How should directories be set up on ecommerce?
-
I have a ecommerce site. I am trying to figure out the best layout for my directories. Here are my two options.
Option 1. - Each directory in root domain.
Carrying Cases - plastic.com/carryingcases/
Case Type - plastic.com/casetype/
Specific Product - plastic.com/sproductOption 2 - Put them in subdirectories
Carrying Cases - plastic.com/carryingcases/
Case Type - plastic.com/carryingcases/casetype/
Specific Product - plastic.com/carryingcases/casetype/sproductI know this is a very basic question but I am looking for the right answer. I keep getting conflicting answers from different sources.
-
It depends a bit on the depth and breadth of the products/categories you've got, but assuming the site has only a few dozen categories and maybe half a dozen brands/types, I'd go with option 2 and use subdirectories. They can help you in your analytics to sort and see what's happening in specific areas, can show up in Google with the category > subcategory delineation in place of the URL (which can help enhance CTR), and provide more detail (and a tiny bit more keyword relevance) for anyone looking at the URL in a browser, in email, in social media, etc.
However, I'd stop before going overboard, e.g. site.com/laptops/thin-light/samsung/series-9 is fine, while site.com/laptops/thin-light/black/gray-highlights/samsung/series-9/make140/model2334 is not
Use good judgement and you'll be fine!
This post is still a reasonably good reference: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/11-best-practices-for-urls (though I should probably do a rewrite sometime soon)
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
-
ECommerce Website Internal Links
We run an ecommerce website... approx 8K products. When using the page grader, MOZ tools consistently tell me that I have too many Internal Links on the page.
On-Page Optimization | | Ampweb
These are caused from our fairly large menu system, and probably from the sub-category links on the category landing pages as well. I was reading an article that mentioned a no-follow on these Internal links would not really solve the "Too many internal links issue", so wanted to check if anyone has ideas or should I just dis-regard this MOZ suggestion that there are too many in this type of environment?0 -
Best .net cms and ecommerce platform for seo?
Hi and thanks for looking. Due to internal constraints we are looking at a .net cms and ecommerce solution, I would have preferred a magento and wordpress solution but we have to work within our constraints. Can anyone share their experiences or thoughts on what cms they would use with seo in mind and what eCommerce platform, again with seo in mind. thanks again for looking and all replies gratefully received.
On-Page Optimization | | Renford_Nelson1 -
Keyword usage in eCommerce Sites - Danger of keyword stuffing?
Hi all, I'm having a little difficulty deciding the best approach for selecting my product titles as I've encountered a few issues. I understand how important it is to try and use the keyword in your product titles, but about the category page that lists all of these products? One of category pages, for example, has 16 products on it. Each has the product title followed by the keyword. I have also used the keyword in the category title, URL, breadcrumbs and two or 3 times (because it was natural) in a paragraph that describes the category etc. Due to the little amount of text on the page, and the sheer amount of times that the keyword is being used, it looks like I am keyword stuffing (By Moz On Page Report Card). I think it came to 23 uses of the same keyword altogether. This is the pretty much teh same throughout every category page on my site, and think I was penalised by Google for this reason. I'm a relatively new site and have done everything by the book as far as I know, so everything is pointing at this to be the cause of the drop/disappearance in ranking. How do I rectify this problem? It's important for the products to have the keyword in, right? As this is one of the SEO practices that is given more weight when considering rankings. I have thought a potential way around this, which is to split the keyword between an exact match, and a variant of the keyword in the titles - only very slightly though. So my product titles would look like 'Product A Exact Match Keyword', 'Product B Variant on Keyword' etc. Could this work? Can anybody advise on the best thing I could try? I have attached an image to give you an idea of the layout of my category pages - Apologies in advance about my embarrassingly rubbish photoshop skills! I wasn't able to upload directly, so I have attached a link. Thanks for reading, John 4iIkmSx
On-Page Optimization | | John_Francis0 -
How often should ecommerce category and product descriptions be rewritten?
We are a 15 year old ecommerce company. Most of our category descriptions are about 3 years old. Our product descriptions are 5-8 years old. While our category pages still rank well in Google our product pages have dropped significantly over time. How often should product page descriptions be rewritten so they do not become stale to Google? We have about 1,000 products on the site. If we rewrite them we are thinking about 250 words each. Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | SLINC0 -
How should we handle ecommerce section pages (flagged with duplication) containing the same products?
We've removed a ton of errors, duplication and other stuff since signing up to SEOmoz Pro, but we're getting to the point where what we have left isn't that easy to fix. On one of our (ecommerce) sites we have several sections where people buy products that are applicable to the area of the home. In one or two instances, a particular list of products is the same for two or more different areas - for instance the "Bedroom and Landings" and "Hallway and Stairs" sections may list the same 10 products. This is obviously flagging up as duplication in our reports. What is the best way to handle this situation? Make the one with the highest authority canonical? Point both to another canonical page? Or, try and convince the product department that we should have a more generically name section that both link to? Thanks for any advice!
On-Page Optimization | | Safelincs0 -
Does the seomoz crawler that crawls for the onpage reports have a set ip?
I would like to test my site, but its not launched yet and don;t want anybody to see it. But I can allow myself and other to view the site if I have there ip address. So does the seomoz crawler have a static one or range? James
On-Page Optimization | | BarefootJames0 -
How to Resolve Google Crawling Issues for My eCommerce Website?
I want to resolve Google crawling issues for my eCommerce website. My website is as follow. http://www.vistastores.com/ Google have crawled only 97 webpages from my website. My website is quite old. (~More than 6 months) But, Google have indexed only 97 webpages. I have created one campaign over SEOmoz tool and found some errors over there. So, I just assumed that due to it Google did not crawled my website. But, I have created one another campaign for my competitor website to know actual status and reason behind it. I found that, my competitor website have more error compare to me but, Google have crawled maximum pages compare to me. So, What is reason behind it? How can I improve my crawling rate and index maximum webpages to Google? [6133009604_af85d29730_b.jpg](img src=) 6133009604_af85d29730_b.jpg 6133009604_af85d29730_b.jpg 6139706697_4e252fdb82_b.jpg
On-Page Optimization | | CommercePundit0 -
Too many on page links on ecommerce site
I have an online store with 10 catagories, many of those have subcategories. I have a tree style navigation menu on the page. This helps people quickly find what they need. However, I end up with about 125 links on the page that way. Does google really penalize me for this? Is there anyway around this? Advice much appreciated!
On-Page Optimization | | bhsiao0