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
-
Gotcha thx for the help
-
I'm not finding a great example, offhand, but basically, I'm suggesting that you could have city/state URLs, like:
www.example.com/illinois/chicago
...make model URLs, like:
...and individual product URLs, like:
www.example.com/honda-crv-1234
... but that you DON'T mix the first two and end up with something like:
www.example.com/illinois/chicago/honda/crv
....because you're going to spin out a ton of thin content. There's no perfect way these days to even do a lot of state/city pages - Panda hasn't been kind to that. Ideally, you need to have some sort of unique content for each one. If you're just spinning out content to target keywords, you're likely to harm your site eventually.
-
Hey Pete can you please point out a site that does this.
I know that its not good to add too many links to any page and we should only target two keywords on each page. What is the best way to optimize for every city within a state?
lets say we had 20 cities we want to target, is it best to build 10 pages each one targeting two keywords? what is the best practice for this?
-
Yeah, my gut reaction (although there's no one-sized-fits-all answer for every site) is in line with @blu42 - it's not so much about the folder-depth here, it's that this structure is inevitably going to create "thin" content, possibly by the truckload. Post-Panda, the days of just spinning out state+city+product are pretty much gone. It used to work great for long-tail search. Now, you risk it not only not working, but actually damaging your entire site.
It would be much better, IMO to have some kind of state/city structure but then land on the same make/model page, regardless of geography. You can get some kind of geo-targeting that way AND landing pages for products, but don't try to cross them on every variation. The tiny amount of long-tail traffic you pick up will probably be dwarfed by the problems you'll have.
-
It should get indexed however it is very deep...
Its probably better idea to have it structured http://adomainname.com/Category/Location/Make&Model/
-
Ahhh, you will definitely run into duplicate content issues!
You want to include a rel="canonical" to point to the domain & path without the variables. You don't want this sort of URL to be indexed (use robots: noindex,follow); it's much better to show the clean URL in Google.
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
-
Can you help by advising how to stop a URL from referring to another URL on my website with a 404 errorplease?
How to stop a URL from referring to another URL on my site. I'm getting a 404 error on a referred URL which is (https://webwritinglab.com/know-exactly-what-your-ideal-clients-want-in-8-easy-steps/[null id=43484])referred from URL (https://webwritinglab.com/know-exactly-what-your-ideal-clients-want-in-8-easy-steps/) The referred URL is the URL page that I want and I do not need it redirecting to the other URL as that's presenting a 404 error. I have tried saving the permalink in WordPress and recreated the .htaccess file and the problem is still there. Can you advise how to fix this please? Is it a case of removing the redirect? Is this advisable and how do I do that please? Thanks
Technical SEO | | Nichole.wynter20200 -
What to do with existing URL when replatforming and new URL is the same?
We are changing CMS from WordPress to Uberflip. If there is a URL that remains the same I believe we should not create a redirect. However, what happens to the old page? Should it be deleted?
Technical SEO | | maland0 -
URL ASCII Characters Issue
Hi guys; Is there any different between URL whit capital ASCII code and URL with small ASCII Code? For example I have 2 URLS for one page like this: 1- 332-%D8%AA%D8%AD%D8%B5%DB%8C%D9%84-%D8%AF%D8%B1-%DA%A9%D8%A7%D9%86%D8%A7%D8%AF%D8%A7.html 2- 332-%d8%aa%d8%ad%d8%b5%db%8c%d9%84-%d8%af%d8%b1-%da%a9%d8%a7%d9%86%d8%a7%d8%af%d8%a7.html both of them point to same page but no 1 is non SSL and no 2 is ssl version! and whole pges of site forces to https
Technical SEO | | seoiransite0 -
Keyword Phrase in URL structure
Wondered the best URL structure, to include a major keyword phrase. Our clients' case is that their domain name is not the main keyword. So should we include the keyword phrase in the URL structure to list all their office locations: A - www.website.com/anxiety-treatment/denver/1001
Technical SEO | | ErnieB
or
B - www.website.com/denver/1001 Would this be considered keyword stuffing? We'd like "A" above to rank for keyword phrases related to "anxiety treatment denver", etc.0 -
Should I change the URL now?
Hi all, I have a client website that got hit in the latest algorithm update. It since appears that it had over 100 suspect links to it. I performed the Disavow procedure a few weeks ago via my Google Webmaster account, but have not received a message yet to say its been actioned. The majority of these suspect links go to one page. I am considering changing the base category (in Wordpress) to a different keyphrase and then submitting a new sitemap for indexing. This way there will be no actual link from a suspect website to a page on my website. Do you see what I mean? Will this help do you think? Thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | BrandC0 -
Single URL not indexed
Hi everyone! Some days ago, I noticed that one of our URLs (http://www.access.de/karriereplanung/webinare) is no longer in the Google index. We never had any form of penalty, link warning etc. Our traffic by Google is constantly growing every month. This single page does not have an external link pointing to it - only internal links. The page has been indexed all the time. The HTTP status code is 200, there is no noindex or something in the code. I submitted the URL on GWMT to let Google send it to the index. It was crawled successfully by Google, sent to the index 5 days ago - nothing happened, still not indexed. Do you have any suggestions why this page is no longer indexed? It is well linked internally and one click away from the home page. There is still the PR of 5 showing, I always thought that pages with PR are indexed.......
Technical SEO | | accessKellyOCG0 -
Spider Indexed Disallowed URLs
Hi there, In order to reduce the huge amount of duplicate content and titles for a cliënt, we have disallowed all spiders for some areas of the site in August via the robots.txt-file. This was followed by a huge decrease in errors in our SEOmoz crawl report, which, of course, made us satisfied. In the meanwhile, we haven't changed anything in the back-end, robots.txt-file, FTP, website or anything. But our crawl report came in this November and all of a sudden all the errors where back. We've checked the errors and noticed URLs that are definitly disallowed. The disallowment of these URLs is also verified by our Google Webmaster Tools, other robots.txt-checkers and when we search for a disallowed URL in Google, it says that it's blocked for spiders. Where did these errors came from? Was it the SEOmoz spider that broke our disallowment or something? You can see the drop and the increase in errors in the attached image. Thanks in advance. [](<a href=)" target="_blank">a> [](<a href=)" target="_blank">a> LAAFj.jpg
Technical SEO | | ooseoo0 -
Automatic redirect to external urls
Hi all, I'm developing a dynamic qr code service.. The service works in the following way: You create an account with an associated QR CODE pointing to a url like:
Technical SEO | | raulo79
- http://domain.me/username The user can change the target of this url.. he can:
- point to an external url ( his website for example)
- point to a vCard download page
- a mobile ready webpage ( no redirection in this case)... Visiting http://domain.me/username my company logo is displayed and we redirect the visitor with a: header("Refresh: 5;URL=http://userdomain.tld"); Google is indexing many user's URLs, this is good for those users pointing to the mobile ready webpage, in this case there is no redirection, but Google is indexing many urls that redirect to an external url and I don't know how to avoid this.. I can't do an header('Location: http://www.example.com/'); because I need to display our logo after redirection.. how can I do google friendly? Sorry for my english, I hope you can undestand the problem. Best regards.
Mauro.0