Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
What is better for SEO keywords in folder or in filename - also dupe filename question
-
Hey folks,
I've got a question regarding URL structure. What is best for SEO given that there will be millions of lawyer names and 4 pages per lawyer
www.lawyerz.com/office-locations/dr-al-pacino
www.lawyerz.com/phone-number/dr-al-pacino
www.lawyerz.com/reviews/dr-al-pacino
www.lawyerz.com/ratings/dr-al-pacino
OR
www.lawyerz.com/office-locations-dr-al-pacino
www.lawyerz.com/phone-number-dr-al-pacino
www.lawyerz.com/reviews-dr-al-pacino
www.lawyerz.com/ratings-dr-al-pacino
OR
www.lawyerz.com/dr-al-pacino/office-locations
www.lawyerz.com/dr-al-pacino/phone-number
www.lawyerz.com/dr-al-pacino/reviews
www.lawyerz.com/dr-al-pacino/ratings
Also, concerning duplicate file names:
In the first example there are 4 duplicate file names with the lawyers name. (would this cause Google to not index some)
In the second example there are all unique file names (would this look spammy to Google or the user)
In the third example there are millions of duplicate file names (if 1 million lawyers then 1 million files called "office-locations" etc (could so many duplicate filenames cause ranking issues)
Should the lawyers name (which is the main keyword target) appear in the filename or in the folder - which is better for SEO in your opinion? Thanks for your input!
-
I like all of the answers here and I would definitely focus on how the user is searching for the lawyers. If you have a site with millions of lawyers, they would each have an area of practice so it would make sense to develop a structure around this first:
lawyerz.com/practice-area/state/city/attorney-name
WIth this structure, a searcher that types in "estate planning lawyer" would be sent to the estate planning lawyers page and allowed to search further for their city and then lawyer names. I would attach the contact info, reviews directly on that lawyer's page.
Since your higher volume keywords are going be found within the "practice areas", this would seem the next step after the main domain target of "attorney" or "lawyers". Then, location can come third, attorney name is most likely a lesser searched keyword but using a url structure such as "attorney-john-doe" reinforces.
I would LOVE to hear all the expert opinions about this as I am a newbie to seomoz but am finding some great experts and advice over here.
- topic:timeago_earlier,21 days
-
while pages with such file names can be indexed, the long-term view dictates avoiding pages with filenames in the URL due to future potential conversion to other frameworks. It makes a site less than ideal for portability.
For example, if every page has index.php or whatever.asp and you change platform, you'll end up with every page needing a 301 redirect. So it's better to avoid that whenever possible.
-
Although the filename will be duplicate, the content on those filenames will be okay. Google will look more at the content on the page rather than anything else. There are sites out there that have weird file structures, like:
/index.php
/services/index.php
/products/index.php
Some CMS's will automatically do this, but they rank fine because they have quality content, even though the index.php is technically a duplicate filename.
You should be fine with this method.
-
It's about users for sure. The last set you show communicates "lawyer name" is more important/valuable. Which is the valid perspective, since all of those elements relate to that lawyer. If some users still want to find lawyers based on reviews, you can offer a filter for that in your database sorting. Same with locations.
On the other side of the coin, instead of "locations", if you had town names, you could group by those so it would be /town-name/lawyer-name/ where all lawyers in the same town fall within that town-name grouping. If it's just /locations/ that's an invalid sort hierarchy.
-
yes navigation-wise this definitely makes the most sense
www.lawyerz.com/dr-al-pacino/office-locations
i guess what I am mostly looking for an answer about is which is better for rankings, the keyword in the folder or file name and if duplicate file names will harm rankings.
thanks so much for your assistance guys.
-
Ok gotcha- well if that is the case, then think about how the user will navigate to the end result if they started from the home page. Logically, you could assume the following
If URL structure is as follows:
www.lawyerz.com/office-locations/dr-al-pacino
then /office-locations/ should contain links to all office locations of multiple lawyers.
But with this structure
www.lawyerz.com/dr-al-pacino/office-locations
/dr-al-pacino/ should contain links to the 4 other pages. **This option will probably be your best structure. **
-
If I am not mistaken it really depends on what users are searching
if they are only searching lawyers names than just find a structure that looks pretty and has the lawyer name in it.
But if there is any traffic data that points that people search the city or phone number along with the lawyer name than it might be wise to have that in the url structure
also ever thought of using subdomains? havent seen that in a lawyer directory yet but some of the major article sites switched to subdomains
-
Assume there will be enough content on these pages to not get hit by panda.
The reason for doing this is to hopefully secure more than one first page result since these are names and very low competition, we see some sites doing this successfully.
We will have locations pages too which will list all the docs in that city
-
Is there any particular reason why office location, phone number, reviews, and ratings need to be on 4 separate pages? I could see there being a lot of thin content which won't really rank well or provide a ton of user value. Can you give some more info as to why this would be? I could easily see all 4 of these pages combined into one.
With that, you can focus your URL structure into categories or local regions or both, depending on how dynamic you want the site to be. For example:
http://www.lawyerz.com/nevada/personal-injury/dr-al-pacino
OR
http://www.lawyerz.com/personal-injury/dr-al-pacino
OR
http://www.lawyerz.com/nevada/dr-al-pacino
Unless there is something that I missing, I think no matter how you structure your URLs, thin content just won't rank.
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
-
Lightboxes and SEO
Do lightboxes (AKA popup boxes when you click "learn more" type CTAs) have any negative effect on SEO? We are looking at revamping our sites to have more of a tiled approach, and a lightbox with summary content popping out with additional CTAs, directing to pages with more information or free trial pages. Is there any downside to this approach from an organic perspective? is there anything specific to keep in mind when creating these if not?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Oct 20, 2017, 1:30 PM | Chris81980 -
SEO implications of moving fra a sub-folder to a root domain
I am considering a restructure of my site, and was hoping for some input on SEO implications which I am having some issues getting clarity in. (I will be using sample domains/urls because of language reasons, not an english site), Thinking about moving a site (all content) from example.com/parenting -> parenting.com. This is to have a site fully devoted to this theme, and more easily monitor and improve SEO performance on this content alone. Today all stats on external links, DA etc is related to the root domain, and not just this sub-department. Plus it would be a better brand-experience of the content and site. Other info/issues: -The domain parenting.com (used as example) is currently redirected to example.com/parenting. So I would have to reverse that redirect, and would also redirect all articles to the new site. The current domain example.com has a high DA (67), but the new domain parenting.com has a much lower DA (24). Question: Would the parenting.com domain improve it's DA when not redirected and the sub-folder on the high-DA domain is redirected here instead? Would it severly hurt SEO traffic to make this change, and if so is there a strategy to make the move with as little loss in traffic as possible? How much value is in having a stand-alone domain, which also is one of the most important keywords for this theme? My doubt comes mostly from moving from a domain with high DA to a domain with much lower DA, and I am not sure about how removing the redirect would change that, or if placing a new redirect from the subfolder on the current site would help improve it. Would some DA flow over with a 301 redirect? Thanks for any advice or hints to other documentation that might be of interest for this scenario 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Aug 8, 2017, 7:46 AM | Magne_Vidnes0 -
Merging Pages and SEO
Hi, We are redesigning our website the following way: Before: Page A with Content A, Page B with Content B, Page C with Content C, etc
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Oct 2, 2016, 2:48 PM | viatrading1
e.g. one page for each Customer Returns, Overstocks, Master Case, etc
Now: Page D with content A + B + C etc.
e.g. one long page containing all Product Conditions, one after the other So we are merging multiples pages into one.
What is the best way to do so, so we don't lose traffic? (or we lose the minimum possible) e.g. should we 301 Redirect A/B/C to D...?
Is it likely that we lose significant traffic with this change? Thank you,0 -
"Null" appearing as top keyword in "Content Keywords" under Google index in Google Search Console
Hi, "Null" is appearing as top keyword in Google search console > Google Index > Content Keywords for our site http://goo.gl/cKaQ4K . We do not use "null" as keyword on site. We are not able to find why Google is treating "null" as a keyword for our site. Is anyone facing such issue. Thanks & Regards
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Aug 4, 2015, 7:04 AM | vivekrathore0 -
How to measure traffic for a keyword
Sitting in Country A I want to see how much traffic a particular keyword receives in Country B. Whats the best way to do it? Also, will the search results differ if I am analyzing the above sitting in Country A viz-a-viz Country B. In other words, will the IP of the country I am making the search from play a role in the results?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | May 28, 2015, 11:01 AM | KS__0 -
Does anyone know of any tools that can help split up xml sitemap to make it more efficient and better for seo?
Hello All, We want to split up our Sitemap , currently it's almost 10K pages in one xml sitemap but we want to make it in smaller chunks splitting it by category or location or both. Ideally into 100 per sitemap is what I read is the best number to help improve indexation and seo ranking. Any thoughts on this ? Does anyone know or any good tools out there which can assist us in doing this ? Also another question I have is that should we put all of our products (1250) in one site map or should this also be split up in to say products for category etc etc ? thanks Pete
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Dec 10, 2014, 10:46 AM | PeteC120 -
What Constitutes Keyword Stuffing?
Greeting MOZ Community: I have been attempting to add certain keywords phrases to the home page text of our real estate web site (www.nyc-officespace-leader.com). When I check the keyword density and look at the keyword cloud, the frequency of certain terms appear substantially higher than they should be (see attached keyword cloud and keyword density chart. Certain terms like "office space" have a 5 or 6% frequency which seems high. Last thing we need is a Panda penalty. When I viewed the code for the home page (see enclosed), I noticed HREF tags, SRE tags and ALT tags repeating certain keyword phrases, driving up their density. I have attached a keyword cloud for the home page of a competitor and the use of language seems more diverse. Does Google take the text in these various tags into account? I know the ALT tag is important for SEO, but how about the others? Does the use of text in the tags for this page make the overall page look spammy? Also, there are text and tags for the carousel in the home page that appear in the code for the home page. If this code were somehow concealed, would we be better off from an SEO perspective? Thanks, Alan pkM7CZG 1DFFMZ0
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Nov 8, 2014, 12:55 AM | Kingalan10 -
Quick Question: Is it Bad for SEO to paste from Word to your CMS?
Hey just a quick question I'm having trouble finding a definitive answer to: Is the markup that is transferred from Word docs bad for SEO? We are managing to paste it and it looks fine, but the developers are worried that the extra code will be bad for SEO. Does anyone have solution besides pasting into Text Editor and formatting in the CMS? Is this necessary or can we just leave the extra code? Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Sep 4, 2014, 7:41 PM | keL.A.xT.o0