example.com/folder/us/, but it does not. When I look at the OSE report for the latter version with the "/" it says "No Data Available For This URL". Why would that be? The original URL is www.example.com and it redirects to www.example.com/folder/us. Is this anything I need to worry about? I thought that the trailing / doesn't really mean much anymore but nonetheless, why does it think it redirects there?
Technical SEO | | rock220 -
What's the best URL Structure if my company is in multiple locations or cities?
I have read numerous intelligent, well informed responses to this question but have yet to hear a definitive answer from an authority. Here's the situation. Let's say I have a company who's URL is www.awesomecompany.com who provides one service called 'Awesome Service' This company has 20 franchises in the 20 largest US cities. They want a uniform online presence, meaning they want their design to remain consistent across all 20 domains. My question is this; what's the best domain or url structure for these 20 sites? Subdomain - dallas.awesomecompany.co Unique URL - www.dallasawesomecompany.com Directory - www.awesomecompany.com/dallas/ Here's my thoughts on this question but I'm really hoping someone b*tch slaps me and tells me I'm wrong: Of these three potential solutions these are how I would rank them and why: Subdomains Pros: Allows me to build an entire site so if my local site grows to 50+ pages, it's still easy to navigate Allows me to brand root domain and leverage brand trust of root domain (let's say the franchise is starbucks.com for instance) Cons: This subdomain is basically a brand new url in google's eyes and any link building will not benefit root domain. Directory Pros Fully leverages the root domain branding and fully allows for further branding If the domain is an authority site, ranking for sub pages will be achieved much quicker Cons While this is a great solution if you just want a simple map listing and contact info page for each of your 20 locations, what if each location want's their own "about us" page and their own "Awesome Service" page optimized for their respective City (i.e. Awesome Service in Dallas)? The Navigation and potentially the URL is going to start to get really confusing and cumbersome for the end user. Think about it, which is preferable?: dallas.awesomcompany.com/awesome-service/ www.awesomecompany.com/dallas/awesome-service (especially when www.awesomecompany.com/awesome-service/ already exists Unique URL Pros Potentially quicker rankings achieved than a subdomain if it's an exact match domain name (i.e. dallasawesomeservice.com) Cons Does not leverage the www.awesomecompany.com brand Could look like an imposter It is literally a brand new domain in Google's eyes so all SEO efforts would start from scratch Obviously what goes without saying is that all of these domains would need to have unique content on them to avoid duplicate content penalties. I'm very curious to hear what you all have to say.
Technical SEO | | BrianJGomez0 -
Exclude Child URLs from XML Sitemap Generator (Wordpress)
Hi all, I was recommended the XML Sitemap Generator for Wordpress by the very helpful Keith Bloemendaal and John Pring - however I can't seem to exclude child URLs. There is a section Exclude items and a subsection Exclude posts. I have tried inputting the URLs for the pages I don't want in the sitemap, however that didn't work. So I read that you have to include a list of "IDs" - not sure where on earth to find that info, tried the page name and the post= number from the URL, however neither worked. I hope somebody can point me in the right direction - and apologies, I am a Wordpress novice, and I got no answers from the Wordpress forums so turned right back to SEOmoz! Cheers.
Technical SEO | | markadoi840 -
What is the best SEO URL design for keywords with a period?
Quick question, Assume my keyword is the German soccer team "1.FC Nuremberg". What is the best URL design to target that keyword? domainname.com/1fc-nuremberg or domainname.com/1-fc-nuremberg Any thoughts? Does it make - even a tiny - difference? /Thomas
Technical SEO | | tomypro0 -
Duplicate canonical URLs in WordPress
Hi everyone, I'm driving myself insane trying to figure this one out and am hoping someone has more technical chops than I do. Here's the situation... I'm getting duplicate canonical tags on my pages and posts, one is inside of the WordPress SEO (plugin) commented section, and the other is elsewhere in the header. I am running the latest version of WordPress 3.1.3 and the Genesis framework. After doing some testing and adding the following filters to my functions.php: <code>remove_action('wp_head', 'genesis_canonical'); remove_action('wp_head', 'rel_canonical');</code> ... what I get is this: With the plugin active + NO "remove action" - duplicate canonical tags
Technical SEO | | robertdempsey
With the plugin disabled + NO "remove action" - a single canonical tag
With the plugin disabled + A "remove action" - no canonical tag I have tried using only one of these remove_actions at a time, and then combining them both. Regardless, as long as I have the plugin active I get duplicate canonical tags. Is this a bug in the plugin, perhaps somehow enabling the canonical functionality of WordPress? Thanks for your help everyone. Robert Dempsey0