What directory should a site go in (url structure)?
-
Hi All,
The is the first actual SEO campaign i've worked on and I had a few question about where the site should live on the server and url structure. The site is in WP and we're using Yoast SEO.
Anyway the site lives in a a folder called Coastal, which is a child of the WWW folder. So the permalink of the homepage is mcoastalwindows.com/coastal/. The URL is mycoastalwindows.com. The thing is I can still get to the homepage or any of the pages on the site by typing in the /coastal/. Another example is permalink mycoastalwndows.com/coastal/siding/ and url mycoastalwindows.com/siding/. The urls always display without the /coastal/, so I'm not too worried about people linking to them, but Yoast puts a canonical element to the permalink and always includes the /coastal/. Also I'm seeing that Google displays a lot of the urls with the /coastal/, which is an issue seeing as we don't link to the pages that way.
My original thought was to solve this at the source and just move everything out of the coastal directory, but the developer swears that it's more secure being in another folder especially with WP. What would you all do and what is best practice? Would you move everything out of the coastal folder, 301 re-direct, do something with. htaccess, or another solution?
Appreciate the input thanks!
-
Thanks for the help guys! Appreciate it.
-
Hi Mario,
The Mozzers above are right - your best move is to get rid of the redundant /coastal/ subfolder.
Your developer is incorrect. There is no security benefit to the subfolder.
I would suggest, to ensure security, that you instead have a thorough read through this guide to Hardening WordPress and follow these methods, as they will cover you for the vast majority of hack attacks.
Also, keep regular backup copies of your database if your hosting company doesn't do this automatically. Between that and backups of the website files, you'll be well covered in the event of a hack.
Best,
Mike -
Hi,
I agree with Jeff, developers seem to have an inherited paranoia problem with Word press and security. This can be solved by using a security plug in like word fence.
Word press is built with security in mind its weakness is 3rd party plug ins so beware when installing any always look for more popular properly supported ones.
Hope this helps
Brett
-
Hi Mario,
I agree with Jeff. You need to move your site up a folder.
You could write rules that remove the '/coastal/' from the canonical URL for the Yoast plugin, 301 redirect /coastal/* to /* etc - but this is really messy.
It's fine to have your site on the root domain....it's no less secure.
-
Mario -
The biggest issue I see is that your developer thinks that having content not in the www / home directory is somehow more secure. I think this is a red flag, as literally 20% of the websites on the Internet run WordPress (including my site).
While there are security issues from time to time that crop up, keeping up to date with patches, upgrades and server settings will mitigate this.
Best practice, hands-down, is to keep your home page content in the www folder, and not in the /coastal/ folder. In a sub-folder, it's not going to perform as well from an SEO perspective. And it could hurt you, as it looks like you might be trying to "stuff" in a keyword or two.
I would recommend moving the site into the www / home directory, and setting things up so that this is the primary URL. Yes, use 301 redirects on the older links so that you don't have 404 errors on the site…
Hope this helps!
-- Jeff
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
-
URL Parameters
On our webshop we've added some URL-parameters. We've set URL's like min_price, filter_cat, filter_color etc. on "don't Crawl" in our Google Search console. We see that some parameters have 100.000+ URL's and some have 10.000+ Is it better to add these parameters in the robots.txt file? And if that's better, how can we write it down so the URL's will not be crawled. Our robotos.txt files shows now: # Added by SEO Ultimate's Link Mask Generator module User-agent: * Disallow: /go/ # End Link Mask Generator output User-agent: * Disallow: /wp-admin/
Technical SEO | | Happy-SEO1 -
What would be the optimum URL structure for an inbound tour operator that sells tours in Jordan?
We are an inbound tour operator in Jordan. We have just redesigned and restructured our website. We sell tours in Jordan (Jordan Tours) and this is the primary keyword we are targeting. Our Jordan Tours page includes different tour categories. Each category takes you to a number of tours to choose from. What would be the best URL structure that will optimize our ranking for "Jordan Tours"? A. /jordantours/tour-type-category/tour-name B. /jordantours/tour-name C. /tour-name I have to admit that two weeks ago we launched the new site and went with option C. by intuition, aiming at reducing the clutter for a better user experience. So if C isn't the answer, is it worth making the change and applying 301 redirects after our new pages has been indexed for 2 weeks? Your insight is much appreciated. Thank you, Rakan
Technical SEO | | rakan0 -
Would you shorten this url, and if so how?
I designed the structure of my website way before I even thought about SEO. I run a website that requires me to categorize articles is somewhat deep nested categories so an example url would be as follows http://www.yakangler.com/articles/news/new-products/boats/item/1442-jackson-kayak-launches-the-big-tuna Would you shorten the url to somethign like this? http://www.yakangler.com/a/n/np/b/item/1442-jackson-kayak-launches-the-big-tuna If so how would you manage the redirects I'm unsure how to add a 301 redirect in my .htaccess file that wouldn't require me to add one for every single article. Could I do it with a rule that recognizes only the middle part of the url and redirect it accordingly? Thanks for any advice you might have!
Technical SEO | | mr_w0 -
Trying to get google to know my site is a magazine site is this wrong
Hi, i have put a line to describe what my site is at the top of my site and i want to know if this is wrong or not. We have dropped frok being number one in google for lifestyle magazine to now number seven. Before we had to redo our site we were number one and then we dropepd to around number four when we finished the site and now we are number seven and i need to try and get back up there. To help google know we are a lifestyle magazine i have put a line at the top of the site and i want to know if this looks out of place and if i should take it down. i need advice on how to get google to know we are a lifestyle magazine and get back in the top five of google my site is www.in2town.co.uk any help would be great
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Way to find how many sites within a given set link to a specific site?
Hi, Does anyone have an idea on how to determine how many sites within a list of 50 sites link to a specific site? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | SparkplugDigital0 -
I have a site that has both http:// and https:// versions indexed, e.g. https://www.homepage.com/ and http://www.homepage.com/. How do I de-index the https// versions without losing the link juice that is going to the https://homepage.com/ pages?
I can't 301 https// to http:// since there are some form pages that need to be https:// The site has 20,000 + pages so individually 301ing each page would be a nightmare. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Technical SEO | | fthead90 -
URLs: To Change or Not to Change
Hello, We recently launched a redesigned site in Drupal in December of last year. We are an eco-travel company. My current URL's look like this: /africa-and-middle-east/kenya-tanzania /central-south-america/galapagos-islands My pages have good term targeting grades, and the rankings for the terms we are targeting - "kenya and tanzania safaris" and "galapagos islands cruises" are decent, but not great - most are on page 2 or 3. The one URL where I targeted our most important term, "amazon river cruises," I am still on page 2. /central-south-america/amazon-river-cruises My questions are: Did I miss an opportunity with the rest of the URL's, and should I consider changing the rest to more targeted terms with 301s? Since the new site launched in January, perhaps I have not given enough time for my new URL's to index and mature. Would it be easier to set up landing pages with unique article content that targets terms such as "galapagos islands cruises" and "kenya and tanzania safaris"? If so, how can I do it in such a way as to not "compete" with the pages I want to drive them to? This also raises the question of redirecting the same URL twice i.e. I would have 2 redirects in place for the same url e.g. from the former site to the new site, and yet another redirect to the most-recent URL. Is that a problem? Sorry if I've asked too many questions in one post. 😉 Any advice appreciated.
Technical SEO | | csmithal0 -
Directory URL structure last / in the url
Ok, So my site's urls works like this www.site.com/widgets/ If you go to www.site.com/widgets (without the last / ) you get a 404. My site did no used to require the last / to load the page but it has over the last year and my rankings have dropped on those pages... But Yahoo and BING still indexes all my pages without the last / and it some how still loads the page if you go to it from yahoo or bing, but it looks like this in the address bar once you arrive from bing or yahoo. http://www.site.com/404.asp?404;http://site.com:80/widgets/ How do I fix this? Should'nt all the engines see those pages the same way with the last / included? What is the best structure for SEO?
Technical SEO | | DavidS-2820610