Including spatial location in URL structure. Does subfolder number and keyword order actually matter?
-
The SEOMoz On-Page report for my site brings up one warning (among others) that I find interesting:
-
Minimal Subfolders in the URL
My site deals with trails and courses for both races and general running. The structure for a trail is, for example:
/trails/Canada/British-Columbia/Greater-Vancouver-Regional-District/Baden--Powell-Trail/trail/2
The structure for courses is:
/course/28
In both cases, the id at the end is used for a database lookup.
I'm considering an URL structure that would be:
/trail/Baden-Powell-Trail/ca-bc-vancouver
This would use the country code (CA) and sub-country code (BC) along with the short name for the region.
This could be good because:
-
it puts the main keyword first
-
the URL is much shorter
-
there are only 3 levels in the URL structure
However, there is evidence, from Google's Matt Cutts, that the keyword order and URL structure don't matter in that way: See this post: http://www.seomoz.org/q/all-page-files-in-root-or-to-use-directories
If Matt Cutts says they aren't so important then why are they listed in the SEOMoz On-Page Report?
I'd prefer to use /trail/ca-bc-vancouver/Baden-Powell-Trail.
I'll probably do a similar thing for courses.
Is this a good idea? Thoughts?
Many thanks, in advance, for your help.
Cheers,
Edward
-
-
Thanks for your responses, Ryan and Alan.
Ryan's response included a comment about the number of clicks away from the home page. This makes me question my site architecture so I've asked a question about spatial location and site architecture.
-
Let me start off by sharing the description of the "Minimal Subfolders in the URL" metric from the On Page report:
The quantity of subfolders in a URL appears to correlate to rankings. URLs with fewer trailing slashes perform better than those with more. Additionally, search engine representatives have recommended that excessive, subfolders in a URL string may be a signal that the page is very deep in a site's structure and may be less valuable/worthwhile to crawl, index and rank.
Your On Page report, like many SEO tools, seeks to call your attention to possible issues on your site. There is a correlation to more folders being an increased number of clicks away from the home page. If that is a concern on your site, then the warning is valid. If that is not a concern, you can disregard the warning.
There are other reasons to shorten your URL structure other then rankings. Click Through Rate can be affected by URL appearance. It has been clearly shown users wish to know the URL of the page prior to clicking on the link. Your current URL cannot be seen completely in SERPs. I performed a search in Google.com for the URL path you shared, "/trails/Canada/British-Columbia/Greater-Vancouver-Regional-District/Baden--Powell-Trail/trail/2". Notice the result URL? It is cut off and you never get to see what is presumably the most important part.
Of your ideas, I like your preference the best as a URL structure, /trail/ca-bc-vancouver/Baden-Powell-Trail.
Whatever your decision, there is absolutely no need to stuff every keyword in the URL. mysite.com/baden-powell-trail works just fine. If the extra folders make sense for your users and site, by all means use them. I would advise against adding any keywords to a URL in a pure attempt to influence rankings.
-
I seem to remeber Matt saying that it should not be too long, True its how many clicks from the home page, not how many folders deep. but the folder structure can not be endless.
As for order, I suggest it does matter, it does in every other on page piece of realeaste, having SEO Australia will rank you higher for SEO Australia then it would for Australia SEO.Dont take every thing Matt Cutts says as the best advice for you, What he says is the best for google not SEO's. Sometimes you need to read between the lines, the second video is a good example, where he does not really say No, he states the question, does it have a Significant impact, he never claims it does not have an impact, and then adds he line about spending your time creating great content. I would take rtghe answer to that as a Yes it has an impact.
i dont think I have every heard matt say, Yes that works you do that and you will get good rankings. , the best you will get is an answer like the second video. He will advise you not to do things but rarly advise of a good idea to beat the search engines.
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
-
No structured sitemap
Hello We face this problem that a lot of sitemaps are structurally not good. In this case we used the WP sitemap plugin to generate the website sitemap and Google XML sitemaps to generate the sitemap for Google. We also bought the Yoast premium plugin, but we can read in the backend that the plugin XML sitemaps may cause problems in combination with Yoast. Normally the Google XML sitemap generator improves SEO using sitemaps for the best indexation by search engines, but the structure is not as we want it. Will Yoast be a better solution to generate structured sitemaps? This is a section from the current sitemap of www.rovana.be. Products Reepgordijn Plissé - Dupli gordijn Duo rolgordijn Paneelgordijn Jaloezie - Vlinderjaloezie Poorten Muggenramen Velux accessoires Rolgordijn Vouwgordijn Buitenjaloezie Voorzetrolluik Glasdak Glaswand Vouwdak Pergola Verlichting - Verwarming Automatisering Lamellendak Verandazonwering Screens Koepel zonwering This is how we think the sitemap should look like. We would like more structure in the different product categories. Producten Zonwering Zonnescherm
Technical SEO | | conversal
Screens
Verandazonwering
Koepel zonwering
Automatisering
Verwarming – verlichting Terrasoverkapping Lamellendak
Pergola
VouwdaK
Glasdak
Glaswand Raamdecoratie Rolgorijn
Paneelgordijn
Duo rolgordijn
Vouwgordijn
Plissé – dupli gordijn
Jaloezie – vlinderjaloezie
Reepgordijn
Velux accessoires Rolluiken Voorzetrolluiken
Buitenjaloezie
Velux accessoires Muggenramen Muggenraam
Velux accessoires Poorten Sectionaal poort Is this technically possible to create similar sitemaps in WordPress and how exactly do we proceed here? What is the impact of these changes on SEO? How can we make this work? Thanks!0 -
Adding a parameter to the URL / URL Stracture
Dear Community, I would like to ask a question regarding url structure. We are struggling with shorting urls and we thought to add a "parameter" to the url. Example: domain.com/product**/a/** or domain.com**/a/**product/ Current url structure: domain.com/product/ So we go after and short url contains "/a/" and find the category we want. Is this going to harm our SEO strategies? Any idea is welcome.
Technical SEO | | geofil0 -
Changing site URL structure
Hey everybody, I'm looking for a bit of advice. A few weeks ago Google sent me an email saying all pages with any text input on them need to switch to https for those pages. This is no problem, I was slowly switching the site to https anyway using a 301 redirect. However, my site also has a language subfolder in the url, mysite.com/en/ mysite.com/ru/ etc. Due to poor work on my part the translations of the site haven't been updated in a long time and lots of the pages are in english even on the russian version etc. So I'm thinking of just removing this url structure and just having mysite.com My plan is to 301 all requests to https and remove the language subfolder in the url at the same time. So far the https switching hasn't changed my rankings. Am I more at risk of losing my rankings by doing this? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Ruhol0 -
I have one keyword which disappeared
My site currently ranks for over 2000 of which 92 are in the number 1 position. Im very active with this site. My Main keyword is a two word keyword ,I have never been below the position #30. Has always been at best 3rd and fourth page. I rank primarily for mostly 3 part keywords and 4 part keywords. However , I noticed about a month ago,The main keyword no longer showing up on serp tools .Moz included. At first i was getting wierd results using keyword tool .Not moz serp tool. I would get different result every time i checked it. When i tried to verify these results ,Only to find my site not at the projected page and rank. After more than a month now this particular keyword is no where in site. Im still getting traffic fom all the other keywords but im a bit confused over this. I thought my main keyword was about to be on the bottom of the 2nd page but instead seems to be completely gone.
Technical SEO | | Yellow20000 -
Best tool to find Related keywords with a Keyword provided.
Hi, Best tool to find Related keywords with a Keyword provided. Basically i want to give a keyword and find all related keywords we can use to write articles. Also any way we can find what keyword a page is getting traffic based on? Thanks
Technical SEO | | skandlikp90 -
Removed URLs
Hi all, We have recently removed 200+ articles from our blog. However, those links are still being shown on Google weeks after their removal. In there a way to speed up the process? What effect will this have on our SEO ranking?
Technical SEO | | businessowner0 -
When to use canonical urls
I will be the first to admit I am never really 100% sure when to use canonical urls. I have a quick question and I am not really sure if this is a situation for a canonical or not. I am looking at a my friends building website and there are issues with what pages are ranking. Basically there homepage is focusing on the building refurbishment location but for some reason in internal page is ranking for that keyword and it is not mentioned at all on that page. Would this be a time to add the homepage url and a canonical on the ranking page (using yoast plugin) to tell Google that the homepage is the preferred page? Thanks Paul
Technical SEO | | propertyhunter0 -
Are URL's with trailing slash seen as two different URLs
Hello, http://www.example.com and http://ww.example.com/ Are these seen as two different URL's ? Just as with www or non www ? Or it doesn't make any difference ?
Technical SEO | | seoug_20050