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.
Sizes and numbers in friendly urls - syntax
-
Ok, I'm trying to establish some business rules of syntax for SEO friendly URLS.
I'm doing this for an OpenCart online store which uses a SEO-url field to construct the "friendly URL's". The good news of that is I have total control over the urls' the bad news is I had to do some tricky Excel work to populate them.
That all said, I have a problem with items that have sizes. This is a crafts store so many of the items are differentiated by size. Examples:
Sleigh Bells, come in 1/2", 3/4", 1", 1 1/2" etc.
So far Ive tried to stay away from inch mark " by spelling it out. Right now its inch but could be in.
The numbers, fractions, sizes etc. create some ghastly friendly URL's. Is there any wisdom or syntax standards out there that would help me. I'm trying to avoid this:
www.mysite.com//index.php?route=craft-accessories/bells/sleigh-bells/sleigh-bells-1-one-half-inch-with-loop
I realize that the category (sleigh-bells) is repeated in the product name but there are several 1 1/2" items in the store.
Any thoughts would be useful, even if it's links to good SEO sites that have mastered the myriad of issues with dimensions in the urls.
thanks
-
I'll have to dig deeper than my local big-box retail store. This is a url from a random screw at Home Depot:
This product exhibits the issue. Product name, size (8 x 2 1/2), style (Phillips, Bugle Head), Thread (Coarse), Point (sharp), Coating etc.
-
This is a good question and harkens back to original data modeling. Each size item is a different sku. There are modules for OpenCart that will make a "series" record to mask via interface that they are all different records (think click on different color) but in our case they have different sku's, can be out of stock, can even have different prices. The nature of the crafts store is American Indian supplies. So just in seed beads there are five common sizes, up to 200 different colors per size and some of those can have faceted beads or non-faceted (we call them cuts). Add all that up and there are a ton of products that come in and out of stock etc.
That's it generally. My comment about sizes is that there are many many things across the materials (bells, silver broaches, etc.) that are chosen by the buyer by material (brass vs silver) but then by size (1", 1.5" etc.) The size is a key component so since each one is a different "product record" it will naturally have its own URL. All these inches, millimeters, fractions and odd sizes (thread come D, O, OO, YO etc.) it's enough to make one bonkers. I have an SEO url for each product and am looking for input from others thougths before I go medieval on shortening them.
Hope that answers your question.
-
Some very powerful resources shared by Patrick as always but while I was reading the question several ideas were popping up in my mind.
You are saying you have several different products that are in different sizes. If this is the case, why not you make it one product and in the product section offer the size in the dropdown? #justwondering
In my opinion the best URL structure for you would be domain.com/category/product-name.php
Once you decide what URL structure you will follow, do go through the instruction given by Patrick so that there should be no technical problem with regards to indexing and ranking.
Hope this helps!
-
Hi John
Okay cool - keep me posted - want to make sure you get to here you need to be! Good luck!
-
Thanks. I've read many of these but will do so again looking for details on the technical data in the URL. It strikes me that hardware stores (Home Depot and Lowes) must have this issue with screws etc. Will go there too.
-
Hi John
Take a look at the following resources:
URL Best Practices (Moz)
15 SEO Best Practices for Structuring URLs (Moz)
SEO Cheat Sheet: Anatomy of A URL (Moz)
SEO Optimal Ecommerce URLs (PracticalEcommerce)
Information Architecture for SEO - Whiteboard Friday (Moz)
Canonicalization (Moz - in case aliases or parameters appear)Don't forget to update your sitemap, upload it to Google and Bing Webmaster Tools, and also check your internal links so they are up to date.
There is a lot here, but these resources should help you get started on structuring your website and also your URLs in a logical and user friendly fashion. Let me know if you need anymore help! Good luck!
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
-
Duplicate, submitted URL not selected as canonical
Hi all, A number of our pages have dropped out of search rankings. It seems they are being marked as "Duplicate, submitted URL not selected as canonical" However, the page Google is choosing as the canonical is totally different - different headings, titles, metadata, content on the page. We are completely mystified as to why this is happening. If anyone can shed any light, it would be hugely appreciated! Example URL is this one:
Technical SEO | Oct 8, 2020, 12:00 PM | Eric_S
https://www.vouchedfor.co.uk/IFA-financial-advisor-mortgage/london Which Google seems to think is a duplicate of this: https://www.vouchedfor.co.uk/solicitor/london0 -
Trailing slash URLs and canonical links
Hi, I've seen a fair amount of topics speaking about the difference between domain names ending with or without trailing slashes, the impact on crawlers and how it behaves with canonical links.
Technical SEO | Feb 6, 2019, 8:09 AM | GhillC
However, it sticks to domain names only.
What about subfolders and pages then? How does it behaves with those? Say I've a site structured like this:
https://www.domain.com
https://www.domain.com/page1 And for each of my pages, I've an automatic canonical link ending with a slash.
Eg. rel="canonical" href="https://www.domain.com/page1/" /> for the above page. SEM Rush flags this as a canonical error. But is it exactly?
Are all my canonical links wrong because of that slash? And as subsidiary question, both domain.com/page1 and domain.com/page1/ are accessible. Is it this a mistake or it doesn't make any difference (I've read that those are considered different pages)? Thanks!
G0 -
Folders in url structure?
Hello, Revamping an out-of-date website and am wondering if I need to include the folders (categories) in the url structure? The proposed structure has 8 main folders. I've been reading that Google is ok if the folder is not included in the url, but is it really? The hesitation I have is that the urls are getting long and the main folder only has only a sub folder beneath it. So, /folder-name/facility-name/treatment-overview. This looks too long, doesn't it? Thanks!
Technical SEO | Oct 26, 2018, 10:03 AM | lfrazer1230 -
Category URL Pagination where URLs don't change between pages
Hello, I am working on an e-commerce site where there are categories with multiple pages. In order to avoid pagination issues I was thinking of using rel=next and rel=prev and cannonical tags. I noticed a site where the URL doesn't change between pages, so whether you're on page 1,2, or 3 of the same category, the URL doesn't change. Would this be a cleaner way of dealing with pagination?
Technical SEO | Nov 30, 2015, 10:01 PM | whiteonlySEO0 -
Mobile URL parameter (Redirection to desktop)
Hello, We have a parallel mobile website and recently we implemented a link pointing to the desktop website. This redirect is happening via a javascript code and results in a url followed by this paramenter: ?m=off Example:
Technical SEO | Apr 29, 2013, 10:36 AM | echo1
http://www.m.website.com redirects to:
http://www.website.com/?m=off Questions: Will the "http://www.website.com/?m=off" be considered duplicate content with "http://www.website.com" since they both return the same content? Is there any possibility that Google will take into consideration the url ending in "/?m=off"? How should we treat this new url? The webmaster tools URL parameter configuration at the moment isn't experiencing problems but should we submit the parameter anyway in order not to be indexed or should we wait first and see the error response? In case we should submit this for removal... what's the best way to do it? Like this? Parameter: ?m=off Does this parameter change page content seen by the user? - doesn't affect page content Any help is much appreciated.
Thank you!0 -
Is it a problem to have a homepage with a slug / URL ?
Hi, We are designing a web site for one of our clients, and using a home made CMS. I don't know how this CMS has been built, but anyways, in the end the homepage has a URL format which looks like this : www.mydomain.com/my-custom-url.html. No www.mydomain.com. Is it dangerous for SEO to have a slug/URL directly on the homepage ? Do you have experiences, cases where it has impacted a site negatively ? The main problem I expect is duplicate content (with Google seeing both www.mydomain.com and www.mydomain.com/my-custom-url.html as being different pages) but apparently the CMS is doing a 302 redirect from the root domain to the URL (I told my colleague it should at least be a 301). Sorry if this question seems like basic SEO knowledge, but I really can't find a definitive answer on the subject. Thank you very much 🙂
Technical SEO | Jul 23, 2012, 12:27 PM | edantadis0 -
Old URL redirect to New URL
Alright I did something dumb a year a go and I'm still paying for it. I changed my hyphenated URL to the non-hyphenated version when I redesigned my website. I say it was dumb because I lost most of my link juice even though I did 301 redirects (via the htaccess file) for almost all of the pages I could find in Google's index. Here's my problem. My new site took a huge hit in traffic (down 60%) when I made the change and even though I've done thousands of redirects my old site is still showing up in the SERPS and send much if not most of my traffic. I don't want to take the old site down in fear it will kill all of my traffic. What should I do? Is there a better method I should explore then 301 redirects? Could the other site be affecting my current rank since it's still there? (FYI...both sites are built on the WP platform). Any help or ideas are greatly appreciated. Thank you! Joe
Technical SEO | Mar 14, 2012, 7:56 PM | kaje0 -
Ok to Put a Decimal in a URL?
I'm in the process of creating new product specific URLs for my company. Some of our products have decimals in them for their names as a unit of measurement. For example - .The URL for a 050" widget would be something like: http://www.example.com/product/category/.050-inch-widget My question is - Can I use a decimal in the URL without ticking off the search engines, and/or causing any other unexpected effects?
Technical SEO | Jan 13, 2012, 11:08 AM | CodyWheeler0