undefined
Skip to content
Moz logo Menu open Menu close
  • Products
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Pro Home
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Home
    • STAT
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Home
    • Compare SEO Products
    • Moz Data
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis
    • Keyword Explorer
    • Link Explorer
    • Competitive Research
    • MozBar
    • More Free SEO Tools
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO
    • SEO Learning Center
    • Moz Academy
    • SEO Q&A
    • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Agency Solutions
    • Enterprise Solutions
    • Small Business Solutions
    • Case Studies
    • The Moz Story
    • New Releases
  • Log in
  • Log out
  • Products
    • Moz Pro

      Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

    • Moz Local

      Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

    • STAT

      SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

    • Moz API

      Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

    • Compare SEO Products

      See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

    • Moz Data

      Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
    Moz Pro

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

    Learn more
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis

      Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

    • Keyword Explorer

      Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

    • Link Explorer

      Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

    • Competitive Research

      Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

    • MozBar

      See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

    • More Free SEO Tools

      Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
    Moz Pro

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

    Learn more
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO

      The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

    • SEO Learning Center

      Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

    • On-Demand Webinars

      Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

    • How-To Guides

      Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

    • Moz Academy

      Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

    • MozCon

      Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
    Moz API

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

    Find your plan
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Small Business Solutions

      Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

    • Agency Solutions

      Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

    • Enterprise Solutions

      Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

    • The Moz Story

      Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

    • Case Studies

      Explore how Moz drives ROI with a proven track record of success.

    • New Releases

      Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

    Surface actionable competitive intel
    New Feature

    Surface actionable competitive intel

    Learn More
  • Log in
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Dashboard
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Dashboard
    • Moz Academy
  • Avatar
    • Moz Home
    • Notifications
    • Account & Billing
    • Manage Users
    • Community Profile
    • My Q&A
    • My Videos
    • Log Out

The Moz Q&A Forum

  • Forum
  • Questions
  • Users
  • Ask the Community

Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

  1. Home
  2. Digital Marketing
  3. Web Design
  4. URL structure for multiple cities?

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.

URL structure for multiple cities?

Web Design
5
10
1.9k
Loading More Posts
  • Oldest to Newest
  • Newest to Oldest
  • Most Votes
Reply
  • Reply as question
Log in to reply
This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
  • adamkirk
    adamkirk last edited by Jun 17, 2012, 1:55 AM

    Hi, i am in the process of setting up a business directory site that will be used in a number of cities, though i am initially launching with only one city.

    My question is, what is the best URL structure to use for the site and should i start using this URL structure from day one?

    At the moment i am using www.mysite.com.au as my primary website where it contains all listings for the the one initial launch city.

    Though to plan for the future i was considering this URL structure:

    www.mysite.com.au/cityname

    so for example, if i launch in the city Sydney initially then all website traffic that goes to www.mysite.com.au would simply be redirected (302 temp redirect?) to www.mysite.com.au/sydney.

    When i expand to other cities www.mysite.com.au would simply be a "select your city" screen that then redirects to the city of choice (similar to www.groupon.com page).

    How would doing a 302 redirect from www.mysite.com.au to www.mysite.com.au/city impact on SEO for the initial launch? Or should i just place this on the root domain since no other cities exist at the moment?

    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
    • Dr-Pete
      Dr-Pete Staff @adamkirk last edited by Jun 19, 2012, 5:32 PM Jun 19, 2012, 5:32 PM

      If it's just a few cities, it's probably not a big deal either way, and the search results could give you a landing page. If you really plan to expand down the road, I think I'd go with your alternative approach, at least for now. Keep Google on the main site, and you can let users select their appropriate city page (and cookie that).

      If, down the road, you've got a good structure and solid back-links, and you want to open up the city pages to crawlers, you can always change that later. It's not black-and-white, but in 2012 I think it's best to go out narrow and really focus your link profile on your core pages, expanding once you've got the authority and history to make it work.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • adamkirk
        adamkirk @Dr-Pete last edited by Jun 18, 2012, 8:47 PM Jun 18, 2012, 8:47 PM

        Thanks Peter.

        Just a question in regards to your first point (1). Each city page page will simply have a search box. The results will be filtered to only return entries for that particular city (as derived from the URL - ie Sydney filter will be applied if URL is www.mysite.com.au/sydney).

        I am now thinking the best option for this setup would be to have the search box located on the root domain www.mysite.com.au (and no longer have the city pages), and simply have a drop down list box next to the search box to allow the city filter to be applied. What do you think of this idea?

        I could then also use cookies to set the default value of the city select list based on previous visit selection.

        Dr-Pete 1 Reply Last reply Jun 19, 2012, 5:32 PM Reply Quote 0
        • Dr-Pete
          Dr-Pete Staff last edited by Jun 18, 2012, 6:19 PM Jun 18, 2012, 6:19 PM

          Unfortunately, it's a tricky situation, and I'm not sure there's one "right" answer. I think some of the feedback in the comments is definitely accurate, but it depends on the circumstances. There are two big factors to consider:

          (1) It's probably best not to spin out hundreds of city pages, if they're just a template with a few geo-targeted words changed around. This used to be common practice to rank for long-tail terms, but since Panda, it's really gotten to be risky. If Google sees hundreds or thousands of thing pages, your entire site could be penalized. Meanwhile, those thin pages don't generally rank well, even best-case.

          (2) The 302-redirect is going to leave link-juice at the home-page, but still allow Google to crawl the city-based pages. If you're using geo-location, it probably doesn't matter whether you use a 301 or 302, honestly, because Google is going to come via US IPs and it will never trigger an Australian-based location. So, you need to make sure your solution works for the crawlers and decide where you want them to land.

          adamkirk 1 Reply Last reply Jun 18, 2012, 8:47 PM Reply Quote 1
          • adamkirk
            adamkirk @adamkirk last edited by Jun 17, 2012, 10:09 PM Jun 17, 2012, 10:09 PM

            Ok i see.

            Does having a much heavier weight on the city page (ie Sydney), rather than the root domain have much of an impact if people are searching for "[business name] Sydney"? I guess www.mysite.com.au/sydney would be shown in search results rather than www.mysite.com.au?

            Are you suggesting that having a "city selection" page hosted on www.mysite.com.au would be the best option from an SEO perspective? (Even though there is only one city).

            Thanks

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • bronxpad
              bronxpad @adamkirk last edited by Jun 17, 2012, 9:31 AM Jun 17, 2012, 9:31 AM

              You wouldn't get penalized for the 302. 302's normally aren't used because they don't pass along link juice but in this case that is not your concern. What might create an issue for you is that people will like your site and then choose to link to it, but it will most likely be the Sydney link structure if that's the route you go, most people copy and paste the URL and then use it as a link. Then when you redo all your structures you will have one city page with a crazy amount of link juice but a main URL with no link juice. You won't be able to fix it either with a 301 because then no one will be able to see your Sydney page. You will create a problem for yourself in that sense. Hope this helps.

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
              • SEOLocal92
                SEOLocal92 last edited by Jun 17, 2012, 3:58 AM Jun 17, 2012, 3:58 AM

                HI, first i will support other answers and will not recommend the redirect from the same reasons.

                regard the URL i will like you to look at this site that i am working on www.123locksmith.com and see the way we did the city pages.

                working great with this system and this site is up in major keywords and city, i will recommend you have some changes in the content and not just change the city name.

                i will recommend to start with the city pages from day one because if you will work on a strong DA by the time you get to this pages it will be easy to work on.

                hope that help you

                Mike

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                • MoosaHemani
                  MoosaHemani Banned last edited by Jun 17, 2012, 3:22 AM Jun 17, 2012, 3:22 AM

                  Plan for today didn’t make sense to me and as far as the URL structure is concern you should have to have ea long term planning for that.

                  If I would be at your place I would be happy to see the URL structure which is somewhat similar to you. For example I launch a bakery business in Melbourne my ideal URL should be:

                  • www.mysite.com.au/melbourne/bakery/bakery224/

                  this way the URLs will be organized and user can easily find where his business can be available, even by looking at the URL.

                  As far as your idea of 302 redirections is concern I might not support that so if redirection is necessary at any point then go for 301 permanent redirections.

                  Hope this helps!

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                  • adamkirk
                    adamkirk @bronxpad last edited by Jun 17, 2012, 2:11 AM Jun 17, 2012, 2:11 AM

                    Thanks for the reply Joel.

                    Since there will only be one city initially, is there any negative impact (in terms of SEO), in doing a simple redirect from www.mysite.com.au to /sydney?

                    bronxpad adamkirk 2 Replies Last reply Jun 17, 2012, 10:09 PM Reply Quote 0
                    • bronxpad
                      bronxpad last edited by Jun 17, 2012, 2:07 AM Jun 17, 2012, 2:07 AM

                      I'm a believer in planning for the future. So I would go with www.mysite.com.au and then have the city option of Sydney and with a comment "more cities coming soon" this way you wouldn't have to worry about having a 302 redirect or changing domains later. Hope this helps good luck.

                      adamkirk 1 Reply Last reply Jun 17, 2012, 2:11 AM Reply Quote 0
                      • 1 / 1
                      1 out of 10
                      • First post
                        1/10
                        Last post

                      Got a burning SEO question?

                      Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                      Start my free trial


                      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.

                      • See all categories

                      Related Questions

                      • mattdinbrooklyn

                        Infinite Scroll and URL Changing

                        Hi, So my website is having an issue indexing. Much like other sports sites like ESPN or MLB or a variety of others my site changes the URL as you go down the page. So if you go on a news article and continue scrolling you'll go to another news article. I believe that this is creating errors in Search Console with the article being given an error of being "too long". I don't know how to keep this infinite scroll and url changing which increases my pageviews and eliminate the errors. Can someone help?

                        Web Design | Jul 5, 2016, 4:45 PM | mattdinbrooklyn
                        0
                      • serverleap

                        Missing trailing slash in URL on subpages resulting in Moz PA of 1

                        Even here in moz community I am noticing it. Is it really a factor to have an ending slash on the page? Does it make a difference? Our website has a homepage PA of 63, DA of 56 but all of our sub-pages are just 1 and they have been up for 4 months.

                        Web Design | Apr 4, 2016, 8:02 PM | serverleap
                        1
                      • vivekrathore

                        Will interlinking using dynamic parameters in url help us in increasing our rankings

                        Hi, Will interlinking our internal pages using dynamic parameters(like abc.com/property-in-noida?source=footer) help us in increasing our rankings for linked pages OR we should use static urls for interlinking Regards

                        Web Design | Mar 9, 2015, 4:25 PM | vivekrathore
                        0
                      • RobertFisher

                        Anyone using CloudFlare on multiple sites?

                        We are considering using CloudFlare as a CDN for a large group of sites. The fees are $5 to $200 depending on many factors. We tried the free trial on one site and were impressed with the results. I am wondering if any of you have any longer term experience with this and performance metrics, etc.

                        Web Design | Nov 19, 2016, 3:20 PM | RobertFisher
                        1
                      • InvoqMarketing

                        Duplicate content on websites for multiple countries

                        I have a client who has a website for their U.S. based customers. They are currently adding a Canadian dealer and would like a second website with much of the same info as their current website, but with Canadian contact info etc. What is the best way to do this without creating duplicate content that will get us penalized? If we create a website at ABCcompany.com and ABCCompany.ca or something like that, will that get us around the duplicate content penalty?

                        Web Design | Apr 9, 2014, 8:01 AM | InvoqMarketing
                        0
                      • JoshAM

                        Multiple Local Schemas Per Page

                        I am working on a mid size restaurant groups site.  The new site (in development) has a drop down of each of the locations.  When you hover over a location in the drop down it shows the businesses info (NAP).  Each of the location in the Nav list are using schema.org markup. I think this would be confusing for search robots.  Every page has 15 address schemas and individual restaurants pages NAP is at the below all the locations' schema/NAP in the DOM. Have any of you dealt with multiple schemas per page or similar structure?

                        Web Design | Aug 8, 2013, 4:45 PM | JoshAM
                        0
                      • Will_Craig

                        Is it better to redirect a url or set up a landing page for a new site?

                        Hi, One of our clients has got a new website but is still getting quite a lot of traffic to her old site which has a page authority of 30 on the home page and has about 20 external backlinks. It's on a different hosting package so a different C block but I was wondering if anyone could advise if it would be better to simply redirect this page to the new site or set up a landing page on this domain simply saying "Site has moved, you can now find us here..." sort of idea. Any advice would be much appreciated Thanks

                        Web Design | Mar 7, 2013, 1:45 PM | Will_Craig
                        0
                      • DROIDSTERS

                        Yes or No for Ampersand "&" in SEO URLs

                        Hi Mozzers I would like to know how crawlers see the ampersand (& or &) in your URLs and if Google frown upon this or not? As far as I know they purely recognise this as "and" is this correct and is there any best practice for implementing this, as I know a lot of people complained before about & in links and that it is better to use it as &, but this is not on links, this is on URLs. Reason for this is that we looking to move onto an ASP.Net MVC framework (any suggestions for a different framework are welcome, we still just planning out future development) and in order to make use of the filter options we have on our site we need a parameter to indicate the difference on a routing level (routing sends to controller, controller sends to model, model sends to controller and controller sends to view < this is pattern of a request that comes in on the framework we will be using). I already have -'s and /'s in the URLs (which is for my SEO structuring) so these syntax can't be used for identifying filters the user clicks or uses to define their search as it will create a complete mess in the system. Now we looking at & to say; OK, when a user lands on /accommodation and they selects De Kelders (which is a destination in our area) the page will be /accommodation/de-kelders on this page they can define their search further to say they are looking for 5 star accommodation and it should be close to the beach, this is where the routing needs some guidance and we looking to have it as follow: /accommodation/de-kelders/5-star&close-to-the-beach. Now, does the "&" get identified by search engines on a URL level as "and" and does this cause any issues with crawling or indexation or would it be best to look at another solution? Thanks, Chris Captivate

                        Web Design | Feb 21, 2013, 6:21 PM | DROIDSTERS
                        0

                      Get started with Moz Pro!

                      Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                      Start my free trial
                      Products
                      • Moz Pro
                      • Moz Local
                      • Moz API
                      • Moz Data
                      • STAT
                      • Product Updates
                      Moz Solutions
                      • SMB Solutions
                      • Agency Solutions
                      • Enterprise Solutions
                      Free SEO Tools
                      • Domain Authority Checker
                      • Link Explorer
                      • Keyword Explorer
                      • Competitive Research
                      • Brand Authority Checker
                      • Local Citation Checker
                      • MozBar Extension
                      • MozCast
                      Resources
                      • Blog
                      • SEO Learning Center
                      • Help Hub
                      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                      • How-to Guides
                      • Moz Academy
                      • API Docs
                      About Moz
                      • About
                      • Team
                      • Careers
                      • Contact
                      Why Moz
                      • Case Studies
                      • Testimonials
                      Get Involved
                      • Become an Affiliate
                      • MozCon
                      • Webinars
                      • Practical Marketer Series
                      • MozPod
                      Connect with us

                      Contact the Help team

                      Join our newsletter
                      Moz logo
                      © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                      • Accessibility
                      • Terms of Use
                      • Privacy

                      Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.