Landing Page URL Structure
-
We are finally setting up landing pages to support our PPC campaigns. There has been some debate internally about the URL structure.
Originally we were planning on URL's like:
- domain.com
- /california
- /florida
- /ny
I would prefer to have the URL's for each state inside a "state" folder like:
- domain.com
- /state
- /california
- /florida
- /ny
- /state
I like having the folders and pages for each state under a parent folder to keep the root folder as clean as possible. Having a folder or file for each state in the root will be very messy.
Before you scream URL rewriting :-). Our current site is still running under Classic ASP which doesn't support URL rewriting. We have tried to use HeliconTech's ISAPI rewrite module for IIS but had to remove it because of too many configuration issues.
Next year when our coding to MVC is complete we will use URL rewriting.
So the question for now: Is there any advantage or disadvantage to one URL structure over the other?
- domain.com
-
From a strict A/B standpoint where the two variables are:
www.domain.com/state/california
You will see no discernible difference in SEO results. That being said, if you plan to expand the URLs later, i.e.
www.domain.com/state/california/santa-monica/our-service-keywords.* then you should probably consider what length they will be and factor that into your decision.
-
Yes. I believe there is an advantage in choosing your second option, for exactly the reason you state. In other words it's better for you and your own organization of your content. It will also make it much easier when and if you implement URL rewrites to give you SEO friendly URLs because if you use any relative URLs on your pages, they will be much easier to identify correctly and update if they are constructed "/state/michigan."
I don't believe there is going to be an advantage or disadvantage to your campaigns or SEO if you choose one versus another. That's my personal opinion. I certainly don't pretend to know what Google favors or doesn't favor at any given point in time.
I certainly 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
-
Customer Reviews on Product Page / Pagination / Crawl 3 review pages only
Hi experts, I present customer feedback, reviews basically, on my website for the products that are sold. And with this comes the ability to read reviews and obviously with pagination to display the available reviews. Now I want users to be able to flick through and read the reviews to help them satisfy whatever curiosity they have. My only thinking is that the page that contains the reviews, with each click of the pagination will present roughly the same content. The only thing that changes is the title tags which will contain the number in the H1 to display the page number. I'm thinking this could be duplication but i have yet to be notified by Google in my Search console... Should i block crawlers from crawling beyond page 3 of reviews? Thanks
Technical SEO | | Train4Academy.co.uk0 -
URL structuring / redirect question
Hi there, I have a URL structuring / redirect question. I have many pages on my site but I set each page up to fall under one of two folders as I serve two unique markets and want each side to be indexed properly. I have SIDE A: www.domain/FOLDER-A.com and SIDE B: www.domain/FOLDER-B. The problem is that I have a page for www.domain.com and www.domain/FOLDER-A/page1.com but I do NOT have a page for www.domain/FOLDER-A. The reason for this is that I've opted to make what would be www.domain/FOLDER-A be www.domain.com and act the primary landing page the site. As a result, there is no page located at www.domain/FOLDER-A. My WordPress template (Divi by Elegant Themes) forced me to create a blank page to be able to build off the FOLDER-A framework. My question is that given I am forced to have this blank page, do I leave it be or create a 302 or 307 redirect to www.domain.com? I fear using a 301 redirect given I may want to utilize this page for content at some point in the future. This isn't the easiest post to follow so please let me know if I need to restate the question. Many thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | KurtWSEO0 -
150+ Pages of URL Parameters - Mass Duplicate Content Issue?
Hi we run a large e-commerce site and while doing some checking through GWT we came across these URL parameters and are now wondering if we have a duplicate content issue. If so, we are wodnering what is the best way to fix them, is this a task with GWT or a Rel:Canonical task? Many of the urls are driven from the filters in our category pages and are coming up like this: page04%3Fpage04%3Fpage04%3Fpage04%3F (See the image for more). Does anyone know if these links are duplicate content and if so how should we handle them? Richard I7SKvHS
Technical SEO | | Richard-Kitmondo0 -
Changing URLs
As of right now we are using yahoo small business, when creating a product you have to declare an id, when we created the site we were not aware that you will not be able to change the id but also the ID is being used as the URL. we have a couple thousand products in which we will need to update the URLs. What would the best way to be to fix this without losing much juice from our current pages. Also I was thinking that if we did them all in a couple weeks it would hurt us a lot, and the best course of action would be to do a slow roll out of the URL changes. Any help is appreciated. Thank you!
Technical SEO | | TITOJAX0 -
URL Structure & SEO - Should we be using sub-folders?
Hi all, As part of our content marketing efforts we have run a number of initiatives in the past and created pages on the website to go along with them (also where the links for these particular projects point to). However, the URL structure isn't actually a reflection of where the pages sit on the site. Unfortunately I'm unable to provide a URL for reasons I won't bore you with, but here's an example: We recently ran a competition that was very successful in generating links. The URL for this is www.domain.co.uk/competition. However, the page actually sits within the About Us section - which is where all of our news and content marketing pages go - and uses a URL override. How much of an issue is this in regards to A) Our SEO in general?; and B) Ensuring we receive as much equity from the links we earn as possible? A brief explanation of what URL overrides actually are would also be useful! (We have a digital marketing agency who handle most of our SEO) Thanks in advance guys! John
Technical SEO | | NAHL-14300 -
Url folder structure
I work for a travel site and we have pages for properties in destinations and am trying to decide how best to organize the URLs basically we have our main domain, resort pages and we'll also have articles about each resort so the URL structure will actually get longer:
Technical SEO | | Vacatia_SEO
A. domain.com/main-keyword/state/city-region/resort-name
_ domain.com/family-condo-for-rent/orlando-florida/liki-tiki-village_ _ domain.com/main-keyword-in-state-city/resort-name-feature _
_ domain.com/family-condo-for-rent/orlando-florida/liki-tiki-village/kid-friend-pool_ B. Another way to structure would be to remove the location and keyword folders and combine. Note that some of the resort names are long and spaces are being replaced dynamically with dashes.
ex. domain.com/main-keyword-in-state-city/resort-name
_ domain.com/family-condo-for-rent-in-orlando-florida/liki-tiki-village_ _ domain.com/main-keyword-in-state-city/resort-name-feature_
_ domain.com/family-condo-for-rent-in-orlando-florida/liki-tiki-village-kid-friend-pool_ Question: is that too many folders or should i combine or break up? What would you do with this? Trying to avoid too many dashes.0 -
How can I see the SEO of a URL? I need to know the progress of a specific landing-page of my web. Not a keyword, an url please. Thanks.
I need to know the evolution on SEO of a specific landing-page (an URL) of my web. Not a keyword, a url. Thanks. (Necesito saber si es posible averiguar el progreso de una URL específica en el posicionamiento de Google. Es decir, lo que hace SEOmoz con las palabras clave pero al revés. Yo tengo una url concreta que quiero posicionar en las primeras posiciones de Google pero quiero ver cómo va progresando en función a los cambios que le voy aplicando. Muchas gracias)
Technical SEO | | online_admiral0 -
Google Penguin - Target Landing Page
Hello, One of our sites have been hit by the first penguin update back in April and ever since then we have been removing links and submitting reconsideration requests... It only seems to have affected our home page as some of our internal landing pages are still ranking OK in the SERPS #1 / #2. I'm just wondering if we created a landing page for this keyword and drove high quality / relevant links to this landing page could we get it to rank higher than our homepage even though our Homepage is on the 5th page.Hope the above make sense. Has anybody had any joy with this?
Technical SEO | | ScottBaxterWW0