Which URL structure is better?
-
Quick question - Have a real estate site focused on "apartments", but apartments in not part of my company name. That being said, should which of the following URL structures should I use?
http://website.com/city/neighborhood/property-name
OR
http://website.com/city-apartments/neighborhood/property-name
-
As I said theoretically having the keyword you are after in the leftmost position is better. So if you already analyzed which keywords are the most relevant for you, you should try to place them in the leftmost position. If for example you are fighting a battle to improve your serp position for the query "property-name", you could decide to choose the second url in your example.
But, as others have already mentioned, serp positions are influenced by many many many factors, and focusing too much one technicality can mislead you and shift your focus from the general picture.
In general you should structure your content in folders, because google algo expect to find content structured that way, but it doesn't mean you have to in your specific case or for all your pages, or all your products, etc...
You should structure your url, after analyzing your content, the keywords you are after and your visitors behavior (and I would give a look at your competitors as well).
At the end you will have to make decisions between different possible url structures; you will have to take a risk making you best educated guess based on the analysis you have done, that's why I said the best thing you can do is "test".
I can't tell which structure is best for you, because it depends on that lengthy analysis you should perform, there's not an answer which fit them all.
-
Thank you! Check out the additional question I just added below and let me know what you think.
-
Thanks for your response. I'm going to add to this question..
Is there any advantage to not using all the sub-folders in your URL? For example, if I go with this link structure:
http://website.com/city/neighborhood/property-name
would it make any sense to potentially use this URL instead:
-
When it comes to urls, short and sweet always wins - Cover the technical and UX aspects and you won't go far wrong. There is an undeniable trend away from strictly technical SEO and towards UX-driven ranking factors. If your brand is memorable and relate-able, you will likely be better off moving forward than if you focus on strict keyword-matching.
-
I totally agree with Ray.
Theoretically having the keyword to the leftmost position is better. But I prefer shorter.
If you have time and patience you can test it, use one structure for a group of urls, and the other for another group of urls and try to spot a possible influence.
-
You do want to have a good balance between keyword rich URLs and friendly URLs - shorter is more friendly.
I'm inclined to prefer the first choice. Usually apartment complexes have an 'apartments' in the name - e.g. Lakewood Apartments. You could keep that keyword to the property name itself and keep the more finely tuned structure of the first URL.
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 advice on ecommerce url structure where categories contain "/c/"
Hi! We use Hybris as plattform and I would like input on which url to choose. We must keep "/c/" before the actual category. c stands for category. I.e. this current url format will be shortened and cleaned:
Technical SEO | | hampgunn
https://www.granngarden.se/Sortiment/Husdjur/Hund/Hundfoder-%26-Hundmat/c/hundfoder To either: a.
https://www.granngarden.se/husdjur/hund/hundfoder/c/hundfoder b.
https://www.granngarden.se/husdjur/hund/c/hundfoder (hundfoder means dogfood) The question is whether we should keep the duplicated category name (hundfoder) before the "/c/" or not. Will there be SEO disadvantages by removing the duplicate "hundfoder" before the "/c/"? I prefer the shorter version ofc, but do not want to jeopardize any SEO rankings or send confusing signals to search engines or customers due to the "/c/" breaking up the url breadcrumb. What do you guys say and prefer from the above alternatives? Thanks /Hampus0 -
Structured markup for wordpress
Hello, I am having problems with marking up my WP posts. I used the All-in-One which seems to be the most user-friendly, except when I denote the aspects of the "article" and update, the markup shows up as a box at the bottom of the post (even though the info is in the text). How do I mark these up for Google without having the unseemly box at the bottom? Thanks so much in advance for any help! Btw, I am not altogether comfortable just yet on manual schematic markup (if you have a really basic manual markup that will let me do so across various platforms, I would also appreciate the recommendation). Thanks!
Technical SEO | | lfrazer1 -
Tool to Generate All the URLs on a Domain
Hi all, I've been using xml-sitemaps.com for a while to generate a list of all the URLs that exist on a domain. However, this tool only works for websites with under 500 URLs on a domain. The paid tool doesn't offer what we are looking for either. I'm hoping someone can help with a recommendation. We're looking for a tool that can: Crawl, and list, all the indexed URLs on a domain, including .pdf and .doc files (ideally in a .xls or .txt file) Crawl multiple domains with unlimited URLs (we have 5 websites with 500+ URLs on them) Seems pretty simple, but we haven't been able to find something that isn't tailored toward management of a single domain or that can crawl a huge volume of content.
Technical SEO | | timfrick0 -
Should the date be included in news URLs
My website is not a news or magazine site, but we do have a news section updated 2-3 times a week with industry related news. We are working on a new structure for the URLs.
Technical SEO | | theLotter
Should the date be included in the URL? From this article from Google I understand that as long as we submit a news sitemap it doesnt matter whether or not numbers are included in the URL, correct? https://support.google.com/news/publisher/answer/68323?topic=116650 -
Removing a URL from Search Results
I recently renamed a small photography company, and so I transferred the content to the new website, put a 301-redirect on the old website URL, and turned off hosting for that website. But when I search for certain terms that the old URL used to rank highly for (branded terms) the old URL still shows up. The old URL is "www.willmarlowphotography.com" and when you type in "Will Marlow" it often appears in 8th and 9th place on a SERP. So, I have two questions: First, since the URL no longer has a hosting account associated with it, shouldn't it just disappear from SERPs? Second, is there anything else I should have done to make the transition smoother to the new URL? Thanks for any insights you can share.
Technical SEO | | williammarlow0 -
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 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?
Technical SEO | | briankb0 -
How do I use only one URL
my site can be reach by both www.site.com and site.com. How do I make it only use www?
Technical SEO | | Weblion0 -
What is the best website structure for SEO?
I've been on SEOmoz for about 1 month now and everyone says that depending on the type of business you should build up your website structure for SEO as 1st step. I have a new client click here ( www version doesn't work)... some bugs we are fixing it now. We are almost finished with the design & layout. 2nd question have been running though my head. 1. What would the best url category for the shop be /products/ - current url cat ex: /products/door-handles.html 2. What would you use for the main menu as section for getting the most out of SEO. Personally i am thinking of making 2-3 main categories on the left a section where i can add content to it (3-4 paragraphs... images maybe a video).So the main page focuses on the domain name more and the rest of the sections would focus on specific keywords, this why I avoid cannibalization. Main keyword target is "door handles" Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Technical SEO | | mosaicpro0