Recommended URL Structure
-
Hello,
We are currently adding a new section of content on our site related to Marketing and more specifically 'Digital Marketing' (research reports, trend studies, etc). Over time (several months, or 1-3 years) we will add more 'general' marketing content.
My question is which of the following URL structures makes more sense from an SEO perspective (and how best to quantify the benefit of one over another):
www.mysite.com/marketing/digital/research/...
www.mysite.com/digital-marketing/research/..
Thanks,
Mike
-
I'm with Kate on this one. marketing/digital/research reflects the site structure, is very easy to read, and shouldn't be a problem.
Keywords in URLs are no longer a real factor, unless you have an exact match domain name.
Go with the URL that's easiest to read, will be easy from a structural point of view (in whatever CMS you're using) and most likely to get clicked.
-
Hi Mike!
Moosa has the best behind the scenes answer, but everyone here is dead on. Both structures work really well when it comes to search because they are both descriptive and short. That's really what you need to focus on. If I had to pick though based on your examples:
www.mysite.com/marketing/digital/research/...
www.mysite.com/digital-marketing/research/..
I'd go with marketing/digital/research .. that way as you content changes, you can change the types of marketing research and if digital is just understood later as marketing overall, then at that time the research can just be put under marketing, but I think you'll always want to distinguish the types of marketing. This will just account for all possibilities.
Also, having all marketing focused content under /marketing/ allows you do be able to do some quick calculations inside of analytics on multiple scales. You can filter to see traffic, sources and more data for all marketing (all with /marketing/), just research (anything with /research/), and so on.
Hope this helps!
-
This is always the choice of a webmaster but if I would be at your place I would be at your place I would select the URL that is short, to the point and give a hint to Google about what the page is all about.
I believe digital marketing is a separate branch of marketing and having a URL that is independent from the marketing tag will be more relevant to me!
If I have to choose the URL structure, I would have chosen:
http://www.mysite.com/digital-marketing/research
hope this helps!
-
If the main category is Digital Marketing then I would have the URL be /digital-marketing/. I think its important to consider how you plan to use the category in the future and build for that so you don't have a funky structure in the future and/or have to do a bunch redirects to fix it. I understand that's not always possible and things may come up you hadn't considered.
-
I tend to agree but does your answer change if you consider that the main category will MOST likely (not definite) be 'digital marketing'?
I know, raises a larger question of whether ANY marketing plan in the future could possibly not also be considered digital marketing.
Mike
-
I would have your URL represent your site architecture. If Digital Marketing is a subcategory of Marketing I would have the URL structure represent that by using example.com/marketing/digital/...
If you plan on adding more subcategories at a later date it will save a lot of headaches by just having your URL structure represent your site architecture.
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
-
Which URL should I choose when combining content?
I am combining content from two similar articles into one. URL 1 has a featured snippet and better URL structure, but only 5,000 page views in the last 6 month, and has 39 keywords ranking in the top 10. URL 2 has worse structure, but over 100k page views in the last 6 months, and 236 keywords in the top 10. Basically, I'm wondering if I keep the one with the better URL structure or the one with more traffic. The deleted URL will be redirected to whichever I keep.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | curtis-yakketyyak0 -
What is the Redirect Rule for corresponding https urls to new domain with the same https urls?
2 sites have the same urls but the owner wants just the 1 site. So I will be doing a 301 redirect with .htaccess from https://www.example.co.uk/sportsbook/SOCCER/today/ redirecting to https://www.example.com//sportsbook/SOCCER/today/ There are a lot of urls that are the same, so I was wondering what the rule is to put in the file please that will change them all to the corresponding urls? Would this be correct?... RewriteEngine on
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WSIDW
RewriteCond %{HTTPS_HOST} ^example.co.uk [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTPS_HOST} ^www.example.co.uk [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://example.com$1 [L,R=301,NC] Or would a simple rule like this work... redirect 301 / http://www.new domain.com/ If not correct could you please give me the correct rule, thanks! Then of course doing a change of address of address in webmaster tools after. Also... do I still need to do the forwarding from the https://www.example.co.uk/ domain provider after as well? Many thanks for your help in advance.0 -
Any excellent recommendations for a sitemap.xml plugin?
Hi, I'm trying to find a sitemap generator/plugin that I can point my client to. My client is using Magento, and is one of the largest sports store i Norway (around 20 000 products). I've heard there's one that can set the <priority>according to page views, sold units, and other relevant parameters, and that also takes care of the other elements in the sitemap.xml.</priority> Any good recommendations out there? 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Inevo0 -
Will disallowing URL's in the robots.txt file stop those URL's being indexed by Google
I found a lot of duplicate title tags showing in Google Webmaster Tools. When I visited the URL's that these duplicates belonged to, I found that they were just images from a gallery that we didn't particularly want Google to index. There is no benefit to the end user in these image pages being indexed in Google. Our developer has told us that these urls are created by a module and are not "real" pages in the CMS. They would like to add the following to our robots.txt file Disallow: /catalog/product/gallery/ QUESTION: If the these pages are already indexed by Google, will this adjustment to the robots.txt file help to remove the pages from the index? We don't want these pages to be found.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | andyheath0 -
Different URL structure Desktop VS Mobile Regarding SEO when building a new seperate mobile site
Hi I have a old OScommerce webshop, that i will keep for now, but i have build a complete new mobile site for mobile devices, but it has another url structure. Can i launch this site without any problems when its Google Mobile Search Engine that index the mobile site, and then just make the neccesary rel alternate tags for the desktop site for the product pages and main categories that i can. There will be some differences in the urls i cant make a alternate for.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | noerdar0 -
How to switch from URL based navigation to Ajax, 1000's of URLs gone
Hi everyone, We have thousands of urls generated by numerous products filters on our ecommerce site, eg./category1/category11/brand/color-red/size-xl+xxl/price-cheap/in-stock/. We are thinking of moving these filters to ajax in order to offer a better user experience and get rid of these useless urls. In your opinion, what is the best way to deal with this huge move ? leave the existing URLs respond as before : as they will disappear from our sitemap (they won't be linked anymore), I imagine robots will someday consider them as obsolete ? redirect permanent (301) to the closest existing url mark them as gone (4xx) I'd vote for option 2. Bots will suddenly see thousands of 301, but this is reflecting what is really happening, right ? Do you think this could result in some penalty ? Thank you very much for your help. Jeremy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JeremyICC0 -
Ecommerce SEO URL Structure Questions
| I am in the process of developing a new Magento ecommerce store. Take for instance this website is in the apparel industry and i have the following main categories. Clothing Shoes Accessories Beauty Sub categories for clothing would be: Dresses Pants jeans Tops Products would be: Kelly Maxi dresses What is the best SEO Structure for this? Main categories obviously: www.example.com/clothing Sub Categories:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WayneRooney
www.example.com/clothing/dresses Or www.example.com/dresses (Zappos seem to pursue the second type) Products:
www.example.com/clothing/dresses/kelly-maxi-dresses/ Or www.example.com/kelly-maxi-dresses ? Which one would be the best way to structure your site? Also what about filters that available in category pages? Say if i were to filter by color. what would be the best URL? I am sure canonical tag is needed here. New to Ecommerce SEO so i need some guidance! |0 -
Pretty URLs... do they matter?
Given the following urls: example.com/warriors/ninjas/ example.com/warriors/ninjas/cid=WRS-NIN01 Is there any difference from an SEO perspective? Aesthetically the 2nd bugs me but that's not a statistical difference. Thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nymbot0