Yet Another, Yet Important URL structure query.
-
Massive changes to our stock media site and structure here.
While we have an extensive category system previously our category pages have only been our search pages with ID numbers for
sorting categories. Now we have individual category pages.
We have about 600 categories with about 4 max tiers.
We have about 1,000,000 total products and issues with products appearing to be duplicate.
Our current URL structure for producta looks like this:
http://example.com/main-category/12345/product-name.htm
Here is how I was planning on doing the new structure:
Cat tier 1:
http://example.com/category-one/
Cat tier 2:
http://example.com/category-one/category-two/
Cat tier 3:
http://example.com/category-one-category-two/category-three
Cat tier 4:
http://example.com/category-one-category-two-category-three/category-four/
Product:
http://example.com/category-one-category-two-category-three/product-name-12345.htm
Thoughts?
Thanks!
Craig
-
Hi Craig,
If the keyword appears twice in the url it should be acceptable. What I normally do is to look at the url & judge if it still looks "natural" (with "natural" off course is quite subjective). If it looks stuffed, I change, if not I keep it. Check the 'stuffed' examples here: http://blogs.bing.com/webmaster/2014/09/09/url-keyword-stuffing-spam-filtering/
Sorry I cannot be more specific, it's a bit of a grey area.
Dirk
-
Hey Dirk,
Thanks again for the great insight here.
I have a follow-up however...
On our current product pages pre-URL change, the URL structure looks like this:
Let's say, for example purposes, that two of our very top keywords are "Calico Cats" and "Calico Kittens."
example.com/Calico-Cats-Kittens/12345/Tiny-Cat-Playing.html
Before this site re-mod we didn't have any actual category pages, the categories just linked to our search results pages as talked about previously.
The new category pages would look like this:
example.com/Calico-Cats/Calico-Kittens/Sub-Category-One/Sub-Category-Two
So, my question is first for the category page:
Which is better:
example.com/Calico-Cats/Calico-Kittens/Sub-Category-One/Sub-Category-Two/
example.com/Calico-Cats/Kittens/Sub-Category-One/Sub-Category-Two/Is there any concern here with Repeating the word "Calico?"
And for the product page:
example.com/Calico-Cats/Tiny-Cat-Playing-12345.html
(Excluding the "Calico-Kittens" category level to decrease the number of folders and also, because of the concern that including "Calico" twice may be an issue?
ORexample.com/Calico-Cats/Calico-Kittens/Tiny-Cats-Playing-12345.html
(including an extra category layer, but only because "Calico-Kittens" is one of our top, most valuable keywords)There will be hundreds of thousands of product pages like this.
Thanks again for your help!
Craigexample.com/Calico-Cats/Calico-Kittens/Sub-Category-One/Sub-Category-Two
-
Hi Craig,
Personally I would prefer folders because it's easier for reporting purposes
Cat tier 1:
http://example.com/category-one/Cat tier 2:
http://example.com/category-one/category-two/Cat tier 3:
http://example.com/category-one/category-two/category-threeCat tier 4:
http://example.com/category-one/category-two/category-three/category-four/It seems to go against the rule of a flat site structure, but in fact for that, it's more the number of links to the category that counts rather than the number of folders.
For the product url I wouldn't use all these folders. If one product belongs two multiple categories / subcategories you'll end up with duplicate urls - here I would rather go forhttp://example.com/xxx/product-name-12345.htm. xxx could stand for the main category (if each product belongs to only one main category) or something generic like "products"
Some additional info can be found here: http://www.bruceclay.com/blog/structured-urls/
Hope this helps,
Dirk
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
-
I'm struggling to understand (and fix) why I'm getting a 404 error. The URL includes this "%5Bnull%20id=43484%5D" but I cannot find that anywhere in the referring URL. Does anyone know why please? Thanks
Can you help with how to fix this 404 error please? It appears that I have a redirect from one page to the other, although the referring page URL works, but it appears to be linking to another URL with this code at the end of the the URL - %5Bnull%20id=43484%5D that I'm struggling to find and fix. Thanks
Technical SEO | | Nichole.wynter20200 -
Clean URL vs. Parameter URL and Using Canonical URL...That's a Mouthfull!
Hi Everyone, I a currently migrating a Magento site over to Shopify Plus and have a question about best practices for using the canonical URL. There is a competitor that I believe is not doing it the correct way, so I want to make sure my way is the better choice. With 'Vendor Pages' in Shopify, they show up looking like: https://www.campusprotein.com/collections/vendors?q=Cellucor. Not as clean. Problem is that Shopify also creates https://www.campusprotein.com/collections/cellucor. Same products, same page, just a different more clean URL. I am seeing both indexed in Google. What I want to do is basically create a canonical URL from the URL with the parameter that points to the clean URL. The two pages are very similar. The only difference is that the clean URL page has some additional content at the top of the page. I would say the two pages are 90% the same. Do you see any issue with that?
Technical SEO | | vetofunk0 -
Redirecting a Few URLS from One Domain to Another
Hello, I have two websites within a similar niche...some of the top organic traffic driving pages on Website B I'd like to redirect to a similar page on Website A. The reason is Website A is a bigger and better and is monetized much better as well. I only want to redirect a few of the main URLS on Website A and also only those that I have similar content on my main Website B. Is this process safe for SEO? What is the best way to go about this process. I am not really concerned with Website B and what happens to it's rankings, but in the meantime, I'd like to redirect the traffic from some of it's main organic traffic driving pages to my main website A and to it's similar pages. I am also concerned with making sure my main website A stays white hat and doesn't receive any negativity from these redirects. Thanks.
Technical SEO | | juicyresults0 -
URL spacing help
Hi all, easy question: I have a client URL...example.com/giftbags that has been indexed for a while. Should I change the URL to example.com/gift-bags to separate these words for better KW ranking, or would the change be useless at this point? Thanks, -Reed
Technical SEO | | IceIcebaby0 -
URL - Well Formed or Malformed
Hi Mozzers, I've been mulling over whether my URLs could benefit a little SEO tweaking. I'd be grateful for your opinion. For instance, we've a product, a vintage (second hand), red Chanel bag. At the moment the URL is: www.vintageheirloom.com/vintage-chanel-bags/2.55-bags/red-2.55-classic-double-flap-bag-1362483150 Broken down... vintage-chanel-bags = this is the main product category, i.e. vintage chanel bags 2.55-bags = is a sub category of the main category above. They are vintage Chanel 2.55 bags, but I've not included 'vintage' again. 2.55 bags are a type of Chanel bag. red-2.55-classic-double-flap-bag = this is the product, the bag **1362483150 **= this is a unique id, to prevent the possibility of duplicate URLs As you no doubt can see we target, in particular, the phrase **vintage. **The actual bag / product title is: Vintage Chanel Red 2.55 classic double flap bag 10” / 25cm With this in mind, would I be better off trying to match the product name with the end of the URL as closely as possible? So a close match below would involve not repeating 'chanel' again: www.vintageheirloom.com/chanel-bags/2.55-bags/vintage-red-2.55-classic-double-flap-bag or an exact match below would involve repeating 'chanel': www.vintageheirloom.com/chanel-bags/2.55-bags/vintage-chanel-red-2.55-classic-double-flap-bag This may open up more flexibility to experiment with product terms like second hand, preowned etc. Maybe this is a bad idea as I'm removing the phrase 'vintage' from the main category. But this logical extension of this looks like keyword stuffing !! www.vintageheirloom.com/vintage-chanel-bags/vintage-2.55-bags/vintage-chanel-red-2.55-classic-double-flap-bag Maybe this is over analyzing, but I doubt it? Thanks for looking. Kevin
Technical SEO | | well-its-1-louder0 -
Variables in URLS?
How much do variables in URLs hurt indexing of that page? I'm worried that with this huge string of variables that the pages won't get indexed. Here's what I think we should have: http://adomainname.com/New/Local/State/City/Make/Model/ Here's the current URL:http://adomainname.com/New/Local/MN/Bayport/Jeep/Liberty?curPage=1&pageResultSize=50&orderDir=DESC&orderBy=ModifiedDate&conditionId=1&makeId=7&modelId=141&stateProvinceName=Minnesota&mc=1
Technical SEO | | CFSSEO0 -
Should I import external reviews to my site?
Hi everybody! I manage the website for a financial services company. We have more than 5000 reviews on a user review website. We have the possibility to import and display all these reviews on our site. Is this good for SEO? Will Google find it suspicious that our site suddenly displays a lot of new keyword-rich content? What about duplicate content? Please, share your thoughts. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Georgios0 -
URL with tracking code
Hi there, At the company i am currently working for we have a problem with shortcut url with tracking in it. They send a lot of brochures with a shortcut URL which redirects to the page of the event with tagging. For example The real URL is:
Technical SEO | | RuudHeijnen
http://www.sbo.nl/cursussen/schoolleider-primair-onderwijs/ The URL in the brochure is:
www.sbo.nl/schoolleiderpo this then redirects to: h
ttp://www.sbo.nl/cursussen/schoolleider-primair-onderwijs/?utm_source=direct&utm_medium=shortcut&utm_campaign=schoolleiderpo Now we can measure the effect of the brochure on on-line traffic and conversion. This is great but a lot of website link to that shortcut url and if the event is put offline the links to it generate an 404. We have now about 800 backlinks that generate this 404 and i want to fix it. Another big problem "i think" is the possibility that google will index this url with tagging. Now i have 2 options: 1. look at al the url with that 404 and redirect them with a 301 to the best page 2. create the shortcut on an page that is most suitable but then i will get the tagging in the URL and i guess google will see this as dublicate content. It is possible that in the future the shortcut url will be used again. What would you suggest as the best sollution.0