Are SEO Friendly URLS Less Important Now That Google Is Indexing Breadcrumb Markup?
-
Hi Moz Community and staffers,
Would appreciate your thoughts on the following question:
**Are SEO friendly URLS less important now that Google is indexing breadcrumb markup in both desktop and mobile search? **
Background that inspired the question:
Our ecommerce platform's out of the box functionality has very limited "friendly url" settings and would need some development work to setup an alias for more friendly URLS. Meanwhile, the breadcrumb markup is implemented correctly and indexed so it seems there's no longer an argument for improved CTR with SEO friendly URLS .
With that said I'm having a hard time justifying the URL investment, as well as the 301 redirect mapping we would need to setup, and am wondering if more friendly URLs would lead to a significant increase in rankings for level of effort? Sidenote: We already rank well for non-brand and branded searches since we are brand manufacturer with an ecommerce presence.
Our breadcrumbs are much cleaner & concise than our URL structure. Here are a couple examples.
Category URL: http://www.mysite.com/browse/category1/subcat2/subcat3/_/N-7th
Breadcrumb: www.mysite.com > category1 > subcat2 > subcat3Product URL: http://www.mysite.com/product/product-name/_/R-133456E112
Breadcrumb: www.mysite.com > category1 > subcat2 > subcat3 > product nameThe "categories" contain actual keywords just hiding them here in the example. According to my devs they can't get rid of the "_" but could possible replace it with a letter. Also they said it's an easier fix to make the URLs always lower case. Lastly some of our product URLS contain non-standard characters in the product name like "." and "," which is also a simpler fix according to my developers.
Looking forward to your thoughts on the topic!
Jesse
-
Thanks - good question. I agree with a previous poster that any website should possess friendly URL'S, such is a given these days and ultimately aids user awareness and navigation. You really should carefully research and think about the time required for URLS rewrites - these can be quit dangerous and if not done properly can damage your rankings. Certainly breadcrumb trails are a big plus so that's something I would definitely recommend.
-
Hi Jesse
Google reading breadcrumbs is not really a new thing, its been around for years, i remember "optimizing" my breadcrumbs in 2009 to get the perfect "green breadcrumbs" on the results pages.
Friendly URLs are not used solo for SEO optimization, you should have user-friendly URLs regardless to your optimization efforts. It is one of the elements that users do pay attention. This being said, you will find enourmous amount websites ranking for very competitive keywords with URLs not even containing the keyword within the uri.
for example: xxx.com/product/t/121kl?sku=28971723dsa-black.
In my opinion having a friendly URL is important, it is one of the hundreds of ranking factors. The catch is that every other SEO expert puts a different weight on certain factors. There are many other ranking factors way more important then the friendly URL. I believe that every single factor is important, because i believe that the end product that the user gets must be as perfect as i can provide. And the end-results always speaks for themselves But again, this is not the end of the world, and i believe that your case is not that problematic. It's just that I am obsessed and always aim for perfectionRegarding the 301 mapping, if you choose to move forward with it, you do not need to move all URLs at once. You should go ahead and test couple of URLs to see how Google reacts, how long does it takes until google index is updated etc. (you probably will want to submit a new updated sitemap to get things move faster). There is always some ranking loss in 301 redirections, especially in the first couple of day/weeks. But it can be fixed with further SEO efforts.
Best
Yossi
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
-
How .com and .me effect SEO?
Hi, We have a project https://www.shipwaves.me/ and https://www.shipwaves.com/ and however if we are doing SEO for .me domain - is this give early results like as .com domain. I'm not sure that .me is in the category of .me domains. Well, if we are following the same strategy as like following for .com domains - is that the results will be the same or not. Also, in terms of any additional strategy to be done to make the SEO little faster for the .me domain. Guys, please share your thought on this.
Algorithm Updates | | LayaPaul0 -
Are Meta-descriptions important for blogs?
I am tasked with optimizing an existing sites SEO. I have added meta's to all the menu pages, however they have blog section with over 700 posts. How important are meta descriptions when it comes to a websites blog? Do I need to take the time to go through 700+ blog posts and create unique meta descriptions for each one?
Algorithm Updates | | rburnett0 -
Reviews - Google & Third Party
Hi We have reviews on our product pages & service reviews on Feefo, but how important is it to also drive customers to review your company on Google? I'm guessing we should be doing both, but it proves difficult when you already ask them to review your company through a third party? Any tips moz?
Algorithm Updates | | BeckyKey0 -
How to you get a company details to appear on the right side of google searches? For example is you type dr martens in google , the search page shows links and then a snippet of the company on the right. Thank you.
For example is you type dr martens in google , the search page shows links and then a snippet of the company on the right. Thank you. https://www.google.com/search?q=dr+martens&oq=dr+martens&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l5.2176j0j7&sourceid=chrome&espv=210&es_sm=122&ie=UTF-8
Algorithm Updates | | vijayvasu0 -
Doing Directory Submission are Worth Now a days ?
Hello Guys, **Doing directory submission these days are worth ? ** What are the best factors of link building ? Please suggest me link building strategies to rank my keywords well in search engines.
Algorithm Updates | | sumit600 -
Domain Authority and Google keywords
Hi there, We have a domain authority of 33, one of our competitors has an authority of 10, yet they appear to list higher on many keyword searches in google. Is there a reason for this? Our site is 5 months old, and their site is over 3 yrs old. Thanks for your feedback 🙂
Algorithm Updates | | PHDAustralia680 -
Google results on an Ipad 2
Has anyone else seen different google organic results for a site when viewing on an Ipad compared to computer browser ? I've just checked a site and were no1 on google when searched on the Ipad 2 but when searched on my Macbook we are page 2 ? Could this just be different data centers or do google serve up different results to the 2 devices ? Would be really interested to know if anyone else has seen this. JP
Algorithm Updates | | Prongo0 -
Organic CTR on Google - KPI?
Hi, I was hoping for some advice on my keyword analysis I have completed. So far I have identified a hitlist of high volume keyword associated to the industry I operate in. As well as this, I'm monitoring our keyword positions within the SERPS. Question: Is there a CTR metric available depending on the position your keyword ranks within Google? i.e. If I am position 3 and looking to move to position 1 on a specific keyword, what amount of incremental search volume would be geneerated to my website? PResumably the CTR would also depend on what market you operate in too I am also going on a 65% / 35% Organic/PPC split based on keyword search volume so to give me a true reflection of the search volume available... Any advice on this would be much appreciated... Simon
Algorithm Updates | | simonsw0