2 Question about URL structure
-
Hello guys
1 - I have a question about the best structure for URLs from the point of view of SEO:
Is it OK to use the URL as
mywebsite.com.br/long-tail-article
Or is better this
mywebsite.com.br/category/long-tail-article
2 - When part of my keyword is already in my "category", for example:
mywebsite.com.br/digital-marketing/digital-marketing-is-good
I leave it as it is, or in the following way:
mywebsite.com.br/digital-marketing-is-good
NOTE: Do not take into account that this URL would be different from other URLs in this category
-
'a user may remember a number easier than a url which is descriptive' - true. Tho, if you look at it from a search engine angle, CTR is a crucial factor - and even if the title of a page itself is a good discriminator, many people still do look at URLs.
Imagine a page title like 'We give away gold for free' and a URL path saying 'this-is-just-a-scam.html' . While this is an extreme example the analogy should hold up. And while 12345 probably does not mean anything negative to anyone (or only to very, very, very few people) it is not really meaningful.
Thus I don't agree with your premise and I'm with Heather when she's saying that your user should be the prime focus and her implication that Google's interest is in the user and will do what it takes to make them happy - and that's not just for commercial reasons.
I however completely am with you on your 'this depends on the size and nature of your site' comment!
General rule:
- keyword duplication is BAD: mywebsite.com.br/digital-marketing/digital-marketing-is-good would very likely be considered as SPAM
- short title are preferred (as per early 2012 and I've not heard anything else about that since then) - as Michael said before
- targeted landing pages are GOOD. I'd say that if you plan to have the category in the URL just for the URL's purpose - leave it be. But if you plan on making e.g. - digital-marketing/index.html a targeted landing page with additional content (i.e. not just a plain listing of the articles) the you can gain real value
- try to make all pages reachable from the homepage within 4 clicks or less. Category offer you a perfect way to do this - on top of providing good landing pages
What I'd do:
1.) Check if you and/or your team has got the time to provide and maintain bespoke content for category pages, e.g. digital-marketing. If not, then I'd tend not to bother with changing the URLs
2.) If you decide you have the time - GO FOR IT. Check how many duplications you'd really have for each of your designated categories. Might be best to manually change the title and/or have a script check your database for such duplications.Cheers,
Charly -
Yep... I agree... we get thousands of visitors every day through category pages.
-
not really my point - my point is categorisation on large sites is helpful to search engines and users. WP does this very well and I utilise it a whole bunch on my sites that use WP
-
It would not be a problem because I use Wordpress
-
This is exactly my fear, be regarded as SPAM.
-
thats not always the case, consider a user may remember a number easier than a url which is descriptive (eg .com/12345 vs .com/this-is-a-blog-post-title-and-url ) however the numbers aren't descriptive and so hold no real seo value
- this said regardless of what option is choosen Google could always decide to prefer another mechanism in ranking for urls - or totally ignore them
-
I think you should structure your URL from the point of view of the reader rather than Google - that way you future proof yourself against any Google updates.
-
this depends on the size and nature of your site. For instance if you've lots of posts about a topic within your site (say "social media" or "email marketing") it is best to have them as a category and your post title to follow. Otherwise you could have issues in that you end up needing to put "email-marketing" in each post url ... which isn't pretty to do manually
-
I'd be inclined to go shorter. I don't believe you're going to see any additional ranking benefits from having the keyword in the URL twice (might be different if the keyword was in the domain AND the URL, but even then...).
I'd be a little concerned that having the keyword in there twice might look spammy to Google, too.
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
-
SEO question
why does a business rank differ on google search and google maps (for example, a hair salon we do seo for ranks 5th for "hair salon in Dublin" on Google Maps and ranks 10th on Google search)
On-Page Optimization | | ryan.mamma0 -
Google Index/Cashe questions
I have 15k+ pages. I have 4.5k pages indexed. What relation is the google cashe to indexing pages? My site gets cashed every two days. The competition in my SERP goes 2-3weeks to get cashed. What does this indicate? Is your cashe date your last google crawl? How can I get google to crawl my site? Is there a way I can get google to crawl my site starting from an internal page. This way I could set up a better linking structure that would benefit from doing activities that get that page indexed to help get my site indexed more thoroughly...
On-Page Optimization | | JML11790 -
Canonical URL tags help I am not sure what this is
I am trying to get an A grade on my webpage and this is one of the critical steps canonical URL tags I cant find much information as to what this even is never mind fixing it. Thanks I am a total newbe at this any advice is appreciated
On-Page Optimization | | gemfirez0 -
Internal linking structure
howdy SEO moz people, I had a quick question about internal linking. I am using the WP platform for my website and on one of the widgets I have a category widget that shows all the pages, (on every page). I wanted to know that when if i make a new post or page does it matter if the internal anchor texts are on the content itself or is it suffice to have it on the side bar within the widget? Basically what im asking is does it matter if i have anchor text links on the content itself or is it ok to have it anywhere on the page. and if it does matter to have it on the content, please help out on any suggestions on where to place them. thanks
On-Page Optimization | | david3050 -
URL for location pages
Hello all We would like to create clean, easy URLs for our large list of Location pages. If there are a few URLs for each of the pages, am I right when I'm saying we would like this to be the canonical? Right now we would like the URL to be: For example
On-Page Optimization | | Ferguson
Domain.com/locations/Columbus I have found some instances where there might be 2,3 or more locations in the same city,zip. My conclusion for these would be: adding their Branch id's on to the URL
Domain.com/locations/Columbus/0304 Is this an okay approach? We are unsure if the URL should have city,State,zip for SEO purposes?
The pages will have all of this info in it's content
BUT what would be best for SEO and ranking for a given location? Thank you for any info!0 -
301 redirects / clean urls
hello everyone, we moved our site to a new platform that has url rewrite feature. we are building out a spreadsheet of the old aspx urls and the corresponding page on the new site. my dev tells me that its not important to redirect the old page to the new "clean url" page which sounds a bit odd to me ..example below. okay. so he says its the same difference to 301 redirect this url: http://72.3.181.97/catalog/DesignerDogBeds.aspx to this urls: https://www.k9electronics.com/product.php?productid=3474 instead of this clean url: http://www.k9electronics.com/designer-dog-beds/ can anyone give me any feedback on this? thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | k9byron0 -
Seeking URL Advice
Hey Moz Community, I'm looking for some URL structure advice for a new directory of a website. We're trying to rank for the term 'internships abroad in <country>'</country> We have roughly 100 pages targeting specific countries. Right now the URL structure is www.gooverseas.com/internships-abroad/china, but some of my colleagues believe this structure would be better: www.gooverseas.com/internships-abroad/intern-in-china. I personally prefer the shorter structure, but we couldn't come to any agreement so we thought we'd pose the question to the community. Any thoughts? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | dunklea0 -
Internal link structure for large site
I am working on a very large directory site which is undergoing a complete redesign. I am considering the internal link structure from first principles. When a site has over 100,000 pages, how do you ensure that each page is linked to from somewhere so that there are no orphans? Trying to get my head around the structure makes my brain hurt. Any tips?
On-Page Optimization | | mascotmike0