Suggested url structure for hierarchical data
-
For an existing web site we are developing a local info web site section where each area would get a review and information about local bars and restaurants.
The site manages areas in the following hierarchy:
Country > Broader region > Perfecture > Municipality > Neighborhood
e.g. Italy > Northern Italy > Lombardia > Milano > Center
Local Info pages would exist for all the above levels
so you could have a page for Italy as a whole, a page for Lombardia, and a separate page for the Center of Milano.
On certain countries there are many synonyms especially in the Neighborhood level but also a few in the Municipality level.
We would like to build a generic SEF url structure/pattern that would be able to represent the above and be as short as possible for the purpose of SEO.
1. the obvious solution would be to incorporate the unique identifier of
e.g.
www.example.com/local-info/Italy-10
www.example.com/local-info/Milano-12363
www.example.com/local-info/Center-789172but this does not represent the hierarchy and does not include the interesting keyword of e.g. Milano when looking at the neighborhood level
2. Another option would be to include all levels
e.g.
www.example.com/local-info/Italy/Northern-Italy/Lombardia
www.example.com/local-info/Italy/Northern-Italy/Lombardia/Milano
www.example.com/local-info/Italy/Northern-Italy/Lombardia/Milano/CenterBut this would end up with large URLs
3. I am thinking of another solution which would include the current level and its parent at any page. Not capturing the hierarchy very well but at least it includes the parent name for richer keywords in the url itself.
www.example.com/local-info/Northern-Italy/Lombardia
www.example.com/local-info/Lombardia/Milano
www.example.com/local-info/Milano/Center4. Or a hybrid where the first levels are always there and the rest are concatenated on a single segment
www.example.com/local-info/Italy/Northern-Italy/Lombardia
www.example.com/local-info/Italy/Northern-Italy/Lombardia-Milano
www.example.com/local-info/Italy/Northern-Italy/Lombardia-Milano-Centerany thoughts?
thanks in advance
-
Is the site aimed locally or globally? The only reason I ask is because it will affect the keywords you are trying to hit, and that's really what you need to bear in mind, the main keywords should be in the URL, and the rest can likely be cut.
Also how attached are you to /local-info/ it's not particularly descriptive, and if you could change it to /italy-info/ or simply /restaurants/ that cuts an entire level off the string.
I'm in the UK and if I was searching for the content you've described I'd probably just type "restaurants in central milan", Americans would probably use something more like "restaurants in milan italy" which would indicate URLs along the lines of:
www.example.com/restaurants/italy/milan/
www.example.com/restaurants/italy/milan-central
Neither would really think about putting Northern Italy nor Lombardia because they are much broader. You could still account for those just by adding them on the same level despite the hierarchical discrepancy.
www.example.com/restaurants/italy/lombardia/
www.example.com/restaurants/italy/northern-italy/
If you're catering to Italians you could just cut things down to:
www.example.com/restaurants/lombardia/milano/
They aren't going to specify Italy or Northern Italy as part of their searches.
So basically think about what your audience will search for and include those items in the URL, it doesn't have to make absolute hierarchical sense so long as it makes sense to your customers.
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 + Structured Data for Metered Paywall
I have a site that will have 90% of the content behind a metered paywall. So all content is accessible in a metered way. All users who aren't logged in will have access to 3 articles (of any kind) in a 30 day period. If they try to access more in a 30 day period they will hit a paywall. I was reading this article here on how to handle structured data with Google for content behind a paywall: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/paywalls-seo-strategy/311359/However, the content is not ALWAYS behind a paywall, since it is metered. So if a new user comes to the site, they can see the article (regardless of what it is). Is there a different way to handle content that will be SOMETIMES behind a paywall bc of a metered strategy? Theoretically I want 100% of the content indexed and accessible in SERPs, it will just be accessible depending on the user's history (cookies) with the site. I hope that makes sense.
Technical SEO | | triveraseo0 -
50 Duplicate URLS, but not the same
Hi According to my latest site crawl, many of my pages are showing up to 50 duplicate urls. However this isn't the case in real life. http://www.fortusgroup.com.au/browse-products/rubber-tracks/excavator-rubber-tracks/hitachi/ex-33mu.html is showing 31 duplicate URL. Examples include: http://www.fortusgroup.com.au/browse-products/rubber-tracks/excavator-rubber-tracks/parts/x430.html
Technical SEO | | JDadd
http://www.fortusgroup.com.au/browse-products/rubber-tracks/excavator-rubber-tracks/case/cx-75sr.html Obviously these URL's are very similar and I know that Moz judges URLs by 90% of their similarity, but is this affecting my actual raking on google? If so, what can I do? This pages are also very similar in code and content, so they are also showing as duplicate content etc as well. Worried that this is having an affect on my SERP rankings, as this pages arent ranking particularly well. Thanks, Ellie0 -
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 -
URL structure
Hello Guys, Quick Question regarding URL strucutre One of our client is an hotel chain, thye have a group site www.example.com and each property is located in a subfolder: www.example.com/example-boston.html , www.example.com/example-ny.html etc. My quesion is : where is better to place the language extension at a subfolder level?
Technical SEO | | travelclickseo
Should i go for www.example.com/en/example-ny.html or it is preferable to specify the language after the property name www.example.com/example-ny/en/accommodation.html? Thanks and Regards, Alessio0 -
URL Format
Often we have web platforms that have a default URL structure that looks something like this www.widgetcompany.co.uk/widget-gallery/coloured-widgets/red-widgets This format is quite well structured but would it just be more effective to be www.widgetcompany.co.uk/red-widgets? I realise that it may depend on a lot of factors but generally is it better to have the shorter URL if targeting the key phrase "red widgets" One thing, it certainly looks a bit keyword stuffy with all those "widgets"
Technical SEO | | vital_hike0 -
Improving SEO Structure of a Page
Our site is an online Marketplace for Services. Naturally, we have a lot of unique content in the form of :
Technical SEO | | Ideas2life
a) Job Posts
b) Profiles of Service Providers We also have 2 very important pages:
a) The Job Listing Page
b) The Service Provider Page The Listing pages have very valuable H1 Titles, but everything else is duplicate content. To capture those keywords currently in H1, we have created a different landing page for each category page, and we`ll optimize around that, so these H1s are not that big of a deal any more. These landing pages are the key to our SEO strategy and we are building new content every day to help them rank I want to make the Listing Pages No Index Follow. This way they pass Juice to Jobs, and Profiles which have unique contents, but are not indexed themselves. Is this a bad idea? I have been thinking about doing this for over a year but it never felt important enough to be worth the risk of accidentally screwing up We `ll soon do a new on page flow optimization and that's why I am considering this again. Thank you so much in advance Argyris0 -
How to delete specific url?
I just ran drawl diagnostics and trying to delete pages such as "oops that page can't be found" or "404 (not found_ error response pages. Can anyone help?
Technical SEO | | sawedding0 -
How do I fix these duplicate URLs?
HI guys, I ran a report on my site and it shows some duplicate titles (example below). Do I need to add something to the htaccess file or another file to fix this? I understand that the search engines should only see 1 URL for the page. 2 pages have "Bikes for sale | used bikes | second hand bicycles" title pauslwebsite.com/bikes/ paulswebsite.com/bikes/index.asp Thanks
Technical SEO | | paulmund0